What’s the Best Pet DNA Test? We Tested the Most Popular Ones

The review sent swabs from a tabby and a calico to both Wisdom Panel (price $97) and Basepaws (price $104). Wisdom Panel returned an online dashboard in about three weeks, listing over 70 possible breeds, 45 disease‑risk screens, and more than 25 physical‑trait markers, plus blood‑type and transfusion‑risk data. Its interface groups results into clickable tabs, making navigation straightforward. Basepaws, by contrast, took up to ten weeks after a failed first extraction, then delivered a dense PDF. It covers only 21 breeds but claims 64 health markers and 50 trait markers, and it is the only kit that adds an oral‑microbiome report with specific dental‑risk scores and a care plan. Both services agreed on blood type A and moderate transfusion risk for the cats, but their breed breakdowns diverged dramatically—Wisdom Panel labeled the calico as a mix of Highlander, Norwegian Forest, Siamese/Oriental, and LaPerm, while Basepaws produced a spread that included Maine Coon, Ragdoll, and Persian among others. The tabby was essentially a “domestic shorthair” on all tests, underscoring the difficulty of resolving mixed ancestry in common pets.

These findings land amid a crowded pet‑genomics market where companies such as Embark dominate the dog segment and newer entrants like Koko Genetics promise deeper marker panels. The disparity between Wisdom Panel’s broader breed library and Basepaws’ richer health and oral‑care insights illustrates a strategic split: some firms prioritize a user‑friendly, breed‑focused experience, while others chase clinical depth at the cost of usability and turnaround speed. The mixed results also highlight a systemic issue—small reference databases and varying algorithmic approaches can produce conflicting ancestry reports, a problem that has haunted human ancestry testing and now follows pets into the consumer space.

For owners, the practical takeaway is that a pet DNA kit is less a definitive health screen and more a supplemental flag system. The oral‑health module in Basepaws, for instance, can prompt preventive dental care, yet the high‑risk scores may not translate into actual disease. Veterinarians, as Jamie Richardson notes, should treat these reports as conversation starters rather than diagnostic tools. Future iterations will need larger, breed‑balanced reference panels and tighter integration with veterinary electronic records to move beyond novelty and become a reliable component of preventive pet health.