Petfinder - Adopt a Pet reviews
What users love and hate, from real reviews
A nationwide aggregator of shelter listings for adoptable pets — people adore the mission and find their dream companions here, but since the Nestlé/Purina takeover the app has fallen apart: login, search, and the distance filter no longer work.
What users love
The real joy is the mission: people genuinely find the companions of their lives here
Despite all the bugs, many people found their pets through Petfinder and come back to give thanks. One aggregator of every nearby shelter and rescue in a single place is exactly what people love and recommend.
I have found 4 of my family's pets through this app. Super easy to use, you can filter to find exactly what you want.
I have found 2 of the greatest loves of my life on Petfinder
Pet Finder is awesome! It saves me from having to individually search Animal Shelters and Rescues. it has good filters
Comfort, not just shopping: scrolling through pet profiles lifts the mood
For many the app is therapy: scrolling through faces on a rough day, grieving a lost pet, dreaming of a new friend. Detailed profiles with photos and stories make the very act of searching warm.
I absolutely love this app and scrolling through dogs when I'm having a hard time always cheers me up
Petfinder is wonderful. My dog crossed the Rainbow Bridge a few months ago, so it's nice to be able to look at dogs for adoption and read about each one.
Love all this app!! The pictures along with information is great. But what is even better is when the shelter adds additional info about the pets.
What users hate
Distance filter is broken: you set «nearby» and it shows pets thousands of miles away
The single most common pain: whatever radius you set, the app serves up animals from other states and even Canada. The «local pets only» option stopped working, and sorting by distance is either ignored or capped at 100 miles.
even after unchecking to include dogs that are out of state for transport, all of the findings were dogs from far away. useless.
The "local pets only" option used to work. Now, I can go through tens of pages and still only see dogs that can be shipped
If I put 25 mile search radius, why is app showing me pets 55 miles away? App worse than the website.
Login won't stick: every launch means logging in again, «remember me» does nothing
The app signs you out every time you leave it, and the «remember me» checkbox is ignored. Google and Facebook sign-in fail, many can't log in at all — while the same account works on the website.
It keeps signing me out anytime I leave the app. Even if I click to remember me, it doesn't.
App never works on Pixel 10 Pro, cannot sign in with Google account, and it is obscenely laggy when it does work.
love the app. but currently can not login, which causes issues with search, favoriting, etc.
The app crashes the moment you tap the search bar
After a certain update, tapping the search bar instantly closes the app. Reinstalling and clearing cache don't help — searching for pets becomes physically impossible.
There's a bug and I can't use the search bar when I was trying to look up guinea pig the app keeps crashing
If I tap on the search bar at all, the app crashes and closes every time.
New update crashes the app every time I try searching
The adopter profile can't be filled out: every field returns «error, try again later»
The app demands you complete your profile, but every attempt to enter data fails with an error. The account stays perpetually «incomplete», blocking both search and applications.
Everything I try to put in the criteria for my ideal dog I get an error saying try again later.
it will not allow me to complete my adopter profile, and will not fully acknowledge thay i have sighed in .
Keeps telling me to complete my profile and then gives me an error when I do.
Forced Purina/Nestlé tie-in and mandatory marketing emails
Since the Nestlé buyout the app is buried in Purina ads and forces a Purina account on you. Agreeing to marketing emails became a requirement — otherwise «please log out or delete your account» — and unsubscribing is impossible.
Marketing emails ARE REQUIRED, NOW! Otherwise, "please log out or delete your account."
constantly tries to get you to create a Purina account. One more example of a garbage corporation taking over a good thing
you come to check the pets for adoption but it forces you to accept marketing material to use? no, thanks
«Device not compatible»: an update simply drops older phones
Recent versions abruptly declare a phone incompatible with no explanation. People who used the app just fine lose access entirely after an update.
Tried to download the app and it says " device not compatible with this version" what? why?
device is no longer compatible with the app. There should at least be a reason why?
information said your app is no longer compatible with my phone. :(
Location stuck in a loop: permission granted, yet the app insists it's off
The app refuses to work without location and endlessly demands you enable it, even though permission is already granted in settings. Some users simply don't want to share their location just to browse pets.
I gave the app location permissions, but it just keeps saying I need to enable them.
Location loop couldn't use the app. "Allow location" hit allow. Same request.
app refuses to open unless I turn "location" on. You shouldn't need to collect my location for searching pets.
Stale listings and duplicates: one pet shows five times, long-adopted animals linger for years
An animal with five photos becomes five separate listings, and favorites never reflect that a pet was already adopted. Shelters can't update their data, so listings linger for months and years after adoption.
Animals that has multiple pictures have a listing for each picture. A dog with 5 pictures will have 5 listings.
pets that are marked as favorites never reflect if they've been adopted. Every pet I've ever marked still shows as "available"
no one ever takes down their pet listings so 90% of the pets on here were adopted ages ago.
Shelters never reply to inquiries — applications vanish into the void
People submit applications and message shelters but get no reply — and it's unclear whether the messages even arrive. Some suspect the contact form simply never sends.
Inquiries don't make it to the foster/shelter. So why have the app?
Shelters do not reply to my inquiries or my applications.
the Initiate Contact (or whatever it's called) page does not Send, ever. It just says Not Sent, error, internet problem
Photos won't load: instead of the animal you get a «no image available» placeholder
Cards often open with no photo or take many minutes to load, even though the pictures exist on the website. There's no way to filter for listings with photos, so you scroll endlessly past blank placeholders.
it routinely doesn't show animal pictures. It has a no-image-available stock photo.
Photos don't load, you can't keep scrolling, searches are incomplete
Pictures either won't load at all or take several page refreshes/10+ minutes.
No prices and no cost filter: you travel for a pet blind to the fee
Profiles used to list the adoption fee; now it's gone. There's no price, no budget filter, and no way to filter out paid transport — hard on people on fixed incomes, and some travel for an animal only to learn the cost on arrival.
I don't really like how it doesn't give a price range for each cat, personally I don't want to go all the way to get the cat just to find out I don't have enough
require pricing to be required. For the latter, profiles used to include the cost, but no longer doses.
I wish you could filter by how much shelters charge and whether or not you have to pay for them to transport an animal to you.