Smalls Cat Food Vs Raised Right: What’s the Difference?

Are you trying to decide between Smalls and Raised Right in pursuit of the best fresh cat food for your feline?

There’s been a noticeable shift from traditional pet food brands to fresh cat food in the past 5 years as cat owners pay closer attention to the ingredients in your four-legged friend’s food.

We’ve got two American Shorthair cats called Marco and Polo in our family, and we’ve been on a mission to find them the best cat food following a spate of skin issues.

In our search, we initially came across Smalls cat food before we discovered Raised Right while doing further research on human-grade cat food brands available in the US.

In this article, we’re going to compare Smalls and Raised Right, revealing Marco and Polo’s favorite, our pick as consumers and the differences between these two companies.

Smalls Vs Raised Right: Our Recommendation

We’ll cut to the chase and start by revealing our recommendation before delving a little deeper into these two cat food brands. We were impressed by both companies but ultimately we believe Smalls has a slight edge.

Marco and Polo, like a lot of cats, are extremely fussy when it comes to their food. We’ve tried many different dry food brands over the years. However, they both enjoyed Smalls.

Smalls has a great range of recipes, 11 at the time of writing, including chicken, duck, beef, pork, turkey, salmon and cod meals. There’s a lot of variety, allowing pet owners to vary what’s in their cat’s bowl daily. Raised Right, on the other hand, offer just four recipes.

Smalls starts by asking pet owners about their feline friends. Raised Right also offer a custom meal plan, allowing for cat parents to share details about their pets and diet goals. I would say the Smalls website offers a slightly smoother experience.

Ultimately, the biggest factor in our decision was our cats and how they liked the food. Marco and Polo both enjoyed Smalls, but Marco wouldn’t eat Raised Right. His brother scoffed it down but he wasn’t a fan. Of course, all cats are different and this only represents our experience.

Smalls offers a trial pack so you can purchase their cat food at a heavily discounted price – around $20 for two cats. This means you don’t have to commit to much money up front. Raised Right do offer a four pack but it cost us around $60.

Who Is Smalls?

Smalls is one of the leading cat food brands in the fresh cat food space. We first encountered them while reviewing a dog food company called Nom Nom and decided to test out their food on Marco and Polo.

Smalls stand out because they claim on their website that their recipes have roughly 80% meat content. We were intrigued to give their fresh food recipes a try, having relied on traditional dry cat food up until placing our first order of Smalls.

We liked the range of recipes to cater to Marco and Polo, who can be extremely fussy with their food. Smalls offers a range of bird and fish recipes that were more appetizing to our American Shorthair cats.

It was an easy process to place our first order and get a trial box of their recipes. The meal pouches are small and rectangular, so you can stack them in your freezer and keep a few defrosted in the fridge.

In our first order, we received some cat toys, which proved a huge hit with Marco and Polo. They’re the only cat toys that they’ve ever played with despite our best efforts over the years. So this was a thoughtful inclusion that we appreciated.

Smalls offer a heavily-discounted trial box, before you pay full price for a 30-day subscription. We paid just over $110 for a month’s supply of food for Marco and Polo.

Who Is Raised Right?

Raised Right was another brand that kept popping up when we started our search for fresh cat food (they also provide human-grade dog food meals, too).

They offer a more traditional approach to their pet food business in the sense that pet owners can simply visit their website, pick which recipes they’d like, and pay for their order. However, they also provide a custom meal plan if you’d like a more customized experience.

Raised Right have four recipes on offer for cats: chicken, chicken and pumpkin, turkey, and turkey and pumpkin. It’s not the biggest menu that we’ve reviewed, but there are still multiple options for your feline friend.

We were impressed by the protein content in Raised Right’s recipes. Their meals contain 20-21% protein as fed (and 59%-64% as dry matter), while they’re also low in carbs. This is great because Polo needs to shed a few pounds.

You can place an initial order for 4 meal pouches, 8 packs or 16 meals. We’d recommend starting at the lower number to make sure your cat likes Raised Right before committing to a bigger purchase.

We received our Raised Right box but it lacked some of the little touches of Smalls. However, the meal pouches were all frozen, which is ultimately the most important thing.

While Polo scoffed down Raised Right, his brother Marco wouldn’t touch it. So it was hit-and-miss in our house. However, every cat is different and we read a lot of great reviews online.

We paid just over $60 for Raised Right, which amounted to four meal pouches. This lasted us just under two weeks. We did fill out a custom plan for Polo to see the cost. Raised Right quoted us $175 for 16 meal pouches to be delivered every month. That’s for one cat.

Wrapping Up

So there we have it! We’ve reached the end of our comparison review taking a look at Smalls and Raised Right.

We don’t think you’ll go wrong with either of these cat food brands if you’re ready to ditch traditional cat food in favor of a fresh approach.

However, we would recommend Smalls because our cats preferred it, the experience was slightly better and their food is cheaper.