Aged care services in Queensland

Who are the top 10 aged care providers in Australia?

The ranked list above names the top 10, ordered by the methodology explained beside it: registration status, measured response times, service range and suburb coverage from Carevo platform records. Every provider on the list must be approved under the Aged Care Act 2024, in force since 1 November 2025, and you can cross-check each one on My Aged Care’s Find a Provider tool (Department of Health and Aged Care, 2025).

Four checks before you sign with a ranked provider

The rankings above give you a shortlist. These checks narrow it to one, and they go past the general selection criteria covered lower on this page.

Registration category. Providers register with the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission in six categories, from home and community services through to residential care. Personal care at home is category 4 and nursing is category 5, so match a provider’s categories to the services you want and confirm them on the Commission’s public register (Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission, 2025).

Pricing transparency. Support at Home has no basic daily fee. You pay service-based contributions instead: nothing for clinical care, 5 to 50 per cent for independence services and 17.5 to 80 per cent for everyday living, depending on your means (Department of Health and Aged Care, 2025). A good provider puts its price list in writing before you sign.

Response time. Slow communication before you sign rarely improves afterwards. Across Carevo, 70 per cent of inquiries get a provider response within an hour. Hold any shortlisted provider to that benchmark.

Coverage. Ask whether the provider staffs your suburb, not just your city. With 468 aged care providers actively responding on the platform, you can insist on a regular worker rather than a rotating roster.

Who is the largest aged care provider in Australia?

It depends on the measure. Residential groups are ranked by operational places, home care providers by client numbers, and no single operator holds more than a small share of either market (Department of Health and Aged Care sector reporting, 2025). The sector is mid-reform: Support at Home replaced Home Care Packages on 1 November 2025 with eight funding classifications, and the Single Assessment System has handled entry assessments since December 2024 (Department of Health and Aged Care, 2025). Carevo lists 2,619 aged care providers nationally; size alone predicts neither responsiveness nor quality.

What is the difference between home care and residential aged care?

Home care brings support to you; residential aged care moves you into a facility with 24-hour staffing. At home, Support at Home funds personal care, nursing, domestic help and allied health against a classification budget of up to $78,106 a year (Department of Health and Aged Care, 2025). In residential care, government funding flows through AN-ACC and residents pay a basic daily fee of $66.80 a day from 20 March 2026, plus means-tested contributions (Department of Health and Aged Care, 2026). Most people start at home and move only when overnight safety or clinical need makes home support impractical.

Who is eligible for government-funded aged care?

You generally need to be 65 or older, or 50 or older for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and need help to keep living at home (My Aged Care, 2025). Register with My Aged Care, then a Single Assessment System assessor (the system replaced ACAT and RAS in December 2024) works out whether you get CHSP entry-level support or a Support at Home classification (Department of Health and Aged Care, 2024). Existing Home Care Package recipients moved to Support at Home automatically on 1 November 2025. Without an assessment you can still buy services privately.

Which aged care providers are not-for-profit and which are privately owned?

More than half of Australia’s residential aged care homes are run by not-for-profit church, charity and community organisations, about a third by private companies, and the small remainder by state and local governments (AIHW GEN Aged Care Data, 2024). Every provider’s ownership type is disclosed on its My Aged Care profile. Ownership does not decide quality, so judge shortlisted providers on star ratings, compliance history and pricing instead.

Questions to ask a provider before signing a service agreement

1. Which registration categories do you hold? A good answer matches the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission’s provider register and covers every service in your agreement.
2. Can I have your full price list in writing? A good answer is an itemised rate for each service before you sign.
3. What will my contribution be per visit? A good answer is a worked dollar example for your classification and means, with clinical care at no contribution.
4. If touring a residential home, how do you track care minutes? A good answer matches the staffing data on the home’s My Aged Care profile and the sector targets of 215 care minutes per resident per day, including 44 registered nurse minutes, in place since 1 October 2024 (Department of Health and Aged Care, 2024).
5. Have you had any regulatory action in the past three years? A good answer is consistent with the Commission’s published non-compliance decisions.
6. How will you report on my budget? A good answer is a monthly statement showing spending against your quarterly Support at Home budget.
7. Who covers shifts when my regular worker is away? A good answer is a named backup process, not “whoever is free”.

Where providers are available

Aged care providers on Carevo cover 1,797 suburbs nationally, with the deepest supply in NSW. The city pages for Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth list local providers, and the suburb directory below covers smaller areas. The most listed services are personal care, domestic assistance and allied health. If living at home stops being workable, residential aged care is the next step and the same comparison checks apply.

The two government-funded home care pathways

Most people funding care at home use one of two programs, and knowing which you qualify for saves weeks. The Commonwealth Home Support Programme (CHSP) covers entry-level, occasional supports for lower needs, such as cleaning, meals, or transport. Support at Home, which replaced Home Care Packages for new entrants on 1 November 2025, funds coordinated ongoing care through an individual budget set across eight classification levels. Eligibility for both is confirmed through a Single Assessment System assessment booked via My Aged Care, and you can start with CHSP and move to Support at Home as your needs grow.

How this page is compiled

The provider rankings and figures on this page come from Carevo platform records, including provider registrations, measured response times and coverage, together with the cited official sources. Carevo is an Australian platform that connects families with vetted NDIS and aged care providers. Carevo does not deliver care itself.