Cornerstone guide · ElderCareCosts Research
In-Home Care Guide: Help at Home for Seniors
Non-medical in-home care helps with ADLs, meals, and companionship; home health is skilled and usually doctor-ordered.
Not medical advice. This page compares cost and logistics. It does not diagnose, treat, or recommend clinical care; talk with a clinician about health decisions.
The basics
Medicare can cover intermittent skilled home health when criteria are met. Not round-the-clock custodial care.
Ask agencies about caregiver screening, backups, and how overtime/holiday rates work.
What in-home care costs
Across the fifty states where we publish a 2025 figure, the median cost of non-medical in-home care is $6,768 a month at the forty-four hour week the surveys treat as standard. That works out to about $35.50 an hour, with the middle half of states running from roughly $32.63 to $40.00 on the same basis.
Most families do not start at forty-four hours. At twenty hours a week, a common opening schedule, the same rate is about $3,076 a month. Hours are the lever that moves this number more than anything else, which is why two households in the same city can pay very different amounts.
One distinction worth keeping hold of: this is the rate an agency bills, not the wage the caregiver takes home. Ask any agency what its rate includes beyond the aide's pay, and what it does when a scheduled aide calls in sick. Hiring privately can lower the hourly rate, and it moves whatever the agency was handling to you.
Sources
- Medicare.gov. Home health services. Medicare home health coverage overview
- ACL.gov. Community living / aging services context
- ElderCareCosts methodology. How the published cost medians are derived, which survey vintage they come from, and what the model does not cover.
Related
Not sure which of these apply to your family?
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