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 reviews its pricing arrangements and sets new price limits, the maximum a provider can charge for a support under your plan. This year's review was published in June, and the updated limits took effect for anything delivered from 1 July 2026 onward.
A price limit is a ceiling, not a fixed fee. Providers can charge less. Most, including us, charge at or near the limit because the cost of running a roster of trained, screened support workers has gone up too, but the point stands: 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
The biggest change for most participants is in support worker pricing, because that is where most plans spend the largest share of their funding. Price limits for support work rose by a little under 5 percent this year.
That increase is not arbitrary. It tracks two things that happened elsewhere in the economy: the Fair Work Commission's annual wage review, which sets minimum award rates across the country, and the legislated increase in the superannuation guarantee. Support workers are paid under an award, and when that award rate moves, the NDIS price limit has to move with it or providers cannot legally keep paying staff properly while also staying within the price limit.
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 more mixed this year. Psychology, including specialist positive behaviour support, rose by around 8 percent, a larger jump than support work.
Occupational therapy, speech pathology, physiotherapy, podiatry and audiology price limits stayed the same this year. If you use any of these supports, you should not see a rate change on your invoices purely because of this year's review.
One change in this category is more about paperwork than price: the way allied health claims are coded changed, replacing an older claim type system with item numbers that carry a suffix identifying the type of service. If you are self managed or plan managed, your provider or plan manager handles this, but it can occasionally cause a claim to bounce back if it is coded the old way during the changeover. If an invoice is rejected around this time and nobody can explain why, ask whether it is a coding issue rather than anything wrong with the support itself.
The bigger change still coming, registered and unregistered pricing
The July update was not the only pricing change in motion this year. From 1 January 2027, price limits for unregistered providers delivering Social, Community and Civic Participation supports are set to drop by 10 percent, and annual indexation stops for those items. Registered provider pricing and indexation continue as normal.
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 five percent 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 toward 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. We adjust our own rates against the same price limits every year, and we would rather explain that 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, in your language, at your pace.
