NDIS Pricing Schedule 2026-27 vs Your SCHADS Cost Base: The October Squeeze

Commentary published around the July increase — including an earlier version of our own SCHADS Award increase guide — stated that NDIS price limits did not rise on 1 July 2026 and that the 2025-26 Pricing Arrangements and Price Limits would continue until the next scheduled review. That is not what happened.

The NDIA published the NDIS Pricing Schedule 2026-27, effective 1 July 2026, following the Annual Pricing Review and the Fair Work Commission's Annual Wage Review decision. It also replaced the document previously known as the NDIS Pricing Arrangements and Price Limits. We have corrected that guide, and this article supersedes the earlier analysis. If you built a July margin model on the assumption that funded prices were frozen, it is worth rebuilding.

National price limits for standard Disability Support Worker supports, from the 2026-27 Pricing Schedule:

• Weekday daytime (01_011_0107_1_1, Assistance With Self-Care Activities – Standard) — $73.58/hr
• Weekday evening — $81.07/hr
• Weekday night — $82.57/hr
• Saturday — $103.54/hr
• Sunday — $133.50/hr
• Public holiday — $163.46/hr
• Night-time sleepover (01_010_0107_1_1) — $311.79 each

High intensity supports (Disability Support Worker Level 2) run higher: $79.60 weekday daytime, $112.01 Saturday, $144.42 Sunday, $176.84 public holiday.

Remote and very remote loadings are substantial — the weekday daytime standard rate becomes $103.01 remote and $110.37 very remote.

Support Coordination is unchanged again: Level 2 Coordination of Supports at $100.14/hr and Level 3 Specialist Support Coordination at $190.54/hr. These have now held for several consecutive years while wage costs have risen every one of them, which is why coordination is the thinnest service line in most providers' books.

One structural change to catch in your item mapping: Supported Independent Living items now carry a 0138 prefix in place of the previous 0115 items, alongside a new SIL registration group. SIL weekday daytime standard is 01_801_0138_1_1 at $73.58/hr, and SIL sleepover is 01_832_0138_1_1 at $311.79.

The 2025-26 price limit for the standard weekday daytime support item was $70.23/hr. At $73.58 for 2026-27, that is an increase of about 4.8% — slightly ahead of the SCHADS Annual Wage Review increase of 4.75% from the first full pay period on or after 1 July 2026.

(We have verified the $73.58 figure directly against the 2026-27 Pricing Schedule. The $70.23 comparison figure is from published 2025-26 price guide sources rather than the primary document, so treat the exact percentage as approximate — the direction and rough magnitude are what matter.)

You will also see a "3.95%" figure quoted for the 2026-27 uplift in sector commentary. It does not reconcile with $70.23 to $73.58. Some of that commentary additionally attributes part of the increase to superannuation guarantee rising "from 11.5% to 12%" — that is wrong for this period. The SG rate reached 12% on 1 July 2025 and did not change on 1 July 2026. What changed on 1 July 2026 was Payday Super, which alters payment frequency, not the rate.

So the honest July verdict: for core support worker hours, funded price and award cost moved together within a fraction of a percent. That is not a squeeze. The squeeze is three months later.

Following the Fair Work Commission's gender-undervaluation decision handed down on 1 June 2026, Schedule E employees under the SCHADS Award — disability home care — receive an interim increase of around 15% from the first full pay period on or after 1 October 2026. Two classifications sit slightly below that headline: approximately 14.96% for Level E.4.2 and 13.31% for Level E.5.2. The full Final Classification Structure follows from 1 October 2027.

Nothing in the 2026-27 Pricing Schedule moves to meet it. The Schedule was published in July, effective for the full financial year.

And 1 October 2026 is also the day the community participation budget reset begins. For a provider with Schedule E workers delivering community access supports, both sides of the ledger move against them on the same date: wage cost up around 15%, participant budgets progressively resetting downward.

This is the number to model. Not July.

The gap between a price limit and a wage rate is not your margin, and providers who treat it that way are the ones that get surprised. Between $73.58 and the base hourly rate sits:

• Superannuation at 12%, now payable within 7 business days of each payday under Payday Super rather than quarterly — a cash flow change, not just an admin one
• Leave loading, annual leave and personal leave accrual
• Penalty rates where the shift is not weekday daytime, which the price limit already reflects but your rostering may not optimise against
• Broken shift allowances, which community access work generates constantly
• Travel time and kilometre allowances between participants
• Minimum engagement periods — you pay the SCHADS minimum whether or not you can claim it
• Sleepover mechanics — the $311.79 sleepover item has to cover the SCHADS sleepover allowance plus any hours actually worked during the sleepover at the applicable rate
• Non-billable time — supervision, training, handover, progress notes

The last three are where most providers' models are wrong. A sleepover where the worker is woken twice, or a broken shift where the allowance was never applied, does not show up in a spreadsheet built on base rates.

1. Identify which of your workers are Schedule E. If you have not mapped this precisely, do it now — a 15% increase applied to the wrong population, in either direction, is expensive.
2. Remap your SIL support items to the 0138 prefix and confirm your claiming system is using current item numbers.
3. Rebuild your cost-per-funded-hour model with the actual 2026-27 price limits above, not last year's, and with the October wage step included.
4. Re-examine support coordination. At $100.14 and $190.54 held flat against another year of wage increases, check whether these lines still cover their delivery cost.
5. Audit sleepovers and broken shifts specifically. These are the two calculations most often done by hand, and both are where the funded item and the award obligation diverge most.
6. Review your service agreements. The Pricing Schedule is explicit that providers must discuss proposed changes to existing service agreements with participants, and participants must agree to the changes. A price limit increase is not a unilateral licence to re-rate an existing agreement.

The 2026-27 Pricing Schedule notes that the Securing the NDIS for Future Generations Bill proposes to give the Minister for the NDIS a power to make a pricing determination setting maximum prices for NDIS supports, with the NDIA formally tasked with providing advice for that purpose. The Bill passed Parliament on 19 August 2026.

If that power is exercised, price setting moves from an NDIA publication toward a ministerial instrument, and the NDIA's views become advice into that process rather than the determination itself. It also means indexation can be applied to new framework plans when a pricing determination is made, with new framework planning starting 1 April 2027.

Practically: do not assume the annual publication cycle you have planned around will hold from 2027-28 onward.