6 Best Live-in Care Providers + Price Comparison

When it comes to live-in care, you have two choices to Introductory Services and CQC Registered Agencies. Which you choose depends on a variety of factors that we discuss in more detail here.

This list represents our breakdown of the

PrimeCarers – Best Value

Introductory Service – From £910/week

https://primecarers.co.uk

Here at PrimeCarers, we’re an introductory service founded with two goals.

1. Remove the barrier to entry for Private Carers
2. Ensure carers are paid fairly

We make the process of finding a carer as simple as possible.

We start by vetting all the carers on our platform, ensuring they have a recent enhanced DBS, ID Checks, Right to Work Self-Employed in the UK and References.

When matching you with a carer, our algorithm uses 80+ possible matching criteria to find the best fit for your needs.

Pricing – 12.5%

At PrimeCarers, carers set their own prices, and we charge them a fee of 12.5% (inc VAT) on top of that. This makes our fees the lowest across both agencies and introductory services.

This becomes clear when we look at how much clients pay for their care. The average price paid for a week of live-in care in the last 12 months to October 2023 was £1,044/week. The lowest a carer worked for was

Elder

Introductory Service From £1,195/week

https://www.elder.org/

Elder is an introductory service founded in December 2015 with a focus on live-in care. They’ve received almost $40mil in investment over that time. They are by far the biggest introductory service live-in care provider.

Pricing – 26-40%

Elder offers a flat banded fee structure with prices from £1,195 per week. As to how much of that money makes it to carers, their website states that carers can earn between £720 to £875 a week.

This makes elders fee at least 26% and possibly as high as 40%.

CuramCare – Average £1,144/week

Introductory Service – From £1,144/week

https://www.curamcare.com/

Curam Care is another introductory service like PrimeCarers, which has a broader range of offerings beyond live-in care. They are another well-funded startup in the care space with approximately £10mil in funding since their inception in 2017.

Pricing – 24.1%

Like PrimeCarers, Curam allows carers to set their own rates. They say that prices start at £770/week, but the average price people pay for live-in care is £1,144 per week (when funding privately).

Curam always charges carers a 15% fee (including VAT), but they also charge a client fee of an additional 12% (including VAT). That brings the total fee that a client pays to 24.1%.

Helping Hands HomeCare – From £1,599/week

CQC Registered Agency – £1,599/week

https://www.helpinghandshomecare.co.uk/

Helping Hands is the first of the CQC-registered agencies on our list today. They don’t franchise out to small branches and instead run as one whole business.

Pricing – 45%

Helping Hands states on their live-in care page that prices for an individual start at £1,599/week, while couples will start at £1,839/week.

According to Helping Hands, Carers are employed by them at £730/week. Of course as employees, helping hands carers do get additional benefits like employer pension contributions, paid holidays, travel expenses and training. They say that those benefits are worth at least another additional £87/week.

This puts their total fee, generously speaking, at around 45%.

MyHomeTouch – Best for the Undecided

Introductory Service / CQC Registered Agency – £1,250/week

https://myhometouch.com/

MyHomeTouch is an exciting provider of live-in care. They have two offerings: an introductory service offering and a CQC Regulated Care Offering. MyHomeTouch was founded by a doctor from the NHS in 2011 and has evolved over the years from a pure introductory service into a hybrid regulated service.

Pricing – 32%

Their introductory service starts at £1,250/week, and regulated care starts from £1,500/week.

They advertise carer rates as between £700 to £840 per week.

This gives them a fee of at least 32%.

Edyn Care

CQC Regulated Agency – From £1,100/week

https://www.edyn.care/

Edyn is a CQC Regulated organisation that can offer a really competitive starting price for live-in care. If you’re set on hiring from a CQC-registered organisation, then Edyn might be your best value choice.

Pricing

Edyn charges for live-in care based on different bands:

• Tier 1 – £1,100/week
• Tier 2 – £1,245/week
• Tier 3 – £1,500/week

As for what they charge carers, their advertised rates are £645-845/week, giving them a fee percentage somewhere between 23% and 41%.

Conclusion

In this graph, we have plotted the price clients pay against the amount of money that the carer receives to highlight which live-in care provider is providing the best value.

PLEASE NOTE: PrimeCarers and CuramCare prices are averages, meaning some clients will be paying less than this. As you can see in the above PrimeCarers price breakdown.

We hope this article has been useful for weighing up your options with live-in care.