12 NDIS Business Ideas That Actually Work in 2026 (Costs, Margins and Registration)

Every week I speak with someone who wants to start an NDIS business. Usually they have a background in care, a bit of savings and a strong sense that there is opportunity in the scheme. They are right. What they usually do not have is a clear view of which service to offer, what it costs to open the doors, and how crowded that particular corner already is. This article is my attempt to answer that properly.

A quick note on honesty. The NDIS is a moving target. Price limits change every July, the registration model has been under review since the 2023 NDIS Review, and the definition of what counts as an NDIS support tightened in late 2024. Every number below is an indicative range based on what I see Australian providers actually paying and charging. Before you commit money, read the current NDIS Pricing Arrangements and Price Limits document yourself and talk to an accountant who knows the sector.

Two decisions that shape everything else

Before you pick a service, settle these two questions. They matter more than the idea itself.

Registered or unregistered

Participants manage their funding in one of three ways. Self managed and plan managed participants can buy from anyone with an ABN. Agency managed participants can only buy from registered providers. Roughly speaking, agency managed participants are a large minority of the scheme, so staying unregistered closes a real slice of the market but nowhere near all of it.

Some services require registration regardless of how the participant is managed. Plan management, supported independent living, specialist disability accommodation and behaviour support all sit in that group. If your idea is on that list, budget for an audit before you budget for anything else.

One caution. Following the NDIS Review, government has signalled a graduated, risk proportionate registration model where more provider types eventually need some form of enrolment or registration. The detail is still being worked through. If you are building a business on being unregistered, build it so it can pass an audit later.

Are you selling hours or expertise

Hours businesses (support work, cleaning, transport) scale by hiring. Margin per hour is small and fixed by the price guide, so profit only comes from volume and rostering discipline. Expertise businesses (support coordination, allied health, plan management) earn more per hour but are capped by how many qualified people you can recruit and retain. Neither is better. They just fail in different ways.

The twelve ideas

1. Support coordination

You help participants understand their plan, find providers, resolve problems and get ready for their next plan review. Registration is not strictly required for plan managed and self managed participants, though agency managed participants need a registered provider. Startup cost is low, often two to six thousand dollars plus GST for insurance, an ABN, a website, a phone system and a simple CRM. The price limit sits around one hundred dollars an hour for standard coordination and roughly one hundred and ninety for specialist support coordination, so a single coordinator carrying a sensible caseload can build a viable one person business. Demand is steady. Difficulty is moderate and the real barrier is credibility: participants and their families choose coordinators on reputation, not price.

2. Plan management

You handle participant invoices, pay providers, track budgets and send monthly statements. Registration is mandatory. The revenue model is a monthly fee per participant of roughly one hundred dollars plus a one off setup fee a little over two hundred, so the business only works at scale. Two hundred participants is a real business. Twenty is a hobby that eats your evenings. Startup cost is fifteen to forty thousand dollars plus GST once you count audit, professional indemnity cover, accounting software and a plan management platform. Margin is good at volume because software does most of the work. Difficulty is high, mostly because you are competing with national operators who have already spent millions on their platforms.

3. Supported Independent Living (SIL)

You provide rostered support to participants living in a shared or individual home. Registration is required and the audit is a certification audit, not the cheaper verification audit. Startup cost is the highest of the common models: expect twenty five to eighty thousand dollars plus GST before the first participant moves in once you include audit, property, fit out, rostering software, recruitment and the working capital to cover four to eight weeks of wages before NDIS payments land. Revenue per house is large. Margin is thin and unforgiving, because vacancies and unfilled shifts hit the bottom line immediately. Demand is genuine. Difficulty is high and this is not a first business.

4. Community participation and social support

Support workers take participants to activities, community groups, appointments and social outings. Registration is optional if you serve plan and self managed participants. Startup cost is low, often three to eight thousand dollars plus GST including insurance, worker screening, a simple rostering tool and a website. The weekday daytime price limit sits in the high sixties per hour, with higher rates evenings, weekends and public holidays. After award wages, superannuation, workers compensation, leave loading and travel, you are typically looking at ten to twenty per cent before overhead. Demand is high. Difficulty is low to enter and high to sustain, because this is the single most crowded part of the market.

5. Personal care and daily living support

Showering, dressing, medication prompting, meal preparation and overnight support. Same price structure as community participation but with higher skill and risk. Registration is optional for plan and self managed participants, though many families prefer a registered provider for personal care. Startup cost is similar to community participation plus proper training and supervision, so five to twelve thousand dollars plus GST. Margin is comparable. Demand is very high and rising with an ageing participant cohort. Difficulty is moderate. The businesses that win here are the ones with real clinical governance, not the ones with the cheapest workers.

6. Cleaning and gardening

House cleaning, yard maintenance and general home tasks funded under core supports. No registration needed for plan and self managed participants. This is the cheapest entry point in the whole scheme: two to six thousand dollars plus GST covers insurance, equipment, a ute or trailer and a basic website. The price limit sits around fifty dollars an hour, well above domestic market rates, which is exactly why so many operators have piled in. Margin is decent for an owner operator and thin once you employ. Demand is high. Difficulty is low. Be realistic: in most metro suburbs you are the fifteenth cleaner to knock on the same support coordinator's door this month.

7. Transport and driving services

Getting participants to appointments, work, day programmes and social activities. Registration is optional for plan and self managed participants. Startup cost depends entirely on the vehicle. A standard car with commercial insurance and the right passenger transport accreditation for your state might be eight to fifteen thousand dollars plus GST if you already own the vehicle. A wheelchair accessible vehicle pushes that to sixty thousand or more, and second hand modified vans hold their value stubbornly. Margin on standard transport is poor because participant transport budgets are small. Margin on wheelchair accessible transport is much better because supply is genuinely short. Demand is high for accessible vehicles, moderate otherwise. Difficulty is moderate, with state transport regulation being the part most people underestimate.

8. Therapy assistant services

You employ therapy assistants who deliver programmes designed and supervised by an allied health professional. Registration is optional depending on the participant. Price limits for a level two therapy assistant sit in the mid eighties per hour, against wages far below that, so the gross margin is materially better than support work. Startup cost is moderate, perhaps eight to twenty thousand dollars plus GST, because you need a supervising practitioner arrangement, documented delegation practices and proper record keeping. Demand is strong and growing, partly because therapy price limits have been squeezed and practices are pushing more delivery to assistants. Difficulty is moderate to high. Get the supervision model wrong and you have a compliance problem, not just a business problem.

9. Allied health practice

Occupational therapy, speech pathology, physiotherapy, psychology, exercise physiology and dietetics delivered to NDIS participants. Registration is optional for plan and self managed participants but many practices register anyway. You need the qualification, which is the real barrier. Startup cost for a mobile solo practitioner is five to fifteen thousand dollars plus GST. A clinic with rooms and equipment is fifty thousand and up. Hourly price limits are the highest in the scheme, sitting in the high one hundreds to low two hundreds depending on discipline, though the NDIA has reduced several therapy limits and cut what providers can claim for travel time. Demand outstrips supply almost everywhere outside inner metro Melbourne and Sydney. Difficulty is moderate for a solo practitioner and high once you employ, because recruiting experienced therapists is brutal. If you go this route, a proper allied health website with clear referral pathways pays for itself quickly.

10. Assistive technology supply, setup and repair

Supplying and maintaining equipment: mobility aids, communication devices, home modifications hardware, sensory equipment and consumables. Low cost items under about fifteen hundred dollars can usually be purchased without quotes, which is where most new suppliers start. Mid and high cost items involve assessments and quotes and take longer to convert. Registration is required for some higher risk categories, particularly anything involving installation or modification. Startup cost varies wildly, from three thousand dollars plus GST for a niche online supplier to eighty thousand for a workshop with stock. Margin on product resale is typically twenty to forty per cent. The stronger play is service: repairs, maintenance and setup, where you are billing labour and competition is thinner. Demand is solid. Difficulty is moderate, with cash flow tied up in stock being the main trap.

11. Short term accommodation and respite

Participants stay with you for a few days, usually to give a family carer a break. Registration is required. You are billing a day rate that bundles support, accommodation and food, which can run from several hundred to well over a thousand dollars a day depending on support ratio and whether it falls on a weekend or public holiday. Startup cost is high: property, fit out to accessibility standards, certification audit, staffing and insurance easily reach forty to one hundred thousand dollars plus GST. Occupancy is the whole game and it is lumpy, clustering around school holidays. Demand is real and underserved in regional Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia. Difficulty is high.

12. NDIS focused business services

This is the idea people overlook. You do not have to serve participants to serve the sector. Providers need bookkeeping and payroll that understand SCHADS award interpretation, audit preparation and policy documentation, rostering and CRM implementation, staff recruitment, and marketing. No NDIS registration is required because your customer is the provider, not the participant. Startup cost is very low, often under five thousand dollars plus GST. Margin is high because you are selling expertise. Demand is strong and counter cyclical: when the Commission tightens compliance, demand for audit support goes up. Difficulty is moderate and depends entirely on whether you genuinely know the sector. If you have worked in a provider for three years, this is often the fastest path to profit.

Side by side comparison

Which of these are saturated

I will be blunt, because nobody else will be. In metropolitan Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Perth, community participation support work and NDIS cleaning are heavily oversupplied. Anyone with an ABN and a car can start tomorrow, and thousands have. That does not mean you cannot succeed, but it does mean you cannot succeed on price or on being available. You succeed on reliability, on specialising in one cohort, or on being the provider whose calls get returned within an hour.

The less crowded corners, in my experience, are wheelchair accessible transport, therapy assistant services, complex behaviour support, allied health outside inner metro areas, short term accommodation in regional centres, and specialised support for particular cohorts such as culturally and linguistically diverse participants, participants with acquired brain injury, or young people transitioning out of school. Regional Victoria, Tasmania, the Northern Territory and outer suburban growth corridors have real gaps.

The costs nobody mentions

• Public liability insurance of twenty million dollars, plus professional indemnity if you give advice. Budget one thousand to four thousand dollars a year depending on service type.
• NDIS Worker Screening Check for every worker, plus a police check and first aid where relevant.
• Verification audits typically run one to three thousand dollars plus GST. Certification audits for higher risk services commonly run eight to twenty five thousand plus GST across the audit cycle.
• Policies and procedures that satisfy the NDIS Practice Standards. Templates cost five hundred to three thousand dollars. Having them written properly costs more and saves more.
• Working capital. Payment terms mean you can be four to eight weeks out of pocket on wages. This is the single most common reason new providers fail.
• Marketing. A website, Google Business Profile, and a referral pipeline. Expect three to eight thousand dollars plus GST to launch properly, and something ongoing after that.

Getting your first ten participants

Here is what actually generates referrals in this sector, roughly in order of value. Support coordinators and local area coordinators, who send work to providers they trust and can reach. Existing participants and families, through word of mouth. Google search, where people type things like NDIS cleaning Werribee or occupational therapist NDIS Geelong and pick from the first three results. Directory listings such as the NDIS Provider Finder if you are registered, plus Clickability and MyCareSpace. Local community organisations, disability groups and schools.

Notice what is not on that list. Facebook ads to the general public rarely work for participant acquisition. Cold calling coordinators without a clear service description annoys them. Flyers do very little.

The practical version is this: build a website that states clearly what you do, where you do it, which management types you accept, and how to make a referral in under a minute. Then make sure that site ranks for suburb plus service searches through NDIS SEO, and that your Google Business Profile is complete. After that, meet fifteen support coordinators in your area and give each one a single page describing your capacity and response time. That combination, done properly, fills a new provider's books faster than anything else I have seen. If you want help with the digital side, our NDIS website development and NDIS marketing pages set out what that involves and what it costs.

A realistic first ninety days

Frequently Asked Questions