Home › Guides › Live-in care: what it costs and when it beats a care home
Live-in care is priced weekly, not hourly, and it sits above the council rate for most care homes. What it buys is different, not cheaper.
In short: councils publish live-in care at £1,151 to £1,206 a week in 2026; private agencies quote roughly £800 to £1,800 depending on need. That is above the council rate for a residential care home almost everywhere, and comparable with nursing care.
Most agencies will not put a figure on a website. Two councils do publish what they pay:
| Weekly rate | |
|---|---|
| Suffolk, lower dependency | £1,151.22 |
| Suffolk, higher dependency | £1,205.51 |
| West Sussex, published guidance | from around £1,400 |
| Hampshire, quoted range for self-funders | £800 to over £1,800 |
Suffolk’s are council rates — what the council pays an agency. A family arranging privately pays more.
The Hampshire range is wide for a reason: live-in care is priced on what the person needs, not on hours. Someone who sleeps through the night and needs help dressing sits at the bottom. Someone needing turning twice a night sits near the top, and may need two carers.
Against a residential care home, councils publish £768 to £1,182 a week for a standard place in 2026/27. Against nursing, Devon’s top band reaches £1,509.95 including the NHS contribution.
So live-in care is broadly comparable with a nursing home and above most residential rates. It is not the cheaper option, and any agency presenting it as one is selling.
What it buys is different: your own home, your own bed, one consistent carer instead of a rota, and a partner not being separated. For many families that is worth the difference.
Breaks. A live-in carer needs two hours off a day and a proper weekly break. Who covers them, and is the replacement charged separately?
Nights. Most live-in rates assume the carer sleeps. If someone needs help at 2am regularly, that becomes waking-night care and is charged differently. Suffolk publishes waking nights at £24.33 an hour against sleeping nights at £15.35.
Two carers. Where a person needs two people for transfers, or a couple both need care, the price roughly doubles.
Food and bills. The carer lives in your house. Heating, water and usually food are yours. Budget £50 to £80 a week that appears in no quote.
Cover for holidays and sickness. Ask what happens when your carer is off, how much notice you get, and whether the rate changes.
Nursing needs. A live-in carer is not a nurse. If someone needs a registered nurse’s judgement rather than a district nurse’s visit, the placement is a nursing home, and the NHS contributes £267.68 a week towards it in that setting only.
Night after night. One or two disturbed nights a week is manageable. Every night is not, and it burns out the carer, which produces turnover — the thing you were paying to avoid.
Isolation. A person alone in a house with one carer can be lonelier than the same person in a home with thirty residents. It is the least measurable factor and the one families most often regret ignoring.
The means test works as it does for other home care, with the rule that matters most: the value of the home you live in is never counted while you live in it. Only savings, investments and income are assessed.
That is why live-in care can be affordable for someone who would be a full self-funder in a care home — the house is disregarded here and counted there. See what home care costs and what happens when savings run out.
Attendance Allowance applies and is not means-tested: £76.70 or £114.60 a week in 2026/27. It usually continues while you are at home, and around a million eligible people have never claimed it.
Reviewed 11 August 2026. Figures are for 2026/27 unless stated. This is information, not financial or legal advice.
We publish prices and register data. We are not an advice service, and for the decisions that follow these are the sources worth your time — all free, none of them selling you anything.