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Bearded dragons are often touted as great starter pets. They’re easy to care for and relatively affordable, especially when compared to a dog or cat. Plus, bearded dragons don’t take up nearly as much space as a big dog, and they won’t chew up your shoes or furniture.
Even though bearded dragons aren’t too expensive compared to other pets (regular bearded dragon costs around $60–$100 at a pet store), they’re still not as cheap as they might appear at face value. When you see the minimal costs of keeping a standard bearded dragon day-to-day, you might assume that’s all you’ll have to spend. However, you’d be forgetting some important items, such as your dragon’s tank, food, lamps, healthcare, and more.
If you’re new to bearded dragons and just trying to get a feel for how much it will cost to own and raise one, you should have all the information you need by the end of this article. We’ll break down the cost of bearded dragon ownership, including the one-time purchases and the monthly expenses that you’ll need to keep shelling out.
Buying a Bearded Dragon
- Bearded Dragon Cost: $60–$1,000+
The first significant expense is purchasing your pet. Bearded dragons are remarkable reptiles; they’re entertaining, fun to feed, and easy to care for.
If you’ve just started checking out dragons, you might have noticed that they seem to be reasonably affordable pets. For about $50–$100, you can walk out of a pet store with a bearded dragon of your own. But not all bearded dragons are the same. Differences in age, sex, breed, and color can all affect the price of a dragon, just as the place you purchased it from can.
Store vs Breeder
If your primary goal is convenience, visit a local pet store to pick up a dragon. Just be aware of a few things. First, pet stores sometimes provide second-rate living accommodations for their dragons. It’s not always their fault, though. Many pet store employees just don’t know a lot about caring for reptiles like a bearded dragon. Of course, a specialty reptile pet store is a different story. But for the most part, dragons from breeders will tend to be in better health.
Breeders know how to care for bearded dragons, and their livelihood depends on doing it well. They generally deal exclusively with bearded dragons. They’re a wealth of knowledge about the creatures, especially the ones they’ve bred. A breeder will also have many specimens, so they generally sell their dragons for 10%–20% less than pet stores.
Another benefit of buying your dragon from a breeder is that they have many cool variations, though we’ll talk more about that in a moment.
Without any unique color morphs, a regular bearded dragon costs about $60–$100 at a pet store. You might spend $40–$80 from a breeder for the same lizard, but the lizard you get from a breeder is likely to be healthier.
Bearded Dragon: Age, Sex, Type
Of course, where you buy the dragon from won’t be the only factor affecting its price. While standard dragons can cost less than $100, premium dragons can cost many times more. Today, you can find hundreds of bearded dragon morphs in all colors, including yellows, oranges, reds, pure white, and various combinations. They can cost upwards of $500, depending greatly on each dragon’s specific colorations and patterning.
Another factor worth mentioning is the reptile’s sex. Female dragons are necessary for breeding, but many breeders don’t sell the females so they can keep exclusive color morphs that others won’t be able to recreate. As such, female bearded dragons with spectacular coloration can cost up to $1,000.
You can also save money by purchasing your dragon as a baby. Baby bearded dragons are easier and cheaper to care for. Plus, they haven’t fully developed, so you don’t know how spectacular their skin color will be. Adults are already fully mature, so you can tell how good they are for mating, showing, etc. Likewise, adults are more expensive to keep, with higher costs for food and healthcare, so they tend to cost more to purchase.
Setting Up Your Bearded Dragon
- Total Setup Cost: $50–$500
Once you purchase your dragon, you’re only part of the way there. If you purchased a unique color morph and spent hundreds of dollars, you’ve already made the bulk of your purchases. But if you only paid $60 for your dragon, you’ll probably spend more on setting it up in an enclosure than you did to purchase it.
To keep your dragon healthy, safe, and happy, you’ll need a few supplies. Some of those supplies will be used regularly and need replacing, but in this section, we’ll look at the supplies you’ll only need to purchase once, such as an enclosure, lamps, furniture, etc.
Enclosure
Naturally, the enclosure is one of the most important pieces of gear you’ll need for your dragon. Without it, you’ll have nowhere to keep your new pet! How much you spend on an enclosure will vary greatly depending on where you purchase it and how large it is.
For instance, you could purchase a used aquarium at a yard sale for $10, which will fulfill your dragon’s needs. On the other hand, you could purchase a decked-out custom terrarium with art on the walls and everything, such as this terrarium from Carolina Custom Cages. Of course, at more than $300, there’s a huge price difference between these options.
Lights and Heat Lamps
Your dragon is going to need lights. The lights imitate the sun and provide your dragon with essential nutrients while also allowing it to regulate its body temperature. You’ll need light-emitting lamps and heat lamps. Essentially, you’ll need one with a heat bulb that produces no light and another with a heat bulb that does produce light. For a dragon’s enclosure, only half the tank should be heated. The other half must be cooler so your dragon can move there to regulate its temperature.
A single lamp with a bulb is about $20, but you’ll need two, and the other needs a light-producing bulb to replicate sunlight. Your other option is a dual light that can provide both, such as this REPTI ZOO dual light fixture.
Either way, you’ll need to spend about $40–$60 just on the lamps. Luckily, you’ll only have to buy them once, though the bulbs will need regular replacement, so we’ll discuss the cost of bulbs in the next section.
Furniture
You don’t want to set your bearded dragon in an empty cage and call it a day. Your dragon will lose its mind! Instead, you need to make the cage into an environment similar to where your dragon would live in nature. You’ll need to provide some rocks, a few plants, a water dish, and places for your dragon to bask.
Heated rocks are an excellent accessory for dragons, but you don’t need a heated rock to keep it happy. Just don’t run outside and grab a rock from the ground. You’ll need sterile furniture for your dragon to prevent parasites from invading the enclosure.
With your dragon’s furniture, you can go as cheap or wild as you’d like, so we estimate it will cost you $20–$100 to fill the enclosure.
Caring for Your Dragon
- Total Annual Cost: $400–$1,500+
Your expenses are mostly covered once your dragon is fully equipped with a nice enclosure set up to its liking. However, there are a few items you’ll have to budget for in the coming weeks and months. Some will be regular purchases, such as replacing your dragon’s substrate. Others will be occasional costs that are harder to prepare for, like vet visits for emergency care.
Substrate
You’ll use a substrate to cover the glass bottom of your dragon’s aquarium. It’s what your dragon will walk and lay on, as well as where it will create waste. You can use one as simple and cheap as a newspaper if you’d like, or you can go for a standard reptile substrate like sand or bark. Newspaper costs $1 to cover your pet’s enclosure several times. Reptile bark is closer to $20 to cover it several times. Sand can be replaced many times with a $5 bag.
Food
Bearded dragons eat a lot of insects, fruits, and veggies. Depending on its age, your dragon could be eating more insects or plant matter. You’ll also spend more depending on what you’re feeding.
For example, 40 feeder crickets are about $4, which is around $0.10 per cricket. But Dubia roaches at 0.5 inches in length run about $6 for just 25. You’ll be purchasing a lot of insects to feed your dragon, which could cost a lot each month. Eating about 10 per day, your bearded dragon will eat around $1 of crickets or $2.40 of Dubia Roaches.
Light and Heat Bulbs
Heat and light bulbs don’t last as long as you might think. They’re running for about 12 hours daily, so you should expect to replace them every few months.
Veterinary care
Veterinary care is the hardest expense to predict. Aside from an initial vet visit after purchasing your dragon, you may not spend much on veterinary care if your pet stays healthy. On the other hand, your dragon could be plagued with health problems that require veterinary assistance, which would get very costly very quickly. So, we’ll estimate that healthcare can range from $0 to $1,000 annually.
Overall Cost of Owning a Bearded Dragon
On the surface, bearded dragon ownership seems low-cost and simple. Dragons are far less pricey than many popular alternatives, but there are some costs associated with keeping them that you might not realize until you’re neck-deep in expenses you didn’t account for. From food and veterinary care to the cost of setup, a lot goes into caring for a bearded dragon. Make sure you know exactly what you’re getting into before purchasing a bearded dragon. That way, the costs won’t be unexpected, and you can be prepared ahead of time, knowing roughly what you’ll spend in each area.
Featured Image Credit: ekamelev, Pixabay
