Stats for Nerds

Watercolor illustration of a vintage desk calculator, its display reading 1+2=3.

This humble little website of mine catalogs the nutritional data of 2,146 cat foods across 86 brands. After spending hundreds of hours reviewing every data point by hand, I wanted to do something fun with it all. To that end, I present to you: an interactive chart and dorky cat food facts!

I’m so grateful that you’ve not only visited the website but also now find yourself here. It tells me that you’re probably a dork like me and I’m so very glad to have folks like you around.

Yours truly,
Chief Cat Dad (and sole operator) of CompareCatFoods.com

Catalog map

Small dots equal one food. Bigger dots represent multiple. Pick what nutrients you’d like to show on each axis and watch as they scurry about!

Loading the catalog…

The catalog in numbers

If a manufacturer doesn’t publish a particular value, that food will be left out of the relevant figure(s).

Catalog data

Total foods	2,146
Total brands	86
Wet foods	1,620 (75%)
Dry foods	526 (25%)
Prescription diets	154 (7%, wet and dry together)
Discontinued foods (kept on record)	10 (0.5%)

Of those 10 discontinued foods: 7 are wet, 3 are dry, and 1 is a prescription diet. Considering their status, they are not considered a part of the catalog counts indexed here.

Brands by first letter

Brand names start with every letter except Q, U and X. Pick a letter to see its brands.

Pick a letter to see its brands.

Watercolor illustration of Elune, a black cat with green eyes, peering through a brass magnifying glass mounted on an articulated stand so one eye is enlarged by the lens, with a potted maidenhair fern and a small dish of succulents on the wooden desk in front.

Wet vs dry

Wet food is typically 80% water

For a 5.5 oz can, that maths out to about 8 tablespoons.

Watercolor illustration of a cat food can with a red label and a cat-shaped window, its pull-tab lid on top.

Measure	Wet food	Dry food	Notes
Median proteindry-matter basis	50%	38%	Wet food enjoyers be getting swole.
Median carbohydratesdry-matter basis	11%	33%	Curiously, a ton of brands do not publish their carb values. In fact, only 633 wet and 169 dry items did.
Median calorieskcal per kg	929	3,746	Dry food has about 4× the calories by weight.
Everyday comparison	about 145 kcalper 5.5 oz can	about 415 kcalper 1 cup of kibble	That’s about three 5.5 oz cans for every cup of kibble!

Dry matter is what remains after you dehydrate a food. Removing water from the equation can be helpful when comparing wet and dry food side by side.

Prescription diets

Making this website has made me appreciate how much work goes into prescription diets. While the profit motive is no doubt playing a part, I don’t think it tells the whole story. It’s plain as day there are so many wonderful and bright people behind the scenes keeping our loved ones healthy and alive. A huge thank you to you all.

Condition	Count	% of prescription diets
Urinary	42	27%
Weight	36	23%
Digestive	30	19%
Kidney	26	17%
Allergy	21	14%
Stress	18	12%
Diabetes	8	5%
Joint	7	5%

Condition	Count	% of prescription diets
Skin	7	5%
Recovery	3	2%
Dental	3	2%
Cognitive	2	1%
Multi-Organ	2	1%
Cancer	2	1%
Thyroid	2	1%

Watercolor illustration of Iggy, an orange tabby cat wearing a plaid bow tie and a stethoscope, lying on a lab bench among test tubes, a petri dish, a beaker, a thermometer and a wooden case of vials, with a potted succulent and a dandelion in a test-tube vase alongside.

Based on manufacturer-stated use cases.

In the ingredient list

There are some real oddballs in here...

The rarest kinds

In one food each11 kinds

In two foods each6 kinds

In three foods each10 kinds

Also on a label: caviar, in one Evanger’s food. 17 more kinds sit between these and the twelve most common below.

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Animals named in the most foods

Animal	Count	% of foods
Chicken	1,522	71%
Salmon	727	34%
Tuna	514	24%
Turkey	376	18%
Pork	273	13%
Beef	217	10%
Duck	178	8%
Herring	117	5%
Menhaden	94	4%
Lamb	92	4%
Sardine	81	4%
Mackerel	75	3%

Ingredient lists

Kinds of animal	56
Different ingredient names	about 1,050
Names in only one food	245 (23%)
Ingredient entries stored	66,177
Nutrition numbers stored	about 33,000
Converted by us (marked *)	5%

General words such as fish, poultry or meat are not counted as a kind of animal. I tried to account for synonyms as well: shrimp and prawn, sardine and pilchard, etc.

Watercolor illustration of Iggy, an orange and white tabby cat wearing a plaid bow tie, standing on a wooden platform beside a vintage desk calculator and a colorful abacus, surrounded by potted plants.

Last updated: October 13, 2026