The policies sold as pet sitting insurance in Australia are commercial products built for paid work. If you charge a fee, public liability is the usual starting point, and on its own it does not answer for the animal itself. If you house sit in exchange for accommodation and no money changes hands for the sit, the most important policy in the house is the homeowner's home and contents cover, which is not yours to buy and not yours to assume.
General information only
This article explains how the pieces fit together and what to ask. It is not insurance, tax or legal advice, and Sitterly does not sell, arrange or provide insurance of any kind. Only an insurer, a licensed broker or your own adviser can tell you what a specific policy covers.
Paid work and a non-monetary sit are two different insurance questions
Australian pet sitting splits into two arrangements that look identical from the kerb. In one, an owner pays a nightly or per-visit fee. In the other, a sitter stays in the home, cares for the pets, and the accommodation is the whole of the exchange. Almost every confused answer online comes from treating those as one thing.
| The question | Paid pet sitting | Non-monetary house sitting |
|---|---|---|
| What you receive | A fee, usually per night or per visit | Accommodation, and no fee for the sit |
| What insurers will sell you | Commercial pet care liability cover, which assumes a business | No standalone policy written for a non-monetary sitter, though some platforms bundle cover into a paid membership |
| Whose policy carries the house | Yours for your negligence, the owner's for the building | The homeowner's home and contents policy |
| Is the animal itself covered | Only if care, custody and control is added | Not by anything you hold, unless you arrange it |
| The tax question | Repeated activity carried on for profit points toward a business | Usually not a business, but the test still belongs to the ATO |
| The first thing to check | Whether the policy includes animals in your care | Whether the owner has told their insurer someone will be staying |
Work out which column you are in before you read another word about premiums. For a lot of readers this turns a cost question into a non-question.
The word insurance is doing three separate jobs in this conversation
Public liability answers for other people, not for the pet
Public liability covers you if someone is injured or killed, or someone else's property is damaged, because of your negligence, which is how business.gov.au describes it. It answers if a delivery driver trips over a lead you left across a path in Newtown, or the dog you are minding damages a neighbour's fence in Fremantle.
Care, custody and control is the part that includes the animal
Care, custody and control is sold as a separate extension, and that is the answer to the question everybody asks. Pet Business Insurance, an Australian specialist arranger of cover for pet professionals, describes it as cover for injury, loss or death of animals while they are in your care, sitting alongside public liability rather than inside it. The phrase is insurer wording rather than a standard definition, so what it covers, what it excludes and where it caps out is set by the individual policy. Ask in writing whether the animals in your care are covered, to what limit and with what excess, and read the product disclosure statement before the price.
The homeowner's home and contents policy is the biggest cover in the house, and it is not yours
Home and contents insurance covers the cost of repairing or replacing the house and the belongings in it, as ASIC's Moneysmart explains. What sits alongside that definition varies by policy: a liability section for the owner, and conditions about how long the home may be unoccupied and who is permitted to stay in it. Those live in the product disclosure statement rather than on any government page, and they are the homeowner's to confirm with their insurer before you arrive. Our guide to home insurance and house sitters reads the unoccupancy wording published by three Australian insurers and sets out the questions they should ask.
| Cover | What it responds to | Who normally holds it | The point people miss |
|---|---|---|---|
| Public liability | Injury to a person, or damage to someone else's property, caused by your negligence | The sitter, where sitting is paid work | It is built around third parties, not around what you are minding |
| Care, custody and control | The animal and the property in your keeping | The sitter, as a paid extension | Sold separately, priced separately, often capped low |
| Home and contents | The building, the contents, and, depending on the policy, a liability section for the owner | The homeowner | Unoccupancy and who-is-staying conditions can apply |
A non-monetary sit is usually not a business, but the ATO sets that test, not a platform
The ATO's guidance on whether you are in business turns on continuous and repeated activity carried on for the purpose of making a profit. It also makes a point worth knowing before you decide you are safely outside it: profit does not have to arrive as money, and being paid in goods or services can count.
So a fortnight minding two cats in Glenelg while the owners are in Bali is a long way from a business. Sitting most weeks of the year, advertising your availability and charging for it is a good deal closer. If you are working out whether you need an ABN, the Australian Business Register publishes the entitlement test. If the answer is not obvious to you, it is a question for a registered tax agent, not for a blog.
Nobody can quote you a real price, and you should distrust anyone who does
Premiums in Australia are set per applicant and change constantly, so a dollar figure published in an article is out of date almost as soon as it appears. What can be described honestly is what moves the number.
| What you will be asked | Why it moves the price | What to ask back |
|---|---|---|
| Which cover you want | Public liability alone prices very differently from a policy with care, custody and control added | Is the animal covered, and to what limit |
| Your limit of indemnity | A higher limit of indemnity costs more than a lower one | Does any client specify a minimum |
| The excess you accept | A higher excess lowers the premium and raises what you pay at claim time | What is the excess on an animal claim |
| The services you list | Overnight stays, transport, medication and daycare are rated differently | Is everything I do on the schedule |
| Scale and history | Occasional sitting and a full-time operation are not comparable risks | Does occasional work qualify at all |
| Your state or territory | Rating and any local registration requirements differ | Does the cover follow me interstate |
The figures you find online disagree because many are from the United States or the United Kingdom, some quote the narrowest possible cover without its exclusions, and some are simply old. Before trusting a number, check the country, the date, and whether care, custody and control is included. Then get at least three quotes for the same written scope and compare the exclusions before the premiums.
Compare exclusions before you compare prices
Read what a policy excludes before you look at the premium. Two quotes are not comparable until you know what each one leaves out.
The platform is not your insurer, and its own terms usually say so
Platform protection is where Australian sitters get caught, because the marketing and the fine print regularly disagree on the same site. Below is what each platform published about cover when we checked on 22 August 2026. Terms change without announcement, so re-check anything you intend to rely on.
| Platform | What it published |
|---|---|
| Mad Paws | Its Guarantee page states in capital letters that the Mad Paws Guarantee is not insurance, names no underwriter, sets a $350 minimum contribution, pays only in excess of any other insurance, and excludes injury to the owner, the sitter or their households. Two other live pages describe insurance, one of them referring to a 10 million dollar liability insurance policy. |
| Pawshake | A guarantee of up to $2,500 toward veterinary costs with a $250 excess, always secondary to any other insurance. Property damage is excluded outright. |
| TrustedHousesitters | Cover quoted to Australian readers as up to $1 million in US dollars, available on its Standard and Premium plans only, and conditional on the member already holding home insurance. |
| Sitterly | No insurance of any kind. Sitterly supports the connection, and homeowners and sitters remain responsible for their own arrangements. |
The Mad Paws and Pawshake offerings are guarantees rather than insurance, and the difference is not cosmetic. A guarantee is a promise a company makes on its own terms. An insurance policy is a regulated contract, and where its issuer has adopted the General Insurance Code of Practice, the voluntary code published by the Insurance Council of Australia, the Code sets timeframes for responding to claims and complaints. Adoption is not automatic, and the Council publishes its list of code subscribers. We did not establish who, if anyone, underwrites the TrustedHousesitters cover, which is the reason to ask any platform to confirm its position in writing before you rely on it.
You can be the person legally in charge of a dog without owning it
In New South Wales, for example, duties attach to whoever has the animal at the time, not only to the registered owner. The Office of Local Government's page on the legal responsibilities of dog owners refers to the dog's owner or another person in charge of the dog at the time of an attack, requires a dog in a public place to be under effective control, and says a dog is not under effective control if one person is handling more than four dogs at once.
Walk two greyhounds through Centennial Park and you are the person in charge for that walk. Each state and territory runs its own companion animal legislation, and each council adds rules on leashes, off-lead areas and declared dogs, so check the ones that apply where the sit is, not where you live. That is a legal duty rather than an insurance question, which is the point: responsibility can attach to you whether or not any policy responds. Our guide to what a house sitter is liable for in Australia goes through it in more detail.
The cover you already hold is usually more useful than a policy you buy
Before shopping for anything, go through what is already in your name.
- Your own home and contents policy. Many include a personal liability section. Check the product disclosure statement for whether it applies away from your own address.
- Travel insurance, if the sit is part of a trip or you are between homes.
- Motor insurance, if you may drive the owner's car to the vet. Whether a driver who is not listed on the policy is covered is decided by that policy wording, so read it or ring the insurer. Settle it before an emergency, not during one.
- Ambulance cover for yourself, which works differently in each state and territory.
- The owner's pet insurance, and whether a claim can be made while they are overseas. Our guide to who pays the emergency vet bill covers the authority and the money separately, because they are separate problems.
Five things to settle in writing before you say yes
Several of the questions below are not insurance questions at all. They are expectations that were never written down.
- Is this a paid arrangement or a non-monetary exchange? Everything else follows from the answer.
- Has the homeowner told their insurer that someone will be staying in the home, and for how long?
- Who authorises veterinary treatment, up to what dollar amount, and who pays first?
- What happens if something in the home breaks while you are there, and what is the excess on the owner's policy?
- Will you drive their car, and is a driver who is not listed on the policy covered?
Putting those five answers in a message before the sit starts costs nothing. Our Australian house sitting agreement guide covers what else belongs in writing, and how Sitterly works explains where those conversations happen on the platform.
Where to check, and where to go if it goes wrong
For free, independent guidance, use Moneysmart's insurance pages, published by ASIC, and confirm that any broker is licensed through ASIC's registers. For how a service is described and sold to you, the ACCC explains your consumer rights and guarantees under the Australian Consumer Law. If a claim is declined or a complaint stalls, Moneysmart's guide to complaining sets out the steps, starting with the firm's internal dispute resolution and escalating to the Australian Financial Complaints Authority, which considers complaints about insurance.
One question this article does not answer
Whether a live-in sitter acquires tenancy or occupancy rights under state residential tenancy law is a separate legal question and outside what this article covers. Take it to your state or territory fair trading or consumer affairs body, or to a solicitor.
Common questions about pet sitting insurance in Australia
- Do you need insurance to pet sit in Australia?
- If you are paid a fee, treat it like any other small service business and get advice on public liability and on cover for the animals in your care. If no money changes hands for the sit and you are staying in the owner's home, there is usually no product built for you, and the cover that matters is the homeowner's home and contents policy.
- Does dog sitting insurance cover the dog itself?
- Not automatically. Public liability is built around injury to people and damage to other people's property. Cover for the animal in your keeping is normally sold as a separate care, custody and control extension, so ask the insurer directly and read the exclusions.
- How much does pet sitting insurance cost in Australia?
- No honest article can tell you. Premiums are set per applicant and depend on the cover chosen, the limit, the excess, the services listed, your scale and history, and your state. Get three quotes for the same scope and compare what each excludes.
- Does Sitterly provide insurance?
- No. Sitterly does not provide, sell or arrange insurance of any kind. Sitterly supports the connection, and homeowners and sitters remain responsible for their own arrangements.
- I am house sitting for free, so am I covered by the homeowner's policy?
- Do not assume it. Home and contents policies can carry conditions about how long a home may be unoccupied and about who is staying in it, and the homeowner is the only person who can confirm the position with their insurer.
Ready to sit? Create a sitter profile, tell homeowners what you can look after, and settle the five questions above with every owner before you accept a sit.
