Caring for an ageing parent in Singapore costs anywhere from a few hundred dollars a month to well over $4,000, and the gap is mostly about which option you pick and how much subsidy you qualify for. Before subsidy, a nursing home starts from about $3,900 a month, a day care place runs roughly $400 to $2,800, and hiring a migrant domestic worker lands around $1,300 to $1,800 a month all-in. After means-tested MOH subsidies, Singapore Citizens can knock 50% to 80% off the care fees, and from April 2026 the Home Caregiving Grant pays up to $600 a month in cash if your parent needs help with at least three daily activities. This guide walks through every option, what each one really costs in 2026, the subsidies and grants that lower the bill, and how to think about the money so you do not get blindsided.
There are four broad ways to care for an older person in Singapore: keep them at home with family or a hired helper, send them to a day care centre while you work, bring in professional home care visits, or move them into a nursing home. Most families end up mixing two or three of these as needs change.
The numbers below are 2026 figures before any subsidy. The actual amount you pay depends on your household income, your parent's citizenship, and how much help they need with daily tasks. Singapore Citizens get the deepest subsidies, Permanent Residents get roughly two-thirds as much, and foreigners get none.
| Option | Typical monthly cost (before subsidy) | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Migrant domestic worker (live-in helper) | $1,300 to $1,800 all-in | Someone who needs supervision and help at home but family is out at work |
| Day care / senior care centre | $400 to $2,800 | Someone who can be home in the evening but needs activities and care by day |
| Home care visits (nursing, therapy, personal care) | $23 to $30+ per hour, or per visit | Specific needs like wound care, physiotherapy or bathing help |
| Nursing home (residential) | From about $3,900 | Someone who needs round-the-clock care and cannot stay safely at home |
Cost is only half the decision. The right option depends on whether your parent can be left alone, whether they sleep better at home, and how much hands-on nursing they need. The matrix below lines the four main routes up against the questions families actually ask, so you can rule options in or out before you start pricing them.
| Option | Overnight care | Subsidy depth (citizen) | Top scheme to claim | Suits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Live-in helper | Yes, at home | Levy concession plus Home Caregiving Grant cash | Home Caregiving Grant | Needs all-day supervision, family out at work |
| Day care / senior care centre | No, home in the evening | Up to 80% off fees | Non-residential subsidy | Stable enough to be home overnight, needs daytime care |
| Home care visits | No, scheduled visits | Up to 80% off via funded providers | Non-residential subsidy | Specific needs like wound care or therapy, otherwise independent |
| Nursing home | Yes, residential | Up to 75% off fees | Residential subsidy | Round-the-clock nursing, unsafe at home |
Hiring a live-in helper is the most common route for families who want a parent to stay at home but cannot be there during the day. The all-in monthly cost has a few moving parts: the helper's salary, the government levy, food and lodging, insurance, and medical costs.
Salaries vary by nationality and experience, but expect roughly $600 to $850 a month for the helper's basic pay, and more for someone experienced in elder or dementia care. On top of that you pay the Foreign Domestic Worker levy. The standard rate is $300 a month, but if you are hiring the helper to care for an elderly person, you almost always qualify for the levy concession of $60 a month instead.
The concession is the single biggest saving here and it applies automatically in two common cases: if you or your spouse is at least 67 years old, or if the person being cared for has a recognised disability under the Migrant Domestic Worker Levy Concession scheme. Care for a parent with dementia or a long-term disability falls under this. Apply through the Agency for Integrated Care if it does not kick in automatically.
Add food, utilities, medical insurance (mandatory), and the security bond, and a realistic all-in monthly figure is around $1,300 to $1,800. Upfront costs like the agency fee, work permit, medical exam and airfare add a one-time $1,500 to $3,000 when you first hire.
A senior care centre or day care centre is the daytime option: your parent is picked up in the morning, spends the day in a supervised setting with meals, activities, light health monitoring and often physiotherapy, then comes home in the evening. It is far cheaper than a nursing home and lets your parent sleep in their own bed, which matters for people with dementia who get disoriented by new surroundings.
Before subsidy, fees span a wide range. General senior care centres run from around $400 a month at the low end up to about $2,200 for private operators. Dementia-specialist centres are pricier, roughly $1,000 to $2,800 a month, because of the higher staff ratio and trained carers. Transport within a standard radius is usually included; an extended pickup radius can add $50 to $200 a month.
This is where MOH subsidies bite hardest, because non-residential care gets the most generous rates. A Singapore Citizen household with monthly per capita income of $900 or less gets up to 80% off the fee. The subsidy tapers as income rises and cuts off above $3,600 per capita. So a $1,500-a-month centre could cost a lower-income family as little as $300.
To get subsidised, you go through means-testing run by the Agency for Integrated Care, which works out your household's monthly per capita household income. You typically need a referral or assessment, and the centre must be on the government's funded list.
| Per capita household income | Singapore Citizen subsidy | PR subsidy |
|---|---|---|
| $900 and below | Up to 80% | Up to 55% |
| $901 to $1,500 | 75% | 50% |
| $1,501 to $2,300 | 60% | 40% |
| $2,301 to $2,600 | 50% | 30% |
| $2,601 to $3,600 | 30% | 15% |
| Above $3,600 | 0% | 0% |
If your parent mostly manages at home but needs specific help, you can buy home care by the hour or visit instead of paying for a full-time helper or a residential bed. This covers home nursing (wound dressing, injections, catheter and feeding-tube care), home therapy (physiotherapy, occupational therapy), home personal care (bathing, grooming, mobility help), home medical visits by a doctor, and medical escort to appointments.
Private providers like Homage and similar agencies charge roughly $23 to $30 an hour for personal care and trained caregivers, and around $26 to $30+ an hour for licensed nurses, with medical escort trips running about $60 to $90 per round trip plus an hourly service charge. Ad-hoc bookings cost more per hour than recurring weekly packages.
Government-funded home care through AIC-linked providers is subsidised on the same non-residential scale shown above, so a lower-income citizen can have most of the cost covered. Private on-demand services are faster to arrange but not always subsidised, so check the provider's funding status before you commit.
One service families forget is Meals on Wheels, the AIC meal-delivery programme for home-bound seniors who cannot shop or cook and have no carer to do it. Lunch and dinner arrive seven days a week, including public holidays, from about $4 a meal before subsidy, and the fee is means-tested down for citizens and PRs. For a parent living alone, two delivered meals a day can be the difference between staying at home and moving into care.
Home care suits families who want to top up rather than replace. A common setup is a helper at home for daily supervision plus a weekly home-nursing visit for a wound or a fortnightly physiotherapy session, which keeps the total well below a nursing-home bill.
A nursing home is full residential care for someone who cannot stay safely at home, usually because they need round-the-clock nursing, have advanced dementia, or have no one to supervise them. The Agency for Integrated Care puts the basic cost from about $3,900 a month before subsidy, and it climbs with the level of nursing required and the type of room.
Residential care gets a slightly lower top subsidy than home and day care, but it is still substantial. A Singapore Citizen household earning $900 or less per capita gets up to 75% off; the rate steps down by income band and ends at $3,600 per capita. A $4,000-a-month bill can come down to roughly $1,000 to $2,400 a month for many households after subsidy. PRs get up to 50%.
If nobody in the household earns an income, for example a retiree couple, means-testing uses the Annual Value of the home instead. Homes with an Annual Value of $21,000 or below qualify for subsidy; above that, none. You can check your home's Annual Value for free on the IRAS website, and it is worth understanding because the same figure decides several other schemes.
The subsidy table below reflects the rates in effect up to June 2026. From July 2026 MOH is enhancing long-term care subsidies: the per capita household income ceiling rises from $3,600 to $4,800, the top residential subsidy rises to 80% and the top home and community care subsidy rises to 95%, with extra subsidy for Singapore Citizens born in 1969 or earlier. One-off rebates also ran for MOH-subsidised clients from July 2025 to June 2026. So the effective bill should fall further once the new rates land. Confirm the current rate with AIC before you sign, since the numbers move (MOH, Subsidies for Residential Long-Term Care Services).
| Per capita household income | Singapore Citizen subsidy | PR subsidy |
|---|---|---|
| $900 and below | Up to 75% | Up to 50% |
| $901 to $1,500 | 60% | 40% |
| $1,501 to $2,300 | 50% | 30% |
| $2,301 to $2,600 | 40% | 20% |
| $2,601 to $3,600 | 20% | 10% |
| Above $3,600 | 0% | 0% |
Full-time caregiving wears people down, and respite care exists to give the carer a planned break without leaving the parent unattended. It is short-term by design: a few days while you travel, a stretch while your helper is on home leave, or regular daytime hours so you can keep working. Three formats cover most situations.
Nursing home respite is an overnight stay at a participating home for seven to thirty days a year. The Agency for Integrated Care puts daily room and board from about $131 for an open ward before subsidy, on top of administration fees, consumables and a refundable deposit. Means-tested subsidies of up to 75% apply for Singapore Citizens, the same residential scale as a permanent nursing-home bed. You need a referral and should apply about four weeks ahead, because the home has to assess your parent first.
Day respite runs through senior care centres: your parent joins the usual daytime programme of meals, activities and light health monitoring, and you collect them in the evening. It is charged on the non-residential subsidy scale, so a lower-income citizen pays a fraction of the sticker fee. This is the cheapest way to buy yourself a regular weekday off.
Home-based respite sends a trained carer to your home so you can leave for a few hours. From 1 April 2026 this is folding into the Enhanced Home Personal Care service rather than running as a separate scheme, so book it as home personal care and ask the provider how respite hours are funded. If your parent has palliative needs, home palliative providers also offer short relief stays.
Care is not only a monthly fee. The first time a parent loses mobility, the bills are mostly one-offs: a wheelchair, a hospital bed, a commode, a pressure-relief mattress, grab bars and a ramp at home, plus a running tab of consumables like adult diapers, milk feeds and wound dressings. These add up fast and catch families out because they land all at once.
The Seniors' Mobility and Enabling Fund is the scheme that defrays them. It subsidises approved mobility and assistive devices, home healthcare items and consumables for Singapore Citizens and PRs aged 60 and above, up to 90% of the device cost or a per-item cap, whichever is lower. It is means-tested on the same monthly per capita household income, with an income ceiling of $4,800, or an Annual Value of $21,000 if there is no household income. Your parent cannot be living in a nursing home to claim it, and a healthcare professional has to assess the need first.
Replacement devices come with blackout periods, so plan around them: roughly two years for spectacles and commodes, three years for wheelchairs and walking aids, four years for hospital beds and hearing aids. Buying a device early at full price and then finding it qualified for 90% off is a common and avoidable mistake. Get the assessment done before you pay.
Home modification is the other big one-off. Grab bars, anti-slip flooring, a ramp or a wheelchair-accessible bathroom keep a parent at home and out of a far pricier nursing bed, and HDB's Enhanced for Active Seniors programme subsidises basic elderly-friendly fittings for eligible flats. Treat all of this as a capital line in your plan, separate from the monthly care fee.
MOH subsidies lower the sticker price of care services, but several other schemes put cash in your hand or pay out monthly. Stacking these is how families make the maths work.
The Home Caregiving Grant is the one most families miss. It is a monthly cash payout for caring for someone at home who permanently needs help with at least three of six activities of daily living: feeding, dressing, toileting, washing, walking or moving around, and transferring from bed to chair. From April 2026 the top tier rises to $600 a month, up from $400. Households with per capita income up to $1,500 get $600, the $1,501 to $3,600 band gets $400, and the $3,601 to $4,800 band gets $200. The income ceiling itself rose to $4,800, so more middle-income families now qualify. The care recipient must be a Singapore Citizen or a PR with an immediate-family citizen, and not living in a residential institution. You apply through the Agency for Integrated Care after a functional assessment.
CareShield Life is the national long-term care insurance scheme. If your parent becomes severely disabled, meaning unable to do at least three of the six daily activities, it pays a monthly cash payout for life. For someone claiming in 2026, the payout is about $689 a month, and from 2026 to 2030 payouts grow 4% a year. It is compulsory for citizens and PRs born in 1980 or later, and optional for older cohorts who can join. From January 2026 premium subsidies were widened: the income ceiling rose to $4,800 per capita and lower-income members get up to 50% off premiums.
ElderShield is the older scheme CareShield Life replaced. Anyone who stayed on ElderShield still gets its payout (commonly $300 or $400 a month for up to 60 or 72 months) if severely disabled. ElderFund is the safety net below both: up to $250 a month for lower-income citizens aged 30 and up who are severely disabled but cannot benefit from CareShield Life or ElderShield and have low savings.
Two more worth knowing: the Pioneer Generation Disability Assistance Scheme pays Pioneers needing daily-living help $100 a month for life, on top of Pioneer and Merdeka Generation healthcare subsidies. And MediSave can be tapped for some care costs, while a CHAS card cuts GP and dental bills along the way.
Almost every subsidy above runs on the same test: monthly per capita household income, which is your total gross household income divided by the number of people living in the home. A household of four earning $7,200 a month is at $1,800 per person, which sits in the middle subsidy bands. Add an earner or take a pay cut and the figure shifts, which can move you a tier at the next review.
Gross income means before CPF and tax come out, so use the salary figure on the payslip, not take-home pay. If nobody in the household earns income, the test switches to the Annual Value of the home, which is IRAS's estimate of the yearly rent your place could fetch, not its market price. Lower Annual Value means more subsidy.
You do not run this calculation yourself. The Agency for Integrated Care does the means-test when you apply, usually after a hospital referral or a functional assessment of your parent's daily-living ability. Get the assessment done first, because it both sets the care plan and qualifies you for the grants.
Care costs start small and creep up over years, so the worst mistake is treating it as a one-off. Build it into your plan the way you would a mortgage, and start before the crisis hits.
Map the likely trajectory. Many parents begin needing only light help, move to day care or a helper, then sometimes to a nursing home in the final stage. Each step up roughly doubles the monthly cost. Run the numbers for the middle scenario, not the cheapest one, so a sudden fall or a dementia diagnosis does not wipe out your savings.
Separate your money from your parent's. Their CPF, MediSave, CareShield Life payout, ElderShield and any savings come first; your contribution tops up the gap. Siblings should agree a split in writing early, because money is the thing that fractures families during caregiving.
Keep your own retirement on track. It is tempting to stop investing to fund care, but you cannot borrow for retirement. Treat caregiving as a line item in your budget and use the grants to plug the difference rather than your nest egg.
The basic cost starts from about $3,900 a month before subsidy, and rises with the level of nursing care and room type. After MOH means-tested subsidies, a Singapore Citizen can get up to 75% off, so a $4,000 bill often comes down to roughly $1,000 to $2,400 a month depending on household income.
For most families it is a day care or senior care centre, which can start around $400 a month before subsidy and gets the deepest MOH subsidy (up to 80% for lower-income citizens), so the net cost can drop to a few hundred dollars. Hiring a domestic helper is the next option if your parent needs all-day supervision at home.
From April 2026 it pays up to $600 a month in cash, up from $400. The tiers are $600 for per capita household income up to $1,500, $400 for $1,501 to $3,600, and $200 for $3,601 to $4,800. The care recipient must permanently need help with at least three of six daily activities and not live in a residential institution.
MediSave can be used for some long-term care costs such as approved day care, home care and CareShield Life premiums, within annual withdrawal limits. CareShield Life and ElderShield pay out in cash if your parent is severely disabled. CPF retirement savings and CPF LIFE payouts can also fund living and care expenses directly.
ElderShield is the older long-term care insurance scheme; CareShield Life replaced it for citizens and PRs born in 1980 or later and is compulsory for them. CareShield Life pays a higher, lifelong, growing monthly payout (about $689 a month for a 2026 claim, rising 4% a year to 2030), while ElderShield payouts are usually time-limited.
Your parent must be a Singapore Citizen or PR, and your household goes through means-testing by the Agency for Integrated Care based on monthly per capita household income (or the home's Annual Value if there is no income). You usually need a referral from a hospital, polyclinic or medical social worker, or you can apply at an AIC Link office.
Usually not. The Foreign Domestic Worker levy concession lowers the levy from $300 to $60 a month when the helper is hired to care for an elderly or disabled person. It applies automatically if you or your spouse is at least 67, or you can apply through AIC if your parent has a recognised disability such as dementia.
Respite care gives a full-time caregiver a planned break while the parent is looked after. Nursing home respite is an overnight stay of seven to thirty days a year, from about $131 a day for an open ward before subsidy, with up to 75% off for Singapore Citizens. Day respite at a senior care centre uses the cheaper non-residential subsidy scale, and home-based respite is arranged through Enhanced Home Personal Care from April 2026.
Yes. The Seniors' Mobility and Enabling Fund pays up to 90% of the cost of approved mobility and assistive devices, home healthcare items and consumables for Singapore Citizens and PRs aged 60 and above. It is means-tested with a monthly per capita household income ceiling of $4,800, or an Annual Value of $21,000 where there is no income. Get the device assessed before buying, since replacement blackout periods run two to four years.
Get a functional assessment first, usually through a hospital, polyclinic, GP or a medical social worker, since it sets the care plan and qualifies you for subsidies and grants. The Agency for Integrated Care then runs the means-test and refers you to funded providers. Applying through AIC is what unlocks the means-tested rates; booking a private provider directly is faster but often unsubsidised.
This is general financial information for Singapore, not personal financial advice. Figures change — verify current rates against the official sources above before acting. See our full disclaimer.