Setting your hourly rate: what carers charge and why
James Bowdler
4 September, 2026
2 min read
This is for carers deciding what to charge, whether you are setting a rate for the first time or wondering if your current one still makes sense. It follows four calls to our team about pay: a carer with no benchmark to compare against, one whose own settings were working against her, one negotiating a rate fixed by a council budget, and one weighing up private work against an agency wage.
You set the rate; the commission comes out of what the client pays
On the platform, a carer sets her own hourly rate herself. Nobody else picks it for her. What a client pays and what a carer takes home are not the same figure, because PrimeCarers takes a commission, a percentage of the booking, as its fee for finding the work and handling the payment. For most hourly bookings that commission is 20%, though it drops to around 15% once a single visit runs six hours or more, because a carer can set a separate, usually lower, shift rate for those longer bookings. A lower shift rate, combined with a lower commission, can still leave a carer better off per hour than her ordinary rate on a short visit.
In 2026, self-employed carers working privately typically charge £18 to £25 an hour, against agencies which commonly charge £25 to £35 an hour, though most of that difference covers the agency’s own costs rather than reaching the carer. Our guide to how much a private carer costs per hour sets out that range in full, and our piece on the current state of private carer pay looks at how it has moved over time.
Set a rate too low and it doesn’t cover your costs. Set it too high against similar carers nearby and clients may simply choose someone else, since a carer’s rate is one of the first things a family compares. The calls below show carers on both sides of that line, and one working out what a council-funded rate meant for her.
Setting a rate with nothing to compare it to
A carer who had previously worked as a teacher called to finish setting up her profile before applying for her first jobs. She had never priced her own care work before and had no sense of what to ask for.
I don’t know what the minimum wage is for that. But I don’t know what it should be.
Our team explained that hourly rates on the platform commonly range from £18 to £22, with the platform’s 20% commission taken from whatever figure she set. When she said she would be happy to take home around £13 to £14 an hour, our team suggested a rate of £17, which would leave her with about £13.60 after commission, adding that clients tend to choose carers with lower rates.
Her rate was set at £17 and her profile went live. By the end of the call she had applied for two jobs.
This story is here because it shows what can happen without a benchmark of your own. A carer with no sense of the going rate ended up below the £18 to £25 that private carers typically charge, not because her time was worth less, but because nobody gave her a reason to ask for more. Our piece on why good carers don’t get work looks at what else, beyond the number itself, affects whether a rate turns into bookings.
When your own settings work against you
A carer new to being paid through the platform called about a booking that seemed to be paying less than she expected. Sorting out her account, she had carried over the rate she had set when she joined: an ordinary hourly rate, and a separate shift rate for bookings of six hours or more. Hers had ended up the wrong way round, with her shift rate higher than her hourly one, the opposite of how it is meant to work.
A client had booked her for an eight hour shift, and when she worked the pay out against the hourly rate she believed she was on, around £19, it came up short. Our team logged into her account with her to check, found the mismatch, and talked her through resetting both figures: a higher hourly rate for short visits, and a lower shift rate for six hours or more, so the lower commission on longer bookings would leave her better off overall rather than worse. Our piece on pricing a live-in day works through the same kind of arithmetic for carers pricing a full day rather than an hour.
She saved the new figures for future clients, but chose not to ask her existing client to pay more for the booking already arranged, even though she was now travelling two buses to reach the visit.
It’s not fair when you set up something, then you go back and say no. You understand what I mean?
This story is here because it shows two things at once: how easily an hourly rate and a shift rate can end up working against each other if nobody checks them, and that even once a carer understands the numbers, she may still choose to hold an old rate for an existing client rather than raise it, out of a sense of fairness to someone she had already agreed a price with.
A rate set by a council budget
Many clients pay for their own care privately, but some have their care costs covered by their local council, which shares a fixed budget across many people and can only offer what that budget allows. A carer was offered a role by a client whose care was funded this way, at £16 an hour, lower than she would normally charge, though the client lived close enough that she had no travel costs to cover.
She called to ask whether the platform’s own commission could come down to make the rate work. Our team explained the standard hourly commission is 20%, but offered to reduce it to around 5% for this particular booking, given how little £16 an hour leaves once the usual fee is taken off.
Still reasonable, I guess. Not bad. The hours are really good.
She said she would normally look for around £18 an hour, but agreed the reduced commission made £15.20 workable given the short distance and the regular hours on offer. She also asked whether the platform could send her a yearly summary of what she had been paid, since she needed it for her self-assessment, the tax return self-employed people file each year. Our team was not sure whether that was something they could produce, but said they would look into it and check with a manager about lowering the commission.
We do not know whether the lower commission was confirmed afterwards, or whether the yearly summary was ever produced. What the call does show is that when a client’s own funding sets a fixed limit on what they can pay, the figure that can still move is often the platform’s own commission rather than the headline rate, and that self-employed carers remain responsible for their own tax paperwork even when a booking runs through the platform. Our guides to accessing council funding for home care and paying tax as a self-employed carer go through both in more detail.
Weighing a private rate against an agency wage
A self-employed carer, about to start a nursing course with several evening classes a week, called to update her rate so it included her travel costs, and to ask how to read a vaguely worded overnight job.
Our team helped her fold her travel costs into a single hourly figure: £25 an hour for visits under six hours, and a shift rate of £23 an hour for bookings of six hours or more, where the commission drops from 20% to 15%. She also wanted waking night work, an overnight booking where the carer stays awake through the night rather than sleeping, that would fit around her classes.
Partway through the call she explained why she no longer took agency shifts.
By the end of the day, you’re working for £12 an hour.
Once tax and her own travel costs were accounted for, she said, agency shifts had been leaving her with barely £12 an hour, well under what she could set for herself working privately. Our team updated her rate, she planned to filter the platform’s job search for overnight work nearby, and our team said they would flag her to clients looking for waking night care. Our piece on agency, platform, or on your own looks at this same trade-off in more detail.
This story is here because it puts a number on what setting your own rate actually means. The same hours that left her with about £12 an hour through an agency could be priced, working privately, well inside the £18 to £25 that private carers typically charge.
What to do next
- Check what similar carers nearby are charging before you set your own rate, so you know whether a figure is competitive or simply too low to live on.
- Set your hourly rate and your shift rate for six-hour-plus bookings deliberately, rather than leaving an old default in place; a lower shift rate with a lower commission can still leave you better off.
- If a client’s rate is fixed by council funding, ask our team whether the platform’s own commission can be reduced, rather than assuming the number cannot move at all.
- Keep your own record of what each client pays you across the year; it is what you will need for your self-assessment tax return.
- Review your rate every so often, not only when a new client asks, so you do not stay on a figure set for your very first booking.
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James Bowdler
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