The pet quarantine cost Malaysia gazettes is small and knowable: RM10 per day for a dog, RM5 per day for a cat, plus a RM2 certificate. The complication is that the government publishes a second, higher weekly estimate on a different page — and neither figure covers food or treatment. Budget from the daily rate, then add the items that sit outside it.
Introduction: two official numbers, one bill
Malaysia publishes its quarantine charges in two places, and the two do not agree. One is a gazetted per-day rate. The other is a weekly estimate on a government FAQ page. Both are official, both are current, and the gap between them is where most budgeting mistakes begin.
Most articles answering the pet quarantine cost Malaysia question quote one number and move on. That is the problem. There is no single number to quote, because the government itself has published two — and they do not reconcile.
This piece does something more useful than repeating a figure. It puts both official sources side by side, shows exactly where they diverge, and separates the charges that are fixed by law from the ones that move with your pet’s stay. That distinction is what turns a vague range into a number you can actually plan around, and it starts with understanding how quarantine at KLIA works before you look at any invoice.
One thing worth saying early: the quarantine charge is rarely the expensive part of an arrival. It is simply the part owners worry about most, because it is the part with a daily meter running. The video below walks through the wider import sequence these charges attach to.
What the gazette fixes about pet quarantine cost Malaysia charges
Confinement at a federal animal quarantine station is charged at RM10.00 per dog per day and RM5.00 per cat per day, with a RM2.00 quarantine certificate per animal. Those rates are gazetted, not quoted, so they do not vary by station, by season or by who files your paperwork.
The governing text is the Fourth Schedule of the Malaysian Quarantine and Inspection Services (Fees and Charges) Regulations 2013, which came into force on 1 April 2013. The same rates appear on the Department of Veterinary Services’ own quarantine payment rate page, drawn from the 2008 animal quarantine fee rules.
Note what the schedule covers and what it silently leaves out. It prices a kennel space, a certificate and two optional procedures. It does not price food, veterinary treatment, or the handling that gets your animal from the aircraft across to the KLIA quarantine station.
Gazetted quarantine station charges
| Charge item | Dog | Cat |
|---|---|---|
| Confinement (kennel space) | RM 10.00 per animal per day | RM 5.00 per animal per day |
| Quarantine certificate | RM 2.00 per animal | RM 2.00 per animal |
| Anti-rabies injection at the station | RM 25.00 per animal | Not listed |
| Microchip fitted at the station | RM 100.00 per animal | Not listed |
| Food and veterinary treatment | Not covered by the schedule | Not covered by the schedule |
Source: Fourth Schedule, P.U. (A) 115, in force from 1 April 2013.
Why quoted KLAQS quarantine fees rarely match
The KLAQS quarantine fees you find quoted disagree because two government pages give different answers. The gazetted daily rate multiplies out to RM70 a week for a dog and RM35 for a cat, while the veterinary department’s own FAQ estimates roughly RM79 and RM72 per week.
The Department of Veterinary Services pet import FAQ states that quarantine charges for dogs and cats are approximately RM79.00 and RM72.00 respectively per week, and adds that these do not include food or treatment costs.
Run the arithmetic against the gazetted rate and the dog figure is close. The cat figure is not close at all — the FAQ estimate is roughly double a straight seven-day multiplication. That single mismatch explains most of the confusion around KLAQS quarantine fees online.
Two official figures, side by side
| Animal | Basis | One week |
|---|---|---|
| Dog | Gazetted rate, 7 days at RM10.00 | RM 70.00 |
| Plus quarantine certificate | RM 72.00 | |
| Department’s published weekly estimate | approx. RM 79.00 | |
| Cat | Gazetted rate, 7 days at RM5.00 | RM 35.00 |
| Plus quarantine certificate | RM 37.00 | |
| Department’s published weekly estimate | approx. RM 72.00 |
Sources: P.U. (A) 115 Fourth Schedule; DVS pet import FAQ. Estimates exclude food and treatment.
The practical reading is straightforward. Treat the gazetted rate as the floor, treat the departmental estimate as the more realistic planning figure, and assume the true invoice sits at or above the higher of the two.
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The daily quarantine charge pet malaysia families should model
Model the daily quarantine charge pet malaysia arrivals attract as a meter, not a fixed fee. At RM10 a day a dog costs RM70 over the compulsory minimum and RM300 over a month; a cat at RM5 a day reaches RM35 and RM150 across the same two points.
The reason this matters is that the minimum period is a floor, not a release date. Detention runs until the animal is found free of evidence of infection, which is a finding rather than a countdown — a distinction we unpack in detail in our note on whether Malaysian quarantine runs seven days or fourteen.
Because the charge accrues daily, a two-week hold does not cost twice a one-week hold in real terms. It costs twice on the kennel line, and rather more on everything sitting around it — accommodation, leave from work, and rebooked onward travel.
Confinement charge as a stay extends
| Days held | Dog | Scale | Cat |
|---|---|---|---|
| 7 (compulsory minimum) | RM 70.00 | RM 35.00 | |
| 10 | RM 100.00 | RM 50.00 | |
| 14 | RM 140.00 | RM 70.00 | |
| 21 | RM 210.00 | RM 105.00 | |
| 30 | RM 300.00 | RM 150.00 | |
| 60 | RM 600.00 | RM 300.00 |
Modelled from gazetted daily rates. Bars scaled to the dog column. Excludes food and treatment.
What the confinement rate does not buy
The gazetted rate buys a kennel space and daily care. It does not buy food, veterinary treatment, medication, grooming or the ground handling that moves your pet from the aircraft to the station — all of which are billed separately or supplied by you.
The department states the exclusion plainly on its own FAQ page: the weekly quarantine estimate does not include food and treatment costs that may be required. That single sentence is doing a lot of work, because it covers the items most likely to move a bill.
- Food for the duration. Owners are generally expected to supply their pet’s usual diet, which avoids a stomach upset in an already stressful week. Our guide to what to pack for a quarantine stay covers what is worth sending in and what is not.
- Veterinary attention. If your pet needs examination, medication or isolation during the hold, that is charged on top of the kennel line and cannot be estimated in advance.
- Ground handling and transfer. Getting a crate off an aircraft, through clearance and across to the station is a commercial service, not a gazetted one.
- Permit and inspection charges. These sit on the import file rather than the quarantine stay — we break them down separately in our piece on MAQIS fees and permit costs.
None of these are hidden in any sinister sense. They are simply priced by different parties, which is why no single published figure can ever be the whole answer.
Comparing quarantine boarding cost pet owners already know
A quarantine boarding cost pet owners meet at a government station is not comparable to commercial kennelling. The station charge is lower per day, but it is compulsory, non-negotiable on duration, and buys biosecurity supervision rather than exercise, play or grooming.
Owners naturally reach for a familiar benchmark. The comparison misleads in both directions, so it is worth naming exactly how.
- You cannot shop on price. Commercial boarding is a market. Quarantine is a legal obligation at a designated facility, so the rate is whatever the schedule says it is.
- You cannot shop on duration. A boarding stay ends when you collect. A quarantine stay ends when an officer records a clear finding — which is why arithmetic on the daily rate alone always understates the risk.
- The service is different in kind. The station exists to observe animals for disease, not to entertain them. What that looks like day to day is set out in our walkthrough of life inside a KLAQS stay.
- The cheapest outcome is avoiding it entirely. Animals arriving from exempt countries skip detention altogether, so classification — not price — is the real lever.
That last point is the one worth acting on. Whether a quarantine bill exists at all is decided by the exporting country’s classification, which we explain in our breakdown of scheduled and non-scheduled country groups.
Not sure whether your pet needs quarantine at all?
Classification decides it, and classification is checked before permits are filed. Compare our inbound import service →
Where the kennel line sits in the government bill
For a dog held the compulsory seven days, confinement is under half the gazetted government charges on arrival. For a cat it is barely a third, because the permit fee is identical for both animals while the daily rate is halved.
This is the reframing most cost articles miss. Owners fixate on the daily meter because it is the number that moves, but on a minimum stay the fixed charges dominate — and those fixed charges are the same whether your pet is held for a week or released on arrival. Set against the flight, the crate and the veterinary preparation, the whole government column barely registers — which is why how a relocation is actually priced matters far more to a budget than the kennel rate does.
Share of gazetted arrival charges, seven-day hold
| Charge line | Dog | Share | Cat | Share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Confinement, 7 days | RM 70.00 | 46.1% | RM 35.00 | 34.3% |
| Import permit issuance | RM 40.00 | 26.3% | RM 40.00 | 39.2% |
| Import inspection charge | RM 40.00 | 26.3% | RM 25.00 | 24.5% |
| Quarantine certificate | RM 2.00 | 1.3% | RM 2.00 | 2.0% |
| Total gazetted | RM 152.00 | 100% | RM 102.00 | 100% |
Modelled from P.U. (A) 115 First, Second and Fourth Schedules. Government charges only.
How to turn the range into a number for your move
Four checks settle it: confirm whether detention applies at all, apply the gazetted daily rate to the minimum period, add the excluded items, then get the arrival charges confirmed in writing by whoever is filing your permit.
Work through these in order. Each one removes a variable, and the last one is the only step that produces a figure you can rely on.
- Check classification before anything else. If the exporting country is exempt, no detention applies and the whole quarantine line disappears from your budget.
- Apply the daily rate to the minimum, not to your hopes. Seven days at the gazetted rate is the floor. Then sanity-check it against the department’s higher weekly estimate.
- List the excluded items separately. Food, treatment, ground handling and transfer belong on their own lines so they cannot quietly vanish from the total.
- Have the filer confirm the arrival charges in writing. Import permits can only be filed by an authorised agent, so the party submitting your file is the one who should be pricing what the file attracts.
Route matters here too. A road crossing follows a different legal path from an air arrival, which is why owners moving short distances often weigh whether to drive a dog across the Causeway instead.
Conclusion: the smallest line on the biggest worry list
The pet quarantine cost Malaysia charges is modest, published and predictable once you know which document to read. What is unpredictable is the length of the hold and the items sitting outside the schedule — and those are what a budget should protect against.
Two official figures, one gazetted rate card, and a short list of exclusions. That is the entire picture, and it fits on a single page once the numbers are separated properly rather than averaged into a vague range.
Requirements can also be amended at any time, so a rate that is right today is not permanently right. If you would rather have the arrival charges confirmed against your specific route before you commit to a flight, that is the sort of file My Pet Mover handles as a matter of routine.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. How much does pet quarantine in Malaysia cost per day?
The gazetted confinement rate is RM10.00 per dog per day and RM5.00 per cat per day at a federal animal quarantine station, plus a RM2.00 quarantine certificate per animal. Those rates come from the Fourth Schedule of the 2013 fees and charges regulations and apply regardless of which designated station holds your pet.
2. Why do different sources quote different quarantine fees?
Because two government pages publish different figures. The gazetted schedule gives a daily rate, while the veterinary department’s import FAQ gives an approximate weekly charge of RM79 for dogs and RM72 for cats. The weekly estimate sits above a straight seven-day multiplication, especially for cats, and both exclude food and treatment.
3. Does the quarantine charge include food?
No. The department states explicitly that its published quarantine charges do not include food or treatment costs that may be required. Owners are generally expected to supply their pet’s usual diet for the stay, which also reduces the risk of a digestive upset during an already unsettling week.
4. Can the quarantine bill grow beyond the minimum period?
Yes. The compulsory period is a minimum, and release follows a clear health finding rather than a fixed date. If the hold is extended, the daily confinement charge continues to accrue, and any veterinary attention during that period is billed separately from the kennel line.
5. Is quarantine the most expensive part of importing a pet?
Rarely. On a minimum stay the entire gazetted government bill lands in the low hundreds of ringgit for a single animal. Airfreight, an IATA-compliant crate, veterinary preparation and testing usually account for far more of a relocation budget than the quarantine station charge does.
Want your arrival charges confirmed before you book?
Tell us the country you are flying from and the month you are moving. We will confirm whether detention applies to your route, how long the minimum period runs, and what the arrival charges come to — before you commit to a flight.
