NDIS Price Guide for Support Workers PDF Download

NDIS support workers need clear information about rates and costs. The NDIS price guide for support workers PDF contains the official rates you’ll use for budgeting and planning participant support.

At Nursed, we’ve created this guide to help you navigate pricing structures, find the official document, and apply rates to your specific circumstances.

What’s Actually in the NDIS Price Guide

The Core Documents You Need

The NDIS Price Guide isn’t a simple rate card-it’s a comprehensive document that outlines maximum prices for every type of support the scheme funds. The National Disability Insurance Agency built the 2025-26 pricing arrangements on data from more than 10.5 million therapy transactions, making it the most robust dataset the NDIA has ever used. This matters because the rates reflect real market conditions, not theoretical figures. The NDIA publishes two essential documents: the Pricing Arrangements (which covers rules and billing policies) and the Support Catalogue (which lists every claimable support item with its code and price limit). You need both documents working together to bill correctly.

How Support Worker Rates Break Down

The guide covers three distinct support categories: core supports for everyday tasks and personal care, capital supports for assistive technology and home modifications, and capacity building supports focussed on skills development and workforce participation. For support workers specifically, the document sets hourly rates that vary based on the time of day you work, the day of the week, and your location. Standard support worker assistance costs $70.23 per hour during weekday daytime hours (6 am to 8 pm) across most Australian regions, but this jumps to $127.43 on Sundays and $297.60 for overnight sleepover support. Remote and very remote areas have significantly higher rates-reaching $178.40 on Sundays in remote regions and $191.15 in very remote areas-because the scheme accounts for travel costs and workforce scarcity in those locations.

What Changed in 2025

The NDIA updated rates by 4.36% in 2025 to account for minimum wage increases and CPI changes, but therapy rates, certain support coordination categories, and plan management fees remained static. Your hourly rate depends on multiple factors working together: whether you work on a weekday between 6 am and 8 pm, after 8 pm, or overnight; whether it’s a public holiday, Saturday, or Sunday; and whether the participant’s location falls into standard, remote, or very remote classifications. If a support session crosses time boundaries-say you start at 7:30 pm and finish at 9:30 pm-the higher rate applies to the entire session if the same worker delivers it continuously.

Maximum Rates vs. Actual Prices

These rates represent the maximum amount registered providers can charge; plan-managed and agency-managed participants cannot exceed these limits, though self-managed participants retain more flexibility. The practical reality is that you must cross-reference the Pricing Arrangements for understanding the rules around time, location, and billing conditions, and the Support Catalogue for identifying the exact line items and codes that match the services you deliver. When you know how to read these documents together, you can calculate accurate costs for any support scenario-which is exactly what you’ll need when you start applying rates to specific participant circumstances.

Getting the Official PDF

Where to Find the Documents

The NDIS Pricing Arrangements and Price Limits document sits on the official NDIA website, and you need the exact 2025-26 version to avoid billing errors. The NDIA publishes two separate files you must download: the Pricing Arrangements PDF (which contains all the rules, rate tables, and billing conditions) and the Support Catalogue Excel file (which lists every support item with its code and maximum price). The 2025-26 version 1.1 took effect on 24 November 2025, so any older version will give you outdated rates. Navigate to ndis.gov.au, find the pricing section, and download both files. The Pricing Arrangements comes in PDF and Word formats; the PDF lets you search faster when you need to verify a specific rate mid-conversation with a participant.

Why Both Files Matter

The Support Catalogue is Excel-only, which matters because you can sort by support type, location modifier, or price to find exactly what you need without scrolling through pages. Third-party summaries or competitor websites that claim to simplify the guide inevitably leave out edge cases or the specific rules for group supports where pricing divides by participant count. You cannot rely on these shortcuts if you want accurate billing.

Staying Current with Updates

The NDIA updates pricing on a set schedule: the annual review takes effect on 1 July each year, but mid-year adjustments can happen. You should bookmark the official pricing page and check it quarterly, not annually, because policy changes sometimes land outside the July window. When you download, check the version number and effective date on the first page-version 1.1 is current, but the NDIA will release version 1.2 or higher if regulations shift.

Coordinating with Your Team

If you work with plan managers or support coordinators, share the download link with them so everyone operates from identical rate tables; mismatched versions cause invoicing rejections and delayed payments. The Disability Support Worker Cost Model underpins the hourly rates you see in the guide. Understanding this model explains why rates are what they are and how the NDIA calculated them. Once you have both documents downloaded and your team aligned on the same versions, you can move forward with applying these rates to specific participant situations and budgets.

Turning Price Limits Into Real Budget Numbers

Map Your Participant’s Weekly Schedule

Support worker costs depend entirely on when and where the support happens. A weekday daytime session in a standard location costs $70.23 per hour according to the 2025-26 Pricing Arrangements document. The moment that session crosses into evening hours after 8 pm, the rate jumps to $77.38 per hour. If the same support happens on a Sunday, you’re looking at $127.43 per hour. The practical step is to map out your participant’s typical week: list each support block by day and time, then cross-reference the exact rate from the Pricing Arrangements document.

A participant needing three hours of personal care support on weekday mornings costs $210.69 per week, but that same three hours on Sunday costs $382.29-a difference of $171.60 weekly or roughly $8,923 annually. This is why time-of-day precision matters when you build budgets. The rates shift dramatically based on when support occurs, and small scheduling changes create significant budget impacts.

Account for Remote and Very Remote Locations

Remote and very remote participants shift these numbers dramatically. A remote area participant receives $98.32 per hour for weekday daytime support instead of $70.23, and Sunday rates climb to $178.40. The NDIA built these higher remote area participant rates into the scheme specifically because remote locations face genuine workforce shortages and travel costs. When you plan support for a remote participant, you cannot apply standard rates-that’s a billing error that will be rejected during plan review.

The location modifier affects every calculation you make. Verify your participant’s location classification before you quote any rate, because applying the wrong rate creates invoicing rejections and delays payments. The difference between standard and remote rates compounds quickly across a year of support.

Understand How Group Supports Affect Pricing

Group supports introduce another layer of calculation that many people get wrong. When one support worker delivers assistance to multiple participants simultaneously, the price limit divides equally among them. If a support worker provides three hours of community participation support to two participants at the same time, and the standard rate is $70.23 per hour, each participant’s claim is $70.23 per hour (not split), but you bill for the full three hours per person. The practical reality is that group supports only make sense when the participants genuinely benefit from shared activity-not when you’re trying to reduce costs.

The Support Catalogue group billing services clarifies which services allow group billing and which don’t, so you must check that document before you propose group arrangements. Group pricing rules vary by support type, and applying the wrong rule creates billing disputes.

Negotiate Rates Within the Price Limits

The price limits are maximums, not minimums. Self-managed participants can negotiate lower rates with providers, though many don’t realise this flexibility exists. Plan-managed and agency-managed participants cannot exceed the price limits, but that doesn’t mean providers always charge the maximum. A participant with limited funding might negotiate $60 per hour with a support worker instead of the $70.23 cap, freeing budget for other supports.

The conversation should always centre on what’s reasonable and necessary for that specific person’s goals-not on filling every dollar available. The NDIA’s position is clear: pricing must reflect genuine value, not budget exhaustion. When you negotiate, focus on the participant’s outcomes and priorities, not on maximising provider income.

Final Thoughts

Download both the 2025-26 Pricing Arrangements and Support Catalogue from the NDIA website, verify the version number and effective date, and share these documents with your team so everyone operates from identical information. Bookmark the official pricing page and check it quarterly for updates, because the NDIA releases changes outside the annual July window. When you build budgets or quote rates, cross-reference both documents every time, because shortcuts and third-party summaries inevitably miss edge cases that create billing rejections.

The NDIS price guide for support workers PDF gives you the foundation for accurate budgeting, fair pricing, and compliant billing. You now understand that rates shift based on time of day, day of the week, and location classification, and that these shifts create real differences in annual costs. You’ve learned to map participant schedules against the correct rates, account for remote area premiums, and navigate group support pricing without errors.

If you need support in navigating NDIS funding and service delivery, Nursed is a registered NDIS provider that helps individuals thrive at home and in their community. Contact the NDIA directly at 1800 800 110 if you have questions about pricing, or reach out to your plan manager or support coordinator for guidance on applying rates to your specific circumstances.