Every year the NDIS updates what providers are allowed to charge, and most participants only notice when a support worker mentions a new rate or an invoice looks different. This year's changes started on 1 July 2026. Here is what actually moved, what did not, and what it means for how far your plan stretches.
What changed on 1 July 2026
Once a year, the National Disability Insurance Agency runs an Annual Pricing Review and publishes guidance on what it considers appropriate maximum prices for a support under your plan. This year's review was published in June 2026, and the new NDIS pricing schedule (version 1.2, effective 1 July 2026) took effect from that date. One thing changed in name as well as number: the document providers used to call the NDIS Pricing Arrangements and Price Limits is now the NDIS pricing schedule.
A price limit is a ceiling, not a fixed fee, and providers can charge less. In practice most do not. The Annual Pricing Review for 2026-27 prices (version 1, June 2026) found that in the six months to 31 December 2025, 69 per cent of claims were made at the published price, up from 66 per cent the year before: 73 per cent of the time for registered providers, 61 per cent for unregistered ones. The NDIA's own conclusion is that the published price "functions as the prevailing rate for most providers". The point still stands though: the number that changed is the maximum, and your plan's total funding did not automatically grow to match it.
That last part is the one families ask about most, so it is worth saying plainly before anything else: a higher price limit on its own does not mean your plan has more money in it. It means the same amount of funding may buy fewer hours if your provider's rate has risen. That is the thing worth understanding, not just the headline that prices went up.
Support worker rates went up, and here is why
Support worker pricing is the change that reaches the widest group. Between 1 July and 31 December 2025, more than 325,000 participants, which the review puts at 43 per cent of all active participants, claimed supports delivered by disability support workers.
That price is not set by opinion. It comes out of the NDIS Disability Support Worker Cost Model, which estimates what it costs a provider to deliver one billable hour of support, built on minimum wages and employment conditions under the Social, Community, Home Care and Disability Services Industry Award. Recommendation 1 of this year's review is that prices for supports determined by that model "should be adjusted to reflect changes in the minimum wage specified in the SCHADS Award, as determined by the Fair Work Commission's Annual Wage Review determination on 2 June 2026". The model also carries superannuation at 12 per cent from 1 July 2025.
So when the award rate moves, the NDIS price moves with it, because otherwise providers cannot legally keep paying staff properly while staying inside the price. The NDIA has also flagged that the cost model itself has not been comprehensively reviewed since its benchmarking was set on 2020-21 market conditions, and a full review of it is scheduled for 2026-27, which is the change worth watching next year.
Practically, this means the hourly rate for support work is higher than it was in June. If your plan's support work budget was calculated on last year's rate, it is worth checking whether it still covers the same number of hours a week, particularly if you have a large, ongoing support roster. This is exactly the kind of thing to raise before your next plan review rather than after your funding has already run low.
Therapy and allied health: what moved, and what did not
Allied health pricing is genuinely mixed this year, and the review sets out figures rather than percentages, so here they are.
Psychology went up. Recommendation 5 sets a national maximum of $252.99 an hour for supports delivered by a psychologist, applied uniformly across all jurisdictions, to bring the NDIS closer to private health insurance and Medicare benchmarks for a 60 minute session.
Two therapies came down. The maximum for a dietitian is now $178.99 an hour and for an exercise physiologist $161.99 an hour, both benchmarked against Medicare and private health insurance data.
Four stayed put. The review found NDIS prices for occupational therapists, speech pathologists, podiatrists and audiologists "fall within or close to the reference range and no adjustments are recommended": occupational therapy and speech pathology at $193.99 an hour, audiology at $193.99, podiatry at $188.99. Physiotherapy also remains unchanged at $183.99 an hour. If you use any of these, you should not see a rate change on your invoices purely because of this year's review.
There are also changes in this category that are about paperwork rather than price. The review recommends separating out line items that used to be bundled together, so that provider travel for therapy, and non face to face work such as preparation, documentation and NDIS-requested reporting, are claimed and recorded separately from the therapy session itself. If an invoice is rejected around the changeover and nobody can explain why, ask whether it is a coding issue rather than anything wrong with the support you received.
The bigger change still coming, registered and unregistered pricing
The July update was not the only pricing change in motion this year. Recommendation 16 of the same review says that from 1 January 2027, prices for Social, Community and Civic Participation supports delivered by unregistered providers, including high intensity supports in that category, should be reduced by 10 per cent, and that indexation of those supports should be ceased. Prices and indexation for registered providers delivering the same supports are maintained.
This is a separate change from the one above, on a separate timeline, and it only affects one category of support so far. We have written a full explanation of what registration actually means and what the January change does in practice in our guide to registered and unregistered NDIS providers, because it deserves more than a paragraph here. The short version for this post: if community access or social support makes up part of your plan and you use an unregistered provider for it, that is the change to watch, not the one that already happened in July.
What this means for your plan and your budget
A few honest, practical points, rather than a general reassurance that everything is fine.
- Your total plan funding did not increase because prices did. The NDIA reviews prices and reviews individual plan budgets on separate cycles. A rate rise without a matching budget increase is a real squeeze, and it is worth naming rather than glossing over.
- The effect is bigger the more hours you use. A family using a few hours of support a week will barely notice a small rate change. A participant with daily support or supported independent living will feel it more, because the increase compounds across many more hours.
- How you manage your funding changes how much of this you see directly. If you are NDIA managed, the agency pays providers directly and you may never see a rate on paper. If you are self managed, you are the one checking invoices against the current price limits, which makes it worth understanding what self management actually involves before you commit to it for a full plan year.
- This is a genuine, recurring cost of quality support, not padding. Support work only stays viable as a career, and support workers only stay in the sector, if pay tracks the cost of living. A provider holding its rate flat while wages and super rise is not offering you a better deal. It is running towards a staffing problem that eventually lands on your roster as cancelled shifts.
What to do now
If you have not looked at your plan since July, it is worth a short check rather than waiting for your next scheduled review. Ask your provider or plan manager two direct questions: has your hourly rate changed since 1 July, and at your current rate of use, does your remaining budget comfortably reach your plan's end date. Both are answerable in a five minute conversation, and neither requires you to wait for a formal review to ask.
If the answer is that your funding is tighter than it used to be, that is worth raising at your next plan review with specifics: how many hours a week you actually use, and what has changed since your plan was approved. A review built on real numbers gets a better hearing than a general request for more funding.
We are a registered NDIS provider in Liverpool (NDIS 4050154538), so this is not a hypothetical for us either. The same published prices apply to us as to everyone else, and we would rather explain a change plainly than let a family find out from a confusing invoice. If you want a straight answer about what this year's changes mean for your specific plan, get in touch and we will walk through it with you.
Ready to take the next step?
Our Liverpool team is here to listen and help, with an interpreter if you want one, at your pace.
