Why Hill’s, Royal Canin, and Pro Plan rank where they do.

What the scores actually say

Here is every Hill’s Science Diet, Royal Canin, and Purina Pro Plan recipe currently scored on PetScored, sorted by composite. The numbers are not curated for this article — they are pulled from the live dataset.

1. 01Purina Pro Plan Sensitive Skin & Stomach Salmon & Rice8.0
2. 02Hill's Science Diet Adult Chicken & Barley Recipe Dog Food7.7
3. 03Hill's Science Diet Adult Sensitive Stomach & Skin Chicken & Barley Recipe7.6
4. 04Royal Canin Large Breed Adult7.5
5. 05Royal Canin Medium Adult Dry Dog Food7.1
6. 06Purina Pro Plan Sport 30/20 All Life Stages Performance Chicken & Rice7.0
7. 07Hill's Science Diet Adult Sensitive Stomach & Skin Salmon Brown Rice & Vegetable6.9
8. 08Royal Canin Small Adult Dry Dog Food6.8
9. 09Royal Canin Small Breed Adult6.7
10. 10Purina Pro Plan Sport Performance 30/20 Chicken & Rice6.5
11. 11Purina Pro Plan Chicken & Rice Entrée Adult Classic5.9
12. 12Hill's Science Diet Perfect Weight Small & Mini Adult Chicken Recipe5.7
13. 13Hill's Science Diet Adult Healthy Cuisine Roasted Chicken Carrots & Spinach Stew5.6

The trust score is doing real work

Brand Trust is 25% of our composite. It is the second-heaviest weight in the rubric, and it is where these three brands separate themselves from the rest of the category. Across the three brands, trust scores cluster between 8.5 and 9.0. Four things drive that:

• Owned manufacturing.Hill’s, Royal Canin (Mars), and Purina manufacture their own food in their own plants. Most boutique brands contract production out to co-packers. When something goes wrong, the chain of accountability is shorter when you own the line.
• Board-certified veterinary nutritionists on staff. All three brands employ multiple Diplomates of the American College of Veterinary Nutrition (DACVN) full-time. That is the credential for formulating dog food. Most boutique brands employ one consultant, often a generalist DVM, often part-time.
• AAFCO feeding-trial adequacy statements, not just “formulated to meet.” The two adequacy paths AAFCO permits are: (a) prove the recipe meets nutrient minimums on paper, or (b) prove it by feeding it to dogs under a controlled protocol. Path (b) is more expensive and more rigorous. Most of the recipes from these three brands take path (b). Most of the rest of the category takes path (a).
• Recall record. All three brands have had recalls. So has nearly every brand. What matters is the frequency, the cause, the recovery, and whether public disclosure was prompt. The three-brand record across the last decade is, on average, lower-frequency and faster-disclosed than the boutique tier.

The rubric does not credit the phrase vet-recommended. It credits the four underlying signals above, all of which happen to be the reason vets recommend these brands.

Where they actually lose points

The composite scores for these brands are not 10. They are not 9. Most of them are in the 6–8 band, same as the rest of the category. Two things hold them back.

1. Value.

The average Value sub-score across these 13 recipes is 5.4. Several Hill’s and Royal Canin SKUs score a 4on a 10-point scale. That is not a mistake and it is not a punishment for being premium. It is what their price-per-calorie compares to on the shelf. Hill’s and Royal Canin both run roughly two to three times the dollars-per-kilocalorie of a mid-tier kibble like Pedigree or Iams. The rubric reports that.

Pro Plan does better on Value — it benefits from Purina’s broader distribution and volume pricing. That is real, and it shows up cleanly in the numbers.

2. Ingredient clarity, on specific recipes.

Not every recipe from these brands tops the ingredient panel. Some Pro Plan SKUs lead with chicken by-product meal or use generic “poultry” rather than a named species. Some Hill’s formulas use whole-grain wheat and corn high in the ingredient list. We do not penalize by-products or grains by default — that’s in our methodology — but we do reward specificity, and some recipes from these brands are specifically less specific.

You can see this variance in the list above. The same brand can score a 9.0 on ingredients in one SKU and a 5.8 in another. The brand is not the unit of analysis. The recipe is.

What this is and what this isn’t

This is not an endorsement of Hill’s, Royal Canin, or Pro Plan. Those brands have real tradeoffs, and several of their recipes are middle-of-the-pack composites in our dataset. There are smaller brands that beat them on ingredient panels and value simultaneously.

It is also not a defense of the vet-recommendation industry. The phrase vet-recommended on a bag is mostly marketing language we have written about elsewhere. The phrase is not the same thing as the underlying credentials.

What this is: an honest read of what the rubric says about the three biggest vet-channel brands in the U.S. The rubric credits owned manufacturing, in-house nutritionists, feeding-trial protocols, and clean recall records. It penalizes high price-per-calorie and vague ingredient panels. These three brands earn the first set of credits and pay the second set of penalties. The composite reflects both, faithfully.

What to do with this if you’re shopping

If your dog is doing well on Hill’s, Royal Canin, or Pro Plan: there is no evidence-based reason to switch. You are paying for trust signals that are measurable, and the bowl is fine.

If you are paying a Hill’s price for a recipe that scores a 4 on Value and a 7 on ingredient clarity, and you want a similar nutrition and trust profile for less: that is a real shopping question, and it is the question the five sub-scores are designed to answer. Click any product above to see the per-recipe breakdown.

— The PetScored desk. Have a brand you want us to score honestly? Tell us.