How Much Does Support at Home Cost in Australia?

There is no other industry where the gap between what people think something costs and what it actually costs is as wide as it is in aged care. Support at Home is supposed to fix that, and in many ways it does. But the rules are still complicated, and the numbers depend on three things at once: which Classification you're in, your income and assets, and which provider you choose.

This guide cuts through it.

The annual budget: where the numbers come from

Every Support at Home participant is assessed and assigned a Classification between 1 and 8. Each Classification carries a fixed annual budget that the government pays into your package. The numbers below are indicative for 2025-26 and are indexed annually:

Two important caveats. First, these budgets are not given to you in cash, they pay your provider on your behalf. Second, the actual hours per week you receive depend entirely on the hourly rates your provider charges. A Classification 5 budget at $90/hr buys far fewer hours than the same budget at $70/hr.

For exact, current figures, always check myagedcare.gov.au.

What the government pays vs what you pay

This is the bit most people misunderstand. The government doesn't simply hand you the full budget and tell you to use it. SAH splits services into three categories and applies a different cost-share for each:

• Clinical services, nursing, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, podiatry, dietetics, speech pathology. 100% government-funded. You contribute nothing.
• Independence services, personal care (showering, dressing, toileting), transport, social support, respite care, allied health assistants. 0-50% client contribution, depending on your means assessment.
• Everyday Living services, domestic cleaning, laundry, gardening, meal preparation, in-home meal delivery, home maintenance. 0-80% client contribution, again means-based.

The intuition is straightforward: government covers the medical care that keeps you well, but expects you to contribute more towards the lifestyle services you'd be paying for anyway.

How the means test works

Your contribution rate is set by Services Australia after a means assessment. They look at:

• Age pension eligibility (full / part / nil pension)
• Annual income (excluding pension)
• Assets (excluding the family home up to a threshold)
• Whether you're a member of a couple

Broadly:

• Full age pensioners: typically 0% contribution to Independence and minimal contribution to Everyday Living.
• Part-pensioners: typically 15-30% contribution to Independence and 25-50% to Everyday Living.
• Self-funded retirees: typically 50% contribution to Independence and up to 80% to Everyday Living.

Note that the lifetime contribution cap is $130,000 for new participants and $82,018 for grandfathered participants (indexed). Once you've hit that ceiling, you stop contributing for the rest of your life.

The basic daily fee

Almost all SAH participants pay a small basic daily fee, currently around $12.75 per day, indexed quarterly. It's set as a percentage of the single age pension and is independent of your means-tested contribution. The basic daily fee is always optional in theory, but most providers ask you to pay it as part of the standard agreement.

Worth noting: the BDF doesn't reduce your package, it's an additional contribution that goes towards your provider's overheads.

What providers can charge: the cap on care management

This is the headline reform of SAH. Under the old HCP scheme, providers could charge whatever they wanted for care management, and many charged 25%, 30%, or even 35% of your annual package. That money came out of your budget, leaving less for actual care.

Under SAH:

• Care management is capped at 10% of your quarterly budget. This is a hard ceiling.
• Package management fees (admin, scheduling, payroll) are similarly capped at 10%.
• Combined, you should not see more than 20% of your package go to administration.

For a Classification 5 participant with a $40,212 annual budget, that means up to $8,042 a year on management, but no more. The remaining ~$32,000 must be spent on actual services.

If you're paying more than 20% combined, ring your provider and ask why. If you don't get a clear answer, switch.

Hourly rates: the wild west of SAH

The government caps care management. It does not set hourly rates for service delivery. That is left to the market, which means hourly rates vary dramatically.

Typical hourly ranges for SAH services in 2026 (rough national averages):

The point of these ranges is not the absolute numbers, but the spread. The same service from a comparable provider can cost $20 more or less per hour depending entirely on which provider you choose. Over a year of weekly visits, that's thousands of dollars.

A worked example

Let's run a Classification 5 participant who's a part-pensioner. Annual budget: $40,212.

Provider A, high hourly rates, 10% care management, 10% package management. Personal care at $90/hr.

• Care management: $4,021/yr
• Package management: $4,021/yr
• Available for services: $32,170/yr
• Hours of personal care purchasable: $32,170 ÷ $90 = ~358 hours/yr = ~6.9 hours/week

Provider B, lower hourly rates, 8% care management, 6% package management. Personal care at $72/hr.

• Care management: $3,217/yr
• Package management: $2,413/yr
• Available for services: $34,582/yr
• Hours of personal care purchasable: $34,582 ÷ $72 = ~480 hours/yr = ~9.2 hours/week

Same Classification, same budget. Different providers. Provider B delivers an extra 2.3 hours of care per week, over a year, that's the difference between ~7 hours and ~9 hours of help. Genuinely meaningful.

Hidden costs to watch for

Even after the SAH reforms, providers still find creative ways to add charges. Things to ask explicitly:

• Travel charges. Most clean providers don't charge for travel. Some do.
• Cancellation fees. Sometimes legitimate (workers booked), sometimes not.
• Equipment hire. Should be itemised against your assistive technology funding pool, not your package.
• After-hours surcharges. Some are reasonable, some are aggressive.
• Setup or onboarding fees. Banned under SAH. If you see one, push back.
• Exit fees. Banned. Period.

Get a one-page fee schedule before you sign anything. If a provider can't produce one in 24 hours, that's your answer.

Rules of thumb

If you remember nothing else from this guide, remember:

• Clinical services are free. Use them. They don't touch your budget.
• Care management above 10% per quarter is now illegal. Question it.
• Hourly rates vary by 20-30% between comparable providers. Compare before you sign.
• Lifetime caps are real. Track your contributions; they stop eventually.

Compare before you commit

The Home Care Prices comparison tool lets you filter providers in your suburb by hourly rate, care management fee, and package management fee. No sign-up required. The aim is simple: more hours of care, for the same package, by picking the right provider from the start.

If you'd rather work through the numbers for your specific situation, our SAH Budget Calculator estimates how many hours of weekly support your Classification will buy across different fee structures.