NDIS pricing 2026-27: what the new pricing schedule means for providers

By Dr Tom Hitchcock, founder of Mr Purple (LinkedIn)

NDIS pricing 2026-27 arrived in a new wrapper. The familiar Pricing Arrangements and Price Limits document has been joined by something with a shorter name and a bigger signature: the NDIS pricing schedule, set by the Minister’s first pricing determination for NDIS supports. If you run an NDIS provider, the wrapper matters less than what you do with it. This is a plain explainer for owners, written by a business coach, not a pricing consultant. For anything that touches your claims, your contracts or your compliance, the source is the NDIS pricing arrangements page and the people whose job it is to read it closely.

What actually changed with NDIS pricing 2026-27

Three things are worth knowing before you open a spreadsheet.

• The prices now sit in a pricing schedule. The NDIA says the Minister’s pricing determination sets the maximum prices for supports for the 2026-27 financial year, and the schedules list support item numbers and names with national, remote and very remote maximum prices.
• The schedule has its own effective date. The version on the NDIA site is marked effective 24 September 2026. If your team claims against support items, check that your systems, service agreements and quotes all point at the current schedule, not a saved copy from earlier in the year.
• Guidance is still catching up. The NDIA says it will shortly publish updated pricing and claiming guidance documents. Until then, the 2025-26 arrangements document is still on the same page. Expect a period where the rules and the explanations arrive at different times.

None of that is exciting. All of it is the kind of detail that quietly eats a month of margin if nobody owns it.

Who the maximum prices apply to

The NDIA is clear that the maximum prices in the schedules apply to NDIA-managed and plan-managed participants. For those participants, the agency cannot pay a claim above the maximum price, providers cannot charge above it, and participants are not entitled to a payment above it.

Self-managed participants sit differently. That is exactly the sort of nuance where an owner should not guess. If a large share of your revenue comes from self-managed participants, ask your plan manager contacts or an NDIS-literate adviser how your pricing and agreements should read. A business coach can help you decide what to do with the answer; the answer itself belongs to them.

The business questions the new schedule should trigger

A price limit is a ceiling, not a business plan. Every time the ceiling moves, or stays still while your costs move, the useful question is not “what is the new number” but “what does this do to each service line we run”. Five questions worth an hour of your leadership meeting:

1. Which services do we actually make money on? Not in total. Line by line, including travel, cancellations, supervision and the time your coordinators spend on the phone.
2. What did our costs do since the last price change? Award rates rose from the first full pay period on or after 1 July 2026, and super and insurance rarely go down. If your prices are capped and your costs are not, the gap shows up in cash before it shows up in the profit and loss.
3. Are our service agreements current? Old agreements quoting old items are an admin risk and a trust risk with families.
4. Who owns pricing in our business? If the honest answer is “the founder, at 10pm”, that is the real problem to fix.
5. What would we stop doing? Some services are kept because they always have been. A new schedule is a good excuse to look again.

Cash flow: the quiet risk in any pricing change

The danger in a pricing change is rarely a single dramatic loss. It is a small, steady leak: claims rejected because an item changed, invoices delayed while someone checks the schedule, staff paid at new rates while revenue lags behind. Three habits help.

• Run a weekly cash view, not just a monthly report. Thirteen weeks ahead is plenty for most providers.
• Track rejected and delayed claims as a number your leadership team sees every week.
• Give one person clear ownership of the schedule, the systems update and the staff briefing, with a date to have it done.

Where the owner should spend their time

Most NDIS provider owners I work with are excellent at care and stretched thin on everything else. The temptation with any NDIS pricing change is to personally become the expert. Resist it. Your job is to make sure the business has the right information, a clear owner and a decision rhythm: which services grow, which hold, which change. That is the work of business coaching for NDIS providers, and it is the part of the job that no pricing schedule will do for you.

If you want the longer view of how we work with providers on exactly these decisions, read our page on business coaching for NDIS providers.

A simple checklist before you move on

• Download the current pricing schedule from the NDIA site and note its effective date.
• Check your claiming system, price lists and quote templates against it.
• Review service agreements that quote support items.
• Rebuild your margin view by service line, with current wage costs.
• Book a leadership conversation about what to grow, hold or stop.

If the last item feels like the hard one, that is normal. It is also the one that changes the year. A 15 minute call with Tom is a good place to start: book 15 minutes with Tom.

Related: future proofing your NDIS business, a practical guide for owners.

Common questions

What is the NDIS pricing schedule for 2026-27?

It is the document that sets the maximum prices for NDIS supports for the 2026-27 financial year, made under the Minister's pricing determination. It lists support items with national, remote and very remote maximum prices, and you can download it from the NDIS pricing arrangements page on ndis.gov.au.

Do the NDIS maximum prices apply to self-managed participants?

The NDIA says the maximum prices in the schedules apply to NDIA-managed and plan-managed participants. For how this affects self-managed participants in your business, check with the NDIA guidance or an NDIS-literate adviser.

What should a provider owner do first after a pricing change?

Check that your claiming system, quotes and service agreements match the current schedule, then rebuild your margin view by service line with current wage costs. After that, decide as a leadership team what to grow, hold or stop.

Can a business coach set our NDIS prices?

No. Pricing rules and claiming belong to the NDIA guidance and your advisers. Business coaching for NDIS providers helps owners make the business decisions that follow: service mix, roles, cash flow and getting the founder out of the bottleneck.