By Veit Möller, Senior Sales Manager of Pacemo GmbH, Memcare Group, Germany

“When a grandmother passes away, it’s sad - but most of the time understandable. When your own dog dies, for many people it is the end of the world.” This statement from an Austrian pet funeral director captures it well: the emotional bond with pets is immense and it is shaping a growing market.

Although there are no official statistics, estimates for the German market in 2026, published by deine-tierwelt.de, suggest around 150,000 to 250,000 pet burials and cremations. Over the past ten years, the market has grown by approximately 10–15% annually. With a turnover of around €16–20 million, what was once a niche is increasingly becoming an attractive segment, while still being less saturated than the human funeral market.

As a provider of funeral management software, Pacemo has been developing digital solutions for the human funeral sector for about ten years - from case management and memorial printing to inventory management and billing. The goal is to automate administrative processes and create more space for the core task: supporting the bereaved. But can this model simply be transferred to pet funeral services?

Discussions with the industry show that many core functions, such as data management, document generation, and invoicing are transferable. In practice, however, the requirements differ significantly. Processes, regulations, and especially case volumes lead to different ways of working. There are also economic differences: while a human funeral costs on average €6,000 to €8,000, pet funerals start at around €300. This makes scalable pricing and product models more challenging. This also led to the final conclusion that the pet funeral market offers significant potential, but requires tailored, customer-centric software solutions rather than a simple adaptation of existing systems.

>> Read more insightful articles in Thanos magazine 2/2026