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Proudly serving families in Fort Myers, Cape Coral, Naples, Bonita Springs, and surrounding Southwest Florida communities.
For many Southwest Florida families, in-home care is the better choice. It is one-on-one, it lets your loved one stay at home, and depending on how much help is needed, it can cost significantly less than assisted living.
Assisted living in Florida is expensive, and the price keeps climbing. The state’s median is now about $5,500 a month for a private one-bedroom, before the extra charges many communities add as care needs grow. Many families only need a caregiver for part of the day or a few days a week, and paying for just those hours often costs far less than a facility. Even at full-time hours, when the two are closer in price, in-home care offers what assisted living can’t: you stay home, choose your caregiver, and set the schedule.
Here is how the numbers break down, and how families in Fort Myers and Cape Coral can make the comparison for their own situation.
AARP’s 2024 Home and Community Preferences Survey found that 75 percent of adults 50 and older want to remain in their own homes as they age. In-home care is the most direct way to make that happen. A caregiver comes to you, works around your routine, and provides one on one attention that no facility can match at any price.
This comparison leaves out something important: if you own your home, staying in it preserves that asset. Moving to assisted living means paying facility rent on top of whatever happens with the house.
According to CareScout’s 2025 Cost of Care Survey for Florida, the median cost of an assisted living community in Florida is $66,000 per year, or roughly $5,500 per month. That is up 3 percent from the year before.
The base rate is only the starting point. Many facilities price services a la carte on top of monthly rent.
Get every fee in writing up front. A $5,500 base rate can look very different once level-of-care charges are added.
Whether care happens at home or in a facility, labor is the biggest part of the cost. The National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care has noted that nearly 60 percent of a senior care provider’s expenses are labor. CareScout’s 2025 survey also found that labor costs, more than inflation, have been driving care prices up.
The difference is how that labor is shared. In a facility, your monthly rate pays for a share of staff who are also caring for many other residents. Staffing is one of the five most frequent complaints long-term care ombudsman programs handle in assisted living and similar residential communities, alongside discharge or eviction, medications, food service and physical abuse, according to the federal Administration for Community Living. Florida’s minimum staffing standard for assisted living works out to an average of roughly one staff member on duty for every 30 residents in a 95-resident community, and facilities with 17 or more residents are required to have only one awake staff member overnight. Smaller facilities must have someone on site at night, but that person is not required to be awake. Many facilities staff above the minimum, but it is worth asking what the ratio is on every shift, including nights and weekends.
With private in-home care, every hour you pay for goes to one-on-one help, and you choose the caregiver. If the fit isn’t right, you can ask to be matched with someone else. That control over who helps your loved one is one of the biggest benefits of private care.
Some of the families we work with have a loved one who already lives in an assisted living community but needs more support than the facility is able to provide. A private caregiver can help one-on-one right in their apartment, alongside the services the facility already offers.
The same survey puts Florida’s median cost for a non-medical in-home caregiver at $73,216 per year, based on 44 hours a week. That works out to about $32 per hour. Here is how that compares with assisted living:
| Schedule | Approximate monthly cost |
|---|---|
| 4 hours a day, 5 days a week | About $2,770 |
| 6 hours a day, 5 days a week | About $4,160 |
| 8 hours a day, 5 days a week | About $5,550 |
| 44 hours a week (the survey’s standard basis) | About $6,100 |
| 8 hours a day, 7 days a week | About $7,770 |
| Assisted living (Florida median) | About $5,500, plus add-on charges |
In-home figures use the Florida median of about $32 per hour. Actual rates depend on the caregiver and the arrangement.
For longer visits and around-the-clock coverage, families working with Abby Services often see total rates at or below the Florida median.
Families needing round-the-clock support can also compare 24-hour and live-in care arrangements, which are priced differently than hourly visits.
Independent caregivers referred through a nurse registry like Abby Services set their own rates, which are often below agency medians because there is no agency overhead built in.
Want the local numbers in detail?
See typical in-home care costs in Southwest Florida.
Assisted living is a fixed monthly cost whether you need a lot of help or a little. In-home care scales to what you actually need.
If mornings and evenings are the hard parts of the day, a caregiver for 6 hours instead of 8, or 5 days instead of 7, brings the monthly cost well below assisted living. Family members can cover some hours, with respite care filling the gaps when they need a break. You decide when someone helps you and for how long, and you can adjust as needs change.
Flexibility is the single biggest factor in the cost comparison, and it only exists on the in-home side.
Adult day care in Florida runs a median of about $19,500 per year, according to the same CareScout survey, or roughly $1,600 per month for weekday attendance. For families where a spouse or adult child provides evening and weekend care, combining adult day services with part-time in-home care often costs meaningfully less than assisted living while keeping your loved one at home.
At full-time hours, in-home care and assisted living cost about the same in Florida. Below full-time hours, in-home care usually costs less. And at every hour level, in-home care is the only option where the care is one on one, in your own home, on your schedule.
If you are weighing these options in Fort Myers, Cape Coral, or anywhere in Lee, Collier, or Charlotte Counties, Abby Services can help you understand what a private caregiver would cost for your specific situation. We have been helping Southwest Florida families find caregivers since 1997.
Weighing assisted living against care at home?
Talk it through with a registered nurse.
It depends on hours. At 40 hours per week, the costs are nearly identical (about $5,500 per month). Below 40 hours, in-home care typically costs less. Around-the-clock care at home costs more than assisted living but provides one on one attention.
Medicare does not pay for ongoing custodial care in either setting. It covers limited skilled home health services under specific conditions. Long-term care insurance, VA benefits, and private pay are the most common ways families fund both options.
Rates depend on the schedule, the level of assistance needed, and the individual caregiver. Caregivers referred through Abby Services are self-employed and set their own rates. Call 239-590-0861 and we can walk through your situation.
