What Companion Care Costs in Austin

Pricing in this industry is harder to find than it should be. Most companies ask you to call first. We'd rather just tell you.

This is what companion care costs in the Austin area, how the two common pricing models actually work, and where each one makes sense. Including the cases where ours isn't the right answer.

The rate you're quoted usually isn't the rate you pay

Most home care and companion agencies price by the hour. In Austin, non-medical companion care from an insured agency generally starts around $30 to $35 an hour. Treat that as a floor rather than a going rate — it climbs with evenings, weekends, short notice, and anything approaching personal care.

That number is easy to compare and easy to misread, because almost every agency also has a visit minimum — commonly three or four hours.

So the quoted rate is real, but it's attached to a block of time you may not need. A parent who'd benefit from someone stopping by for ninety minutes on Tuesday usually can't buy ninety minutes. They can buy four hours, or nothing.

Which means the number that actually matters isn't the hourly rate. It's the smallest visit you're allowed to purchase:

$30–$35 an hour × a three- or four-hour minimum = roughly $90 to $140 per visit.

That's not a criticism of how agencies operate. Minimums exist because sending someone across Austin for a short visit is hard to staff. But it does mean the short, regular visit — the one a lot of families are actually looking for — often isn't on the menu at any price.

What ThereWhen costs

We price by the month, not the hour, and the price is set by how often we visit.

Visits run up to ninety minutes. There's no long-term contract, and you can pause or adjust.

The per-hour math, since you're going to do it anyway

Ninety minutes, four or five times a month, works out to somewhere around $85 to $100 per hour of visit time, depending on the membership.

Against a $30–$35 floor, that's roughly three times the hourly rate. We'd rather say so than have you find it on a spreadsheet.

But compare the two the way you'd actually buy them — a visit at a time — and the gap mostly closes:

So it's roughly agency money for half the hours. That trade is only worth it if the hours weren't the point — if what you wanted was a familiar person on a dependable schedule rather than a longer block of someone's time.

Here's the honest accounting of what the difference buys:

• You're buying a schedule, not a block. Ninety minutes a week is a length of visit most hourly providers won't sell at all.
• We prioritize the same companion. Familiarity is most of the value, and it's the thing that erodes when whoever is available gets sent.
• Every visit ends with an update. You hear what happened, how it went, and whether anything stood out. That takes time, and it's included rather than billed.
• Scheduling is ours to manage. The visits are already on the calendar. Nobody has to arrange them week to week.

If you strip all of that out and compare hour to hour, hourly wins. If what you want is a dependable ninety minutes with someone who knows your mother, the comparison doesn't really hold — because the cheaper option usually isn't offering it.

When hourly is the better answer

We'd rather you spend your money well than spend it with us. Hourly care is the better fit when:

• You need long stretches of coverage. Post-surgery, a recovery period, or a stretch of days while family travels. Four to eight hours at a time is exactly what hourly pricing is built for, and at $30–$35 an hour it's the better value by a wide margin.
• You need hands-on personal care. Bathing, dressing, medication, transfers. We don't do any of that, and you shouldn't buy a companionship membership hoping it turns into care we've told you we don't provide.
• The need is genuinely occasional. One ride a month, one afternoon before the holidays. Paying monthly for something you want four times a year doesn't make sense — book the minimum visit and pay the $90 or so.
• The budget doesn't reach. $650 a month is real money. Plenty of families put it toward something else and are right to.

What the money is actually for

The practical help is straightforward. Groceries get put away. A ride to the cardiologist happens. The printer that stopped talking to the Wi-Fi starts talking to the Wi-Fi again.

What's harder to put on an invoice is the part families tell us they wanted: somebody who has been there enough times to know that your father narrates the entire grocery trip, and to notice the week he doesn't.

That takes showing up more than once. It's the reason we sell a month instead of an hour.