How to Sell Your Puppies: A Complete Guide for UK Breeders

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You can legally sell a puppy from eight weeks old, and most breeders start advertising when the litter is around two to four weeks old. On Puppies.co.uk, listing your litter costs nothing, but every listing is rigorously checked by our team before it goes live, and only around half of breeders who apply make it through.

That is the short version. The longer version covers the parts that catch people out: what your advert has to say by law, how to price a litter without guessing, when a deposit protects you and when it creates a problem, and which paperwork has to travel with the puppy on collection day. This guide walks through all of it in the order you will actually need it, from the week the puppies are born to the week the last one leaves.

Where can I sell my puppies?

The right place depends on your breed, whether your litter is registered with a kennel club, and how much screening you want the platform to do before an enquiry reaches your inbox.

Dedicated puppy marketplaces carry the most traffic and the most intent, because buyers arrive already looking for a puppy rather than stumbling across one. What separates one marketplace from another is how much of that filtering happens before the enquiry reaches you, so look at what a site actually checks rather than how many listings it carries.

The Royal Kennel Club's Find a Puppy service is open only to litters registered with the RKC, which narrows the audience to buyers specifically after registered pedigree puppies. If that describes your litter, the narrowness is the point. Adverts run for two months from £20, the service is free for Assured Breeders and for vulnerable native breeds, and the RKC says it handles more than 300,000 searches a month.

Breed club litter lists are small, slow and genuinely excellent, since members are usually expected to health test to the club's standard and the buyers who find you this way have often been researching the breed for the best part of a year. If your breed club runs one, get on it, even though it will rarely fill a whole litter on its own.

Word of mouth and your own waiting list produce the best homes and the fewest problems of any route here, which is why experienced breeders start with previous buyers, their vet and their breed contacts before they advertise anywhere at all. It is worth building that list from your first litter onwards, because it compounds.

How do I advertise a litter of puppies?

Assume every buyer is comparing your advert against a dozen others in the same tab. What separates the enquiries you want from the ones you delete is specificity.

The photo of the mum is not optional

A clear photograph of the dam with her litter is the single most important image in your advert. Buyers have been told repeatedly to look for it, platforms increasingly require it, and its absence reads as a warning sign whether or not you meant it that way. On our platform it is mandatory, alongside a minimum of three further images.

Shoot in daylight, near a window, at puppy height. Phone cameras are fine. Stock photos, images lifted from a previous litter and heavy filters all damage trust, and on a vetted platform they will get your listing rejected.

If you hold a dog breeding licence in England, Schedule 6 of the Animal Welfare (Licensing of Activities Involving Animals) (England) Regulations 2018 sets out what every advert must contain:

your licence number
the name of the local authority that issued it
a recognisable photograph of the dog being advertised
the age of the dog

The same regulations require licensed breeders to sell only from the premises where the puppy was born and reared, and only puppies they bred themselves. This is the mechanism behind Lucy's Law, which came into force in England on 6 April 2020 and ended commercial third-party sales of puppies and kittens under six months old.

Writing the description

Work through it in order: why you planned the litter, what the parents are like to live with, the health testing done on sire and dam with the actual test names, how the puppies are being raised and socialised, what goes home with them, and what you expect from a home. Be specific throughout, because "parents are healthy" tells a buyer nothing, while "both parents hip scored under the breed median, eyes tested clear in [month/year], certificates available" tells them everything and filters out the buyers who were never going to care.

Handling enquiries

Reply quickly, even if the reply is short, because most breeders lose good buyers to a two-day silence rather than to anything they got wrong. Move to a phone or video call early. Five minutes of conversation tells you more about a home than twenty messages.

What age can puppies be sold in the UK?

Puppies cannot be sold or permanently separated from their mother before they are eight weeks old.

For licensed breeders, this is written into Schedule 6 of the 2018 Regulations, which also requires that a puppy is only ever shown to a prospective buyer alongside its biological mother. The single exception is where separation is necessary for the health or welfare of the puppy, its littermates or the dam.

Two further rules sit alongside it and apply to every breeder, licensed or not:

Puppies must be microchipped by eight weeks of age in England, Scotland and Wales, and the breeder must be recorded as the first keeper.
Under the Microchipping of Dogs (England) Regulations 2015, no keeper may transfer a dog to a new keeper until it has been microchipped. In practice, an unchipped puppy cannot lawfully change hands at all.

The rule exists because of what happens between weeks six and eight. Puppies are still learning bite inhibition, still taking social correction from their mother and littermates, and still completing the move to solid food. Research consistently links early separation with higher rates of fearfulness, reactivity and resource guarding later on.

Advertising is different from collection. You can advertise long before the puppies are ready to leave. Many breeders list at two to four weeks, and the RKC advises registering a litter at around four weeks so the paperwork arrives in time. Some breeders open a waiting list before the mating. What you cannot do is hand a puppy over before eight weeks.

How much should I charge for my puppies?

"It depends" is true and useless. Here are some steps to consider.

Step one: work out what the litter actually cost

Write down every line, from before the mating to the day the last puppy leaves:

health testing, stud fee, progesterone testing and scanning
extra feed for the dam through pregnancy and lactation
whelping pen, bedding and heat source
weaning food from around three to four weeks, and fortnightly worming
microchipping, vet checks and first vaccinations
kennel club registration, insurance cover and advertising
your council licence, if you hold one, spread across the litters it covers

Divide by the number of puppies. That is your floor, not your price. Anything below it means you are paying for someone else's puppy.

Step two: check live comparables, not averages

Search your breed within a two-hour radius and read the actual listings from the past month. Note asking prices, but note, more importantly, what those breeders are offering. A litter at £1,400 with full health testing, five weeks of insurance and a lifetime return clause is not competing with a litter at £900 that has none of it.

We have deliberately not published an average price table here. Advertised puppy prices move quickly by breed, colour and region, and a number printed in a guide is out of date within months. Live listings are the honest benchmark.

Step three: give buyers something to be reassured by

A puppy is a significant sum of money and a commitment measured in years, and most buyers are quietly anxious about getting it wrong. What settles them is evidence they can look at before they commit: health test certificates for both parents, your council licence number where you hold one, kennel club registration, and a contract they can read in their own time rather than at the door. Have it ready to share rather than promising it on collection day, and know that some of that reassurance is already done for you, since every breeder here completes identity verification before they can list.

Step four: hold your price, but plan your fallback

Decide in advance what you will do if one puppy is still with you at eleven weeks, and write it down before the emotion of the moment arrives. What not to do is advertise a puppy as free or price far below your breed's range. Both attract exactly the wrong attention, and most reputable platforms will remove the listing.

Can I sell puppies for free?

Yes. Listing your litter on our site is free, with no fee to advertise and no commission when the puppy sells.

It is worth being clear about what "free" means across the market, because the word does different work on different sites. Some platforms are free to list but charge the buyer a percentage at the point of payment, which raises what your buyer pays and makes your puppy look more expensive than it is. Others are free at the entry level and charge for the visibility that actually generates enquiries.

Free listing does not mean no standards. Every listing here is manually reviewed before it goes live. Where a listing claims health testing or a breeding licence, we ask for the paperwork. A proportion of breeders are selected for a video call, where we ask to see the dam with the litter and talk through the breeding rationale. Around half of applications do not make it through.

Do I need a breeder's licence to sell puppies?

It depends on how much you breed and whether you are doing it as a business. The rules differ across the UK.

England. Under the 2018 Regulations, you need a licence from your local council if you breed three or more litters in any 12-month period and sell at least one puppy, or if you are breeding and advertising puppies as a business. Councils apply HMRC's badges of trade to that second test, looking at things like frequency of sales, pricing and how you advertise. Defra's position when the regulations were introduced was that the business test was not aimed at hobby breeders.

Scotland. The Animal Welfare (Licensing of Activities Involving Animals) (Scotland) Regulations 2021, in force since 1 September 2021, require a licence for anyone breeding three or more litters in any 12-month period. This replaced the previous five-litter threshold.

Wales. Under the Animal Welfare (Breeding of Dogs) (Wales) Regulations 2014, you need a licence if you keep three or more breeding bitches and either breed three or more litters in 12 months, advertise or supply puppies from three or more litters, or advertise a puppy breeding or selling business from the premises.

Northern Ireland. Separate legislation applies. Fees usually vary by council, and some authorities charge vets' inspection fees on top of the application. Contact your local council before anything else.

If you are licensed, your licence number and issuing council must appear on every advert, online included. If you are not sure which side of the line you sit on, phone your council's animal licensing team before the mating rather than after the whelping. They would rather have that conversation early.

How do I find the right buyers?

Screening is where breeding stops being about the litter and starts being about the next fourteen years. Taking your time over it is the last thing you can do for a puppy before it leaves you.

The point of screening is not to protect yourself from awkward buyers. It is to make sure each puppy lands somewhere it can stay.

Ask, on the phone rather than by message:

Who lives in the house, and how old are the children?
How many hours a day would the dog be alone?
What dogs have you had before, and what happened to them?
Do you rent, and does your agreement allow a dog?
Why this breed, and what do you know about what it needs?

The answers matter less than the willingness to answer. A buyer who bristles at being asked is telling you something useful.

Spotting a dealer. The signals are consistent: interest in more than one puppy, no questions about temperament, pressure to complete quickly, a request to collect anywhere other than your home, or vagueness about where the dog will live. Anyone reselling puppies commercially in England without a licence is breaking the law under Lucy's Law, and you are within your rights to say no.

Viewings. Buyers must see the puppy with its mother at your premises, so plan visits on your terms. Book them individually rather than running an open day, keep them short while the puppies are young, and ask everyone to sanitise their hands and avoid coming straight from another litter.

What paperwork do I need to give the new owner?

Everything below should be ready in a folder before collection day.

Contract of sale. Both parties named and signed, the puppy identified by microchip number, the price and deposit recorded, health guarantees stated, and a clause requiring the dog to come back to you rather than be passed on if the home ever fails. This clause is the clearest marker of a responsible breeder and costs you nothing to include.
Microchip documentation. The chip number, the database it sits on, and transfer of keepership paperwork. You are the first registered keeper by law, so either update the record yourself or give the buyer what they need to do it, then check a fortnight later that they have.
Registration papers. For a Kennel Club registered litter, the registration certificate and the change of ownership form, signed on the reverse by every registered owner. If you have applied endorsements, say so before money changes hands rather than after.
Health records. Worming dates and the product used, flea treatment if given, a vaccination card signed by your vet, and any examination notes.
Parents' health test results. Copies of the actual certificates for sire and dam, not a summary in your own handwriting.
Diet sheet and settling-in notes. What the puppy eats, how often, what it has been socialised with, and where it sleeps. A fortnight's supply of the same food prevents an avoidable upset stomach in week one.
Insurance details. Introductory cover, where you have arranged it, and the start date.

FAQs

Can I sell a puppy at six weeks old?

No. Puppies cannot be sold or permanently separated from their mother before eight weeks, and they must be microchipped before they can be transferred to a new keeper. The only exception is separation on genuine health or welfare grounds.

Do I need to register a litter?

There is no legal requirement to register a litter with a kennel club. There is a legal requirement to microchip every puppy by eight weeks with yourself as first keeper. Registration is optional and only possible where both parents are registered with the same body.

Can I sell puppies without Kennel Club papers?

Yes. Crossbreeds and unregistered pedigree puppies are sold legally every day. Say so plainly in the advert, and never describe a puppy as pedigree or registered if it is neither. Misdescribing a puppy can leave you liable under consumer law.

What if my dam is over eight, or has already had four litters?

The Royal Kennel Club will not normally register a litter where the dam has already whelped four litters, has reached eight years old at whelping, was under a year old at mating, or has had two previous caesareans. Exceptions need permission in advance, supported by veterinary evidence. These are registration rules rather than criminal law, but they reflect a sensible welfare standard either way.

Do I pay tax on selling puppies?

Possibly. HMRC allows a trading allowance of £1,000 of gross income per tax year. Above that you need to register for Self Assessment and declare the income, whether or not you make a profit. Whether your breeding counts as a trade is judged on the badges of trade, including how often you breed, whether you intend to profit, and how you advertise. HMRC has run a disclosure campaign aimed at animal breeders, so this is not an area to guess at. Speak to an accountant if you are unsure.

Ready to list?

Advertise your litter free on Puppies.co.uk. Every listing is checked by a real person before it goes live, which is exactly why buyers trust the ones that get through.