Pawfit 3s review: ours is on the bench, and Pawfit quietly dropped it

What the Pawfit 3s is

The Pawfit 3s was Pawfit's flagship dog tracker until the current range replaced it: a two-part unit (tracker plus locking collar mount) that pairs GPS positioning with cellular data to show your dog's live location in the Pawfit app. Unlike the standard Pawfit 3, the 3s sends its updates over LTE-M and NB-IoT, low-power branches of the 4G network carried by Vodafone and O2 in the UK, and it also uses WiFi to improve fixes around the home.

The feature list is long for the money. You get live tracking, up to ten virtual safety zones with escape alerts, activity monitoring (steps, distance, calories and active hours, adjusted to breed, age and weight), a tracking light and alarm for dark recoveries, temperature and removal alerts, and family sharing for up to ten people. Two features stand out because nobody else offers them at this price: Pawfit Voice, which plays voice commands you record yourself through the tracker's speaker, and an audio pet ID that speaks your contact details aloud to whoever finds your dog.

The housing carries an IP68 rating, which Pawfit specifies as survival at 3 metres' depth for 30 minutes. So swimming dogs are covered. Pawfit recommends the unit for dogs of 3.5kg and over, and having handled ours, we would take that seriously: this is not a tracker for a Chihuahua. A subscription is required before the tracker will do anything at all. The plan covers the data used by the embedded SIM. We cover the exact tiers, and the multi-year totals they produce, further down.

Discontinued: what happened to the Pawfit 3s

We checked pawfit.com/en-gb on 29 August 2026. The store now sells exactly three trackers: the Pawfit 3 (£54.99, on sale at £46.74), the Pawfit Lite for dogs and the Pawfit Lite for cats (both £42.00, on sale at £37.80). The 3s is gone. The old 3s product pages and the official Pawfit 3 vs 3s comparison page now serve the current range instead, and we could find no announcement, end-of-life notice or explanation anywhere on the site. The 3s simply vanished from the catalogue.

It has not vanished from sale, though. Amazon.co.uk still lists the Pawfit 3s, and crucially it has not been orphaned: the current Pawfit app still supports it, and the same subscription e-cards activate it. Our own unit continues to work normally on an active plan, and Pawfit has published no end-of-support notice that we can find as of 29 August 2026.

Here is how the two models compare. One honesty note: because Pawfit has removed the 3s spec pages, the 3s column below comes from Pawfit's original listing and support documentation rather than a live official page, and we have not yet had the current Pawfit 3 on our bench.

The practical upshot: the differences that matter are the network path and the battery claim. Everything else we describe on this page, from the app to the voice features to the subscription maths, applies to both models.

Claimed specifications

These are the manufacturer's claims for the 3s, not our measurements. Because the official spec pages are gone, we quote the original listing and note where the current Pawfit 3 page differs.

Treat the 30-day battery figure the way you should treat every tracker battery claim: as a best case measured under conditions the maker chose. Frequent live tracking, weak signal and cold weather all pull real-world figures down. That is exactly why we publish measured numbers next to the claims.

Claimed vs measured

This is the table this site exists for. We will not fake it. Our Pawfit 3s test cycle is still running, so every measured cell below says pending until the real numbers are in. Our methodology is documented on how we test.

UK subscription costs: the real maths

No plan, no tracker. The Pawfit 3s is inert until you attach a subscription, which covers the data used by the embedded SIM. Pawfit sells two tiers, Basic and Premium, each at four commitment lengths. The published per-month prices, checked on the Pawfit 3 product page on 29 August 2026, run from £3.39 (Basic, two-year term) to £6.79 (Premium, rolling monthly), with one-year and six-month terms in between (Basic £3.59 and £3.99; Premium £4.29 and £4.89). The same plans activate a 3s.

Here is what those rates actually cost over two years of ownership, with the device bought at the current £46.74 sale price.

Two things jump out. First, rolling monthly billing costs roughly 70 per cent more than the two-year rate over the same period. Commit if you are keeping the tracker. Second, even the dearest Pawfit plan undercuts most rivals' equivalent tiers. Around £128 all-in for two years of Basic tracking is the lowest genuine total we know of among subscription trackers. For how that stacks up against Tractive, PitPat and the rest across three and five years, see our dog GPS tracker cost guide.

Quirks worth knowing

Every tracker has oddities you only meet after ownership. These are the ones that shape life with a Pawfit 3s.

Voice recall is a party trick with a serious use

Pawfit Voice lets you record short commands in your own voice and play them through the tracker's speaker from anywhere. The idea is sound. A dog three fields away hears you, not a robot. But it is only as good as your dog's recall training and the speaker's reach. A tracker speaker is small, and wind and distance are unkind to it. Our audibility measurements are part of the pending bench work above. Treat it as a bonus layer. Never a substitute for training.

The audio pet ID assumes a curious finder

The tracker can speak your contact details aloud to whoever finds your dog. Clever. But it relies on the finder realising the collar gadget talks. A physical tag with your number remains the legal requirement and the faster route home.

Coverage is not ordinary 4G

The 3s uses LTE-M and NB-IoT via Vodafone and O2 in the UK. These low-power networks are widespread but not identical to ordinary phone coverage, so check both operators' coverage maps for your walking spots before buying. This is the single biggest practical difference from the standard 4G Pawfit 3.

The subscription arrives as an e-card

Pawfit sells plans as a separate subscription e-card product, and the tracker does nothing until one is attached. The store page even shows a £0.00 placeholder price that confuses first-time buyers. The real tiers are the £3.39 to £6.79 monthly rates above.

The mount fights thieves, and small dogs

The locking collar mount plus removal alert is a genuine anti-tamper touch. The flip side is bulk. On dogs near Pawfit's own 3.5kg minimum, the two-part unit dominates the collar.

Who should buy what now

The 3s's removal from the official store splits the buying decision three ways.

Buy the Pawfit 3s on Amazon only if the price is clearly below the Pawfit 3's £46.74 direct price and you value the 3s's LTE-M network path and bigger battery claim. Check the seller carefully (Pawfit's own listings are the safe route), and accept that you are buying a model the manufacturer no longer promotes, even though the app and plans still support it fully.

Buy the Pawfit 3 direct if you just want a cheap, current, warrantied tracker. At £46.74 on sale it is the obvious default, with the same app, features and subscription tiers. Honesty note: we have not yet bench-tested the Pawfit 3 itself. Its figures in this review are Pawfit's published data, verified on 29 August 2026.

Look elsewhere in two cases. If you want the bigger ecosystem, longer track record and larger user base, read our Tractive DOG 6 review. The head-to-head against Pawfit is in our Tractive vs Pawfit comparison linked above. And if the whole idea of a monthly fee grates, our guide to the best dog GPS trackers without a subscription covers the genuinely fee-free options, though the trade-offs are real.

Whichever way you go, the Pawfit proposition itself holds up: the cheapest credible running costs in the UK market, on hardware that does more than its price suggests.