Do you actually get to set your own rate?
Yes. This is the part that surprises people who have only ever been paid by an agency. When you work for yourself, no roster manager hands you an hourly figure. You decide what you charge, you put it in your service agreement, and you invoice it. The freedom is real, and so is the responsibility for getting the number right.
There is one boundary. If a participant is paying you from NDIS funds, the amount you charge for a given support cannot go above the price limit set for that support item in the current NDIS Pricing Arrangements and Price Limits. Those limits are published by the National Disability Insurance Agency, they differ by support type and by state, and they are updated at least once a year. So the honest rule is: check the current document at ndis.gov.au before you lock a rate in, and never rely on a figure someone quoted you last year.
The number that isn't the number
The trap is treating your hourly rate as your pay. It is not. An employee's wage arrives after their employer has already carried tax, super, insurance, leave and the hours where there was no client to see. When you are the business, all of that comes out of the one number you charge.
Before you decide what to charge, it helps to see what the rate is quietly covering:
- Tax. You set money aside yourself. Nothing is withheld for you.
- Superannuation. If you choose to pay yourself super, it comes out of the rate.
- Insurance. Public liability and professional indemnity cover are a running cost, not a one-off.
- Unpaid time. Writing notes, sending invoices, driving between clients, chasing a plan manager, sick days, and the weeks a client is in hospital or on holiday.
- Non-billable admin. The paperwork that keeps you compliant but that no one pays you an hourly rate to do.
This is why two workers can charge the same hourly figure and take home very different amounts. The rate is a headline. What you keep depends on how much unpaid work sits behind it.
Why one flat rate all week rarely fits
NDIS price limits are not a single number. They are higher for evening supports, higher again on Saturdays and Sundays, and higher still on public holidays. If you charge the same flat rate no matter when you work, you are either leaving money on the table for the unsociable hours or risking sitting above the limit at quieter times.
The clean approach is a rate for each variant, matched to the code that applies to the day and time worked:
- Weekday daytime supports
- Evening supports after the weekday cut-off
- Saturday and Sunday
- Public holidays
Getting this right on every invoice line is fiddly by hand and easy to slip on. It is one of the things software is genuinely good at: Sparks Scribe, which we build, applies the right NDIS support item code and the right rate for the day and time of each shift, so a Sunday evening line is not accidentally billed at a Tuesday-morning rate. Worth being clear about the limit of that: Scribe puts the correct code and your rate on the line, but it does not police the NDIS price caps for you. Setting a rate at or under the limit is still your call.
Travel and expenses change what you take home
Your hourly rate is not the whole invoice. Where a participant's plan allows it, the kilometres you drive and the costs you carry on a shift can be billed as separate lines, and they make a real difference over a fortnight.
Travel to and during a support is claimed with its own non-labour travel code and a distance in kilometres, not folded into your hourly rate. Out-of-pocket costs on a community-access outing, a paid activity or a parking fee, sit as expense lines. Keeping these off your hourly rate and on their own lines is both more accurate and easier to explain if a plan manager queries the invoice. In Scribe, Add Travel drops a travel code and the distance onto the invoice, and Add Expense itemises a cost, both from the entry Essentials plan.
A worked example
Here is one way to sanity-check a rate. The figures are illustrative, not a recommendation, and every person's costs are different.
Say you want to earn the equivalent of a comfortable take-home over a year. You map out how many hours you can realistically bill in a week once travel, notes and admin are taken out, not the hours you are awake and available. Then you add up your yearly costs: insurance, an accountant, phone and data, your car running costs, any subscriptions, and the super you want to pay yourself. You add the tax you will owe on the income. You divide the whole lot by those realistic billable hours, and the number that falls out is your floor, the rate below which the week does not actually work. Your weekday rate sits above that floor and under the price limit, and your evening, weekend and public holiday rates step up from there.
Do this once, on paper, and a rate stops being a guess you copied from a Facebook group and becomes a number you can defend.
If you are on the other side of this
Rates look different depending on where you stand. If you are a self-managing family engaging a worker directly rather than a worker setting your own price, the same question runs the other way, and our sister guide covers what to pay a support worker you engage. Disclosure: Sparks builds both Sparks Scribe (for workers) and Sparks Flow (for families), and we say so wherever one of our tools is in the picture.
Frequently asked questions
Do I set my own rate as an independent support worker?
Yes. You decide your hourly rate and put it in your service agreement. When the work is claimed against an NDIS plan, the rate has to sit at or under the price limit for that support in the current NDIS Pricing Arrangements and Price Limits, but the number within that ceiling is yours.
What is the maximum I can charge an NDIS participant?
The maximum for any given support is the price limit published for that support item in the current NDIS Pricing Arrangements and Price Limits. Limits vary by support type and by state and are updated at least once a year, so check the current document at ndis.gov.au rather than an old figure.
Should I charge more for evenings, weekends and public holidays?
The price limits are higher for those times, so most workers set a separate rate for each variant rather than one flat number. The key is that each invoice line carries the code and rate that match when the shift was actually worked.
Is my hourly rate the same as what I take home?
No. Tax, insurance, super, admin and unpaid gaps all come out of the rate, and travel and expenses are billed separately where the plan allows. Work a rate back from what you need to earn, not from a number you saw advertised.