Support at Home: What Aged Care at Home Really Costs

How Support at Home works

An aged care assessment places you in one of eight funding classifications, from light domestic help at Classification 1 to high and complex needs at Classification 8. Each carries a government-funded annual budget, paid in quarterly instalments. From 1 July 2026 the annual amounts run from $11,010.01 at Classification 1 to $80,137.12 at Classification 8, indexed each 1 July. 10% of each quarterly budget is deducted for care management, so about 90% is available for services. Unspent funds carry over up to $1,000 or 10% of the quarterly budget, whichever is greater.

You then choose a provider and services from an approved list. Each service has a price, and for most services you pay a contribution — a percentage of that price — with the government paying the rest. Each service's price is charged against your quarterly budget, so your contribution is part of paying for a service, not extra money you can spend on top of the budget.

How likely is it to apply to you?

More likely than most people assume. When the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare traced the aged care used by Australians who died aged 65 and over, 80% had used aged care in the eight years before they died — 91% of those who died at 85 or older. Most of it was care at home: 84% first entered through a home-based program, and only 1 in 10 started in residential care. Nor is it brief: almost half had begun using care more than four years before they died.

Two things temper that figure. Much of it is entry-level help — a few hours of cleaning or gardening a week through the Commonwealth Home Support Programme, which still runs separately from Support at Home and costs far less. And those studies cover deaths in 2010–14; use of packaged home care has more than tripled since 2017, so today's figures are likely higher still. The fair reading is that almost everyone uses some care at home, and a substantial share progress to the packaged care this article is about, typically for a year or more — AIHW data put the median stay on a home care package at around 16 months.

What that care is worth, in government spending per person each year:

These are what the care cost the government under the program Support at Home replaced — not what anyone paid themselves. They are useful as a guide to what the care is worth: your own share is your contribution rate, from the tables below, applied to the non-clinical part of it. Figures from the Productivity Commission's Report on Government Services 2026.

Three kinds of service, three kinds of charge

What you pay depends first on what the service is:

The lowest rates — 5% and 17.5% — apply to full pensioners. The highest — 50% and 80% — apply to self-funded retirees who are not eligible for a Commonwealth Seniors Health Card, and to anyone who does not provide the information needed for a means assessment. Everyone else is on a sliding scale, and that scale is where the headline figures mislead.

How your rate is actually worked out

Services Australia assesses your income and assets much as it does for the Age Pension. As set out in adviser technical guides describing the rules, the calculation is built directly on the Age Pension means test:

1. It works out how much the income test would reduce your Age Pension — 50 cents for every dollar of income above the free area.
2. It works out how much the assets test would reduce it — $78 a year for every $1,000 of assets above the free area. The home you live in is excluded, and the free area depends on whether you own your home.
3. It takes the larger of the two, and divides it by a maximum: the income-test reduction that would apply at the Commonwealth Seniors Health Card income limit — half of the difference between that limit and the income free area. That gives a figure between 0 and 1.
4. That figure moves you proportionally along each range — from 5% to 50% for independence, and from 17.5% to 80% for everyday living.

In other words, your home care contribution rate is your Age Pension reduction, scaled against the reduction at the Seniors Health Card income limit. The scale is steep and short: it rises quickly through the part-pension range and reaches the maximum either when your income reaches the card's limit or — for a single homeowner — at about $968,718 of assessable assets, whichever comes first.

Couples are assessed on combined income and assets with couple thresholds, and full pensioners are simply charged the lowest rates. The Department does not publish the calculation in this form — it is set out in adviser technical guides (MLC, BT) — but the rates below have been checked against the My Aged Care fee estimator and match it. Use the estimator for your own figure, since it accounts for circumstances this worked example does not.

Worked examples

A single homeowner whose home is excluded, whose assessable assets are all financial investments (so the income test applies deeming to them), with no other income — at the Age Pension, deeming and Seniors Health Card figures from 20 September 2026:

Illustrative: couples, non-homeowners and people with income from employment or defined benefit pensions will get different results. The My Aged Care fee estimator gives an individual figure.

The lifetime cap — and why it links home and residential care

There is a lifetime cap on what you contribute to non-clinical services. It was $137,917.01 at 20 March 2026 for new participants, and is indexed each March and September — it was indexed again on 20 September 2026, so check My Aged Care for the current figure. Once you reach it, you pay no further contributions for non-clinical services. In residential aged care a separate four-year limit also applies to the non-clinical care contribution, so that contribution can stop before the lifetime cap is reached.

The important detail is that the cap is shared with residential aged care. What you pay toward care at home counts toward the same cap as the non-clinical care contribution in a residential aged care home. Someone who spends several years receiving substantial care at home arrives in residential care with part of their cap already used. The four-year limit applies only in residential care, not to Support at Home: there, whichever comes first — the lifetime cap or four years — ends the residential non-clinical contribution.

People who were receiving or approved for a Home Care Package on or before 12 September 2024 are covered by a “no worse off” principle, which works through transitional rates: full pensioners pay nothing for any service; part pensioners and Seniors Health Card holders pay 0% to 25% for independence and everyday living; self-funded retirees pay 25%. Clinical care stays free for all. It carries a lower lifetime cap ($86,185.23 at 20 March 2026, indexed). It follows specific eligibility rules rather than guaranteeing every individual charge will be lower.

Things worth knowing before you start

• Complete the means assessment. If you do not, you may be charged the maximum rates — 50% and 80%. Pensioners are assessed from what Services Australia already holds; self-funded retirees and Seniors Health Card holders need to provide their details.
• Your rate is a percentage of the service price, so prices matter as much as the rate. Providers set their own prices and must publish them, and they cannot charge separate entry, exit or administration fees. Prices vary between providers, so what you pay depends on both your rate and the provider you choose — worth comparing before you agree.
• You may wait. Funding is allocated through a priority system. Some people waiting for their approved classification may be eligible for interim funding, depending on their circumstances.
• Hardship assistance exists. If you cannot afford your contributions, Services Australia can reduce them.

What this means for planning

Three things follow for anyone planning their retirement finances. First, care at home is a genuine and sometimes long-running cost, not a footnote: $10,000 a year of everyday living services costs a self-funded retiree without the Seniors Health Card $8,000 of it, assuming the services fit within the budget and price rules. Second, your Age Pension and Seniors Health Card position does more than set your pension: it sets what care costs you. Third, the lifetime cap means home care and residential care are not separate problems, and should be planned together.

The RetireConfident calculator models this. Enter the annual value of services you expect and it works out your contribution from the same income and assets test described above — the rates it produces match the My Aged Care fee estimator — and applies the lifetime cap, stopping the contribution when you enter residential care. Two limits worth knowing: the timing is deterministic, so Monte Carlo varies what care costs but never whether or when it happens, and the residential side does not yet split out its own non-clinical contribution, so only care at home draws down the shared cap today.

Frequently asked questions