NDIS therapy & allied health rates 2025-26

If you fund therapy through your NDIS plan, two things changed in 2025–26 that directly affect how far your budget stretches: therapy now has a single national price limit (the old state-by-state differences are gone), and therapists can only bill travel at half their hourly rate. This guide sets out the current rates and what those two changes mean for you.

As with all NDIS pricing, these are maximum price limits — a provider can charge less. They are the 2025–26 NDIS Pricing Arrangements and Price Limits, with the national therapy rates in force since 1 July 2025.

NDIS therapy rates 2025-26 (national, per hour)

National price limits, 2025–26 PAPL. The same limit now applies in every state and territory. Dietetics and podiatry also moved to single national limits on 1 July 2025, each with a small reduction from the previous rates; behaviour support and art/music therapy are priced separately (see below). Confirm any specific figure in the NDIS Support Catalogue — see "How to verify".

These limits cover the therapist's time whether they are with you in person, working with you by telehealth, or doing agreed non-face-to-face work such as writing the report from an assessment or designing a home program. They do not change with the therapist's seniority — a new graduate and a 20-year specialist have the same maximum.

The national pricing change — what it means for you

Until mid-2025, the NDIS set different therapy price limits in different states. From 1 July 2025 the NDIA replaced those with a single national limit for physiotherapy, psychology, dietetics and podiatry, after a review of what these services actually cost to deliver. The headline effects:

• Physiotherapy dropped to $183.99 — about a $10 reduction on the old east-coast limit, and a larger cut (around 18%) in states that previously had higher limits.
• Psychology went the other way, with an increase to a national $232.99.
• Dietetics and podiatry each saw a small reduction to their new national limit.
• Occupational therapy and speech pathology held at $193.99.

For participants this is mostly good news for budgeting: the limit no longer depends on where you live, and a lower physiotherapy limit means each funded hour of physio costs less, so the same Capacity Building budget buys more sessions. The flip side is that some therapists who were charging at the old higher limit have had to drop their price — if your therapist's invoice changed in 2025, this is usually why.

Travel at 50% — the rule that quietly reshaped therapy budgets

The change that catches people out is travel. Since 1 July 2025, therapists can claim travel time at only 50% of their hourly rate, not the full rate. So a physiotherapist on $183.99 an hour can claim up to $92.00 an hour for travel, up to the time cap for their location (generally 30 minutes each way in metro and regional areas).

This rule applies to therapy and other allied-health travel. It does not apply to disability support workers, whose travel is handled differently (see the support worker rates guide).

What a therapy hour actually includes

The hourly limit buys the therapist's professional time — and that time comes in three forms, all charged at the same rate:

• Face-to-face sessions, in a clinic or at your home.
• Telehealth — phone or video sessions are billed at the same hourly limit, and carry no travel cost, which makes them a budget-smart choice for routine follow-ups.
• Non-face-to-face work — writing up an assessment, designing a home exercise or communication program, or liaising with your GP, school or support coordinator. This is legitimate and often necessary, but it should be agreed in your service agreement so it is never a surprise on the invoice.

Two things are worth asking about up front. Assessments and reports — an occupational therapy functional capacity assessment, or an assistive technology assessment — are billed at the same hourly rate but can run to several hours, so ask for an estimate before you commit. And group or shared sessions cost less per person: when a therapist works with two or three participants together (common in exercise physiology or speech), the per-participant rate is a fraction of the one-to-one limit, which can stretch a Capacity Building budget a long way.

Behaviour support, and the other allied-health supports

A few supports sit outside the main therapy table:

• Behaviour support practitioners are funded at a higher specialist rate (in the region of $234 an hour for the standard practitioner level), and must be registered with the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission where restrictive practices are involved. Confirm the exact figure for the practitioner level in the Support Catalogue.
• Art therapy and music therapy gained a new national price limit (around $156 an hour) in the 24 November 2025 update to the 2025-26 pricing.
• Exercise physiology ($166.99) and dietetics are funded as therapy supports too, and the travel and telehealth rules above apply to them in the same way.

Because some of these figures shift between pricing updates, treat the headline therapy rates above as the reliable ones and check any niche support against the catalogue before you build it into a service agreement.

How therapy fits your plan budget

Therapy is funded from your Capacity Building budget — usually the "Improved Daily Living" category. Unlike Core, Capacity Building funding is generally locked to the category it was allocated to, so a therapy budget can only be spent on therapy-type supports, not moved to support-worker hours. That makes the per-hour rate matter even more: at $193.99 an hour, a $4,000 Improved Daily Living budget buys about 20 hours of occupational therapy across the year, so it is worth agreeing up front with your therapist how those hours are split between sessions, assessments and report writing.

To plan it out:

• Look up any therapy or allied-health support in the price guide tool to confirm the current limit.
• Model your plan with the budget calculator.
• Find and compare therapy and allied-health providers — physios, OTs, speech pathologists, psychologists and more — on ProviderScout.

How to verify this information

Therapy price limits are reviewed at least annually and changed nationally in 2025-26, so confirm any figure against the source:

• The NDIS Pricing Arrangements and Price Limits on ndis.gov.au is the official document; the current version took effect 24 November 2025.
• Download the NDIS Support Catalogue from the same page for the exact limit and line-item code of any specific therapy or allied-health support.
• The NDIA's travel-claiming changes are explained in its travel claiming rules notice.

ProviderScout is an independent directory and is not affiliated with the NDIA. The NDIA's published pricing documents are always the authority; we publish these rates to help participants plan and read invoices.