Pricing private home care
Do our private prices cover our cost per hour with a margin, and how do they compare with local private rates and the council rate?
Upload your price list and carer payroll. Ask Orrery works out the margin on each service and compares your prices with what agencies near you publish and with the council's rate.
When people use it: Before April price changes, and when opening a new area.
How it works, step by step
Upload prices and payroll
Include weekend and bank holiday prices.
Margin by service
Short visits often lose money once travel is counted.
Local agencies and searches
Agencies near you, and how many families search for home care.
What you upload
- Your private price list
- Carer payroll
Files are stored privately for your account, never shared with anyone and never used to train AI. You can delete them at any time. Spreadsheets, CSV, PDF and Word files all work, in your own layout.
Try it with sample files
Made up files for a made up provider, Example Care Group, so you can see what Ask Orrery does with them.
Questions you can ask
- “Using my Example Home Care private price list and payroll, what margin do I make on a one hour and a 30 minute visit after pay, travel and employer costs?”
- “How do my private rates compare with published private home care rates near Maidstone and with Kent's council rate?”
Ask the data in plain English
A real question and answer from Ask Orrery, the assistant inside the platform, using the Example Care Group sample files above (October 2026). It works from your files and Orrery's data, and shows its sources.
On a weekday private price list, a one hour visit leaves about £14.94 (47%) and a 30 minute visit about £10.82 (57%). That counts pay, mileage and employer National Insurance only. Your carers' travel time is not paid at the moment, which flatters both figures.
How I worked it out (weekday prices, September 2026 data)
- Price: £31.50 for one hour, £18.90 for 30 minutes (private price list).
- Pay rate: £14.88 an hour on average (payroll, £49,998.77 for 3,360.21 contact hours).
- Time paid: carers are paid for actual minutes, not planned. The visit log shows 55.36 minutes on a one hour visit and 25.65 on a 30 minute visit.
- Mileage: 2.55 miles a visit at 30p, so £0.77 (visit log, payroll).
- Employer National Insurance: 15% of pay, since every carer earns well above the £5,000 a year threshold (Orrery policy timeline). I ignored the Employment Allowance.
| 1 hour | 30 minutes | |
|---|---|---|
| Pay | £13.73 | £6.36 |
| Mileage | £0.77 | £0.77 |
| Employer NI | £2.06 | £0.95 |
| Cost | £16.56 | £8.08 |
| Margin | £14.94 (47%) | £10.82 (57%) |
Travel time. The visit log shows 5.6 minutes of travel before each visit, and payroll shows none of it paid. If you paid it at the same rate, it would add about £1.60 a visit with NI. Margins would fall to £13.34 (42%) for one hour and £9.22 (49%) for 30 minutes.
Unpaid travel between visits can raise minimum wage questions, so it is worth checking with an adviser.
Not included
- Pension and holiday pay, which are not in your payroll file.
- Office, management and insurance costs, so this is a margin per visit, not profit.
- Weekend and bank holiday prices, because I have no weekend pay rates.
I can rerun this with weekend prices or with travel paid. The "Your true cost per care hour against the council rate" guide covers the same ground.
Ask, chart and report, in plain English
Ask Orrery answers from Orrery's data and your own files, draws charts on request and builds reports you can save as PDF. These are real examples made with the sample files.
- Published private rates are a guide; many agencies quote on assessment.
Answer this with your own files
Subscribers get every guide, chart and projection for all 153 councils, Ask Orrery with private uploads of their own files, and every council report.
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