The treat cannon works. The cats hate it.

That was the odd verdict from WIRED's tester on the Furbo Mini 360°, a $49 camera that flings snacks across the room on command. Each launch comes with a loud, jarring chirp, which left the household cats alarmed and, by the tester's account, a little baffled. Not a great look for a gadget built to make pets happy.

Still, it won. In WIRED's 2026 roundup of pet cameras, the Furbo is the pick for most people, and it's easy to see why.

The best pet camera for most people costs $49

The Furbo Mini 360° pans left and right to cover a whole room. It shoots 1080p color video with night vision, and two-way audio lets you talk to the animal on the other end. Treats go out through the phone app. Setup needs no drill, just a surface mount, which matters if you rent.

The list price is $99, though Amazon has it at $49 at the moment. Whether that discount sticks around is anyone's guess.

The limits are real. You can't schedule feedings or adjust how many treats come out. It also only works on 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi, so if your router is 5 GHz only, expect some settings-fiddling before you see a single whisker.

Then there's the money. Most of the good stuff sits behind a subscription, from $8 a month on a yearly plan. Pay up and you get seven days of cloud storage, daily highlights sorted by activity, and a report on what your pet actually does while you're gone. The pricier Nanny tier adds snapshots and alerts for smoke, fallen objects, chewing, barking or meowing, and even intruders.

The cheaper rival with a wider view

Skip the treat launcher and the Petcube Cam 360 is the budget answer at $47. It spins a full 360 degrees, tilts up and down, and has a fish-eye style lens that, per WIRED's tester, showed more of the room than most cameras she has tried. Beyond the view, it can magnify the picture up to eight times digitally, lets you speak to your pet through the speaker, and can see in the dark. A new privacy mode lets you shut the lens when you're home and don't fancy being watched by your own gadget.

Mounting is optional, but it takes tools, so setup can get fiddly.

Petcube has the same subscription problem as Furbo, only more so. Without its Care plan (from $4 a month), you get a live feed and little else: no stored video, no pet detection, no automatic recording. A camera that can't remember anything is just a window.

A live peek is plenty for some owners. If you want to know why the couch cushion is on the floor, it isn't.

Other names in the guide

WIRED also singled out the Imilab C30 Dual Security Camera, a two-lens model listed around $60 to $70, as its dual-lens pick. For scheduled treats, which the Furbo can't do, the Tkenpro 2K Pet Camera Treat Dispenser runs about $70 to $90. In July the guide added the Enabot EBO Max FamilyBot and a Lorex 2K dual-lens pan-tilt indoor camera, so the field keeps shifting.

What to weigh before you buy

The sticker price is a bit of a decoy. A $49 camera with an $8 monthly plan runs close to $145 over its first year, and the Petcube lands near $95 with Care. Run that math before you click.

Then decide what you actually want. A pet that comes running for snacks, and an owner who can live with a chirp? Furbo. A wide-angle view and a lower monthly bill? Petcube. Feeding on a timer? Look at the Tkenpro.

The bigger question is how much of this gear stays useful once the subscription meter is running. Watch whether camera makers keep moving features behind monthly plans. That will decide the best pet camera a year from now more than any lens or motor will.