How much does overnight care at home cost in the UK? Prices per night in 2026

These are prices paid, not list prices. Each carer on PrimeCarers sets their own rate for a night, and the figure on their profile is what you pay. A night counts as a visit of six hours or more, where our standard fee is 15% of that price and is already inside it. On a typical sleeping night at £179, the carer keeps £152.15. How our pricing works sets out the fee for every kind of care.

Families often ask for the hourly figure, because that is how daytime care is quoted. A sleeping night works out at about £16 to £19 an hour, against £19.47 an hour for a typical daytime visit, because the carer is paid for one long block with no travel between calls. You still book and pay for the night as a whole, whether it turns out quiet or hard. The hourly cost of care at home covers daytime visits if you are pricing both. The full cost of care guide compares every kind of care side by side.

Three things stop these being like for like. The first is the length of the night: a 10pm to 7am night is nine hours and a 10pm to 8am night is ten, so check the hours before comparing two quotes. The second is what "from" means. A starting price is usually a sleeping night on a weekday for someone with straightforward needs, and a waking night, a bank holiday or complex care will be more. The third is what the price buys. A managed provider employs and supervises its carers and finds cover when one is ill. With an introductory service you choose a self-employed carer and manage the arrangement yourself.

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The closest thing to a neutral yardstick is the Homecare Association's Minimum Price for Homecare. For England in 2026 to 2027 it is £34.42 an hour, as quoted by Which? (page updated 28 October 2026). The Homecare Association, which published it on 19 January 2026, describes it as the least a regulated provider can charge for an hour of visiting care while paying care workers the legal minimum for their working time, travel and mileage, plus employment costs and a minimum contribution to running the business. It excludes any enhancement for unsocial hours.

It is an hourly price for daytime visits, not a night rate, so treat the sum as a guide only: 10 waking hours at £34.42 would be £344.20. It helps explain why the managed providers in the table start at £255 a night or more. The wage underneath it is the National Living Wage, £12.71 an hour for workers aged 21 and over from 1 April 2026 according to GOV.UK, which is £127.10 for 10 hours awake before an employer adds National Insurance, pension, holiday pay, training and its own running costs. A self-employed carer sets their own rate and carries their own costs, which is where most of the gap between the top and bottom of the table comes from.

A typical waking night costs about £10 more than a typical sleeping one, and the busiest waking nights reach £250. The two ranges start close together and part at the top, where a night of turning, toileting and settling every hour is a full shift of work.

It is worth being straight about the get-ups. A carer prices a sleeping night on the assumption that they will be woken once or twice and go back to sleep. If your mother is up five times a night, that carer is not being paid for the night they are doing, and within a fortnight they will either ask to move to a waking night or stop taking the booking. Neither of those is a good outcome for anyone, so it is worth counting properly before you book. Waking night or sleeping night has the rule of thumb, and do night carers sleep explains what the carer is doing in each one.

If a quote says "night sitting" without saying which kind of night, ask. It usually means a waking night, and it is the difference between £160 to £190 and £165 to £250 a night before anyone has added a margin. Ask three questions on every quote: is the carer awake, how many hours is the shift, and is the price per night or per hour. The overnight care guide shows a night of each kind hour by hour, which is the quickest way to work out which one you are being sold.

Two sleeping nights a week is where most families start, and it is usually the cheapest thing that changes anything. It gives a husband or a daughter two full nights of sleep, which is often the difference between an arrangement that holds together and one that collapses into a hospital admission. Pick the two nights that are hardest, not the two that are most convenient.

A fortnight after surgery is the arrangement families rarely plan for and very often need. The first two weeks home from hospital are when falls happen, and waking nights for that fortnight cost £2,310 to £3,500 in total and then stop. It is a fixed, finite cost rather than an open-ended commitment, which makes it much easier to agree on within a family. Short-term night care after hospital covers how to set it up before the discharge date.

Every night is the point at which to compare other ways of buying the same cover. This is one week of someone being there every night, priced each way.

Seven sleeping nights is £1,120 to £1,330 a week and covers only the hours of darkness. Live-in care from £1,050 a week covers the same nights plus every daytime meal, medication round and trip to the bathroom, so once you are past 5 nights a week and have a spare room, price both. A live-in carer sleeps at night, though, so it replaces sleeping nights and not waking ones. Seven nights a week sets the two out night by night, and the cost of live-in care has the weekly figures.

A care home at around £1,300 a week works out at about £186 a day with everything included, which is close to the price of one sleeping night at home. The comparison only becomes real when nights are needed every night, and by then it is as much about where your parent wants to live as about the money. Overnight care or a care home goes through that decision.

The one families worry about most is the first: booking the wrong kind of night. Moving from a sleeping night to a waking night is not a penalty and not a renegotiation. It is a different job at a different price, and a carer who asks for the change after a fortnight is telling you something true about your relative's nights that you may not have known. Take it as information rather than as a bill going up. Often it arrives alongside a suggestion that is worth more than the price difference: a change to when a diuretic is taken, a commode by the bed, a night light on the landing.

There is one more question families raise, and it has a plain answer. Nobody on PrimeCarers charges a premium for short notice, and nobody charges more at a weekend. A Saturday sleeping night costs what a Tuesday sleeping night costs. Bank holidays are the exception, and they are not left to the carer: the standard contract charges a bank holiday at one and a half times the carer's rate, and Christmas Day at double. Those are the nights to plan and budget for early.

The most effective saving is the one families rarely think of as a saving, which is getting the evening right. Sundowning, a late diuretic, caffeine after four o'clock, a room that is too warm, or pain that was not treated at bedtime can each turn a quiet night into five get-ups, and five get-ups is the difference between a sleeping night at £160 to £190 and a waking night at £165 to £250. What is sundowning explains the most common of these, and night care for dementia goes through what settles someone.

Attendance Allowance is the one most families can actually get. The higher rate of £114.60 a week is £5,959.20 a year, according to GOV.UK (checked 12 November 2026), and needing help at night as well as in the day is exactly what moves someone from the lower rate to the higher one. Our Attendance Allowance guide explains how to describe night-time needs on the form.

Council funding follows a needs assessment and a means test. In England, someone with more than £23,250 in savings pays for their own care, and below £14,250 savings are ignored, as Age UK sets out. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own rules. If the council does agree to fund care, you can ask for the money as direct payments and choose the carer yourself. NHS Continuing Healthcare is separate, is not means tested, and is for people whose needs are mainly health needs. Help paying for care has the full list, and how to privately fund care covers the options when none of these applies.