The cost of eldercare in Singapore

The three numbers that decide what a family pays

Ask “how much does eldercare cost in Singapore?” and the honest answer is that there is no one price, by design. The system means-tests almost everything, so the bill a family sees is built from three separate numbers rather than a single quoted rate.

The first is the gross facility fee — what a nursing home would list before any help. This is the one number nobody publishes officially: it varies by facility, ward type and care level, and the range you see quoted (roughly S$2,000–S$4,500 a month) is an indicative aggregate, not a figure any agency stands behind. Treat it as a rough order of magnitude only.

The second is the government subsidy, which is means-tested and can cover up to 80% of the cost for Singapore Citizens. The third is the CareShield Life payout — a lifelong monthly insurance payment that offsets the bill rather than adding to it. Both of those are official Tier-1 figures, and together they explain why two families in identical rooms can pay very different amounts.

CareShield Life is a payout, not a cost

The most-quoted CareShield Life number belongs on the credit side of the ledger, not the debit side. CareShield Life is Singapore's national long-term-care insurance scheme, administered by the CPF Board. Its base payout is S$689 a month in 2026, paid for life once someone is severely disabled — broadly, unable to perform at least three of the six activities of daily living. It replaced the older ElderShield scheme, whose payouts were around S$300–S$400 a month.

Because it pays out rather than charges, CareShield Life reduces the net cost of care to the family; it should never be added to the cost of eldercare as though it were a fee. On a page about what eldercare costs, it is one of the two things that brings that cost down. It is also compulsory for most residents born in 1980 or later, so for younger cohorts it is already part of how a future care bill will be met rather than an optional extra.

The means-tested subsidy does most of the work

The reason there is no single sticker price is the subsidy. Singapore's long-term-care subsidies are means-tested on per-capita household income, and they reach up to 80% of the cost for Citizens and 50–55% for Permanent Residents. From 1 October 2024, the Ministry of Health raised these subsidies, a change it said would benefit up to about 1.1 million residents.

That design is deliberate: households with lower per-capita income pay a much smaller share of the same gross fee than higher-income households do. Because the subsidy is calculated on income rather than on the size of the bill, two families in identical rooms can face very different net costs — which is exactly why a single “average cost of eldercare in Singapore” would mislead more than it informs.

It also sits against a rapidly ageing population — 18.8% of Singapore's resident population was aged 65 and over in 2025, up from 11.8% in 2015, with an old-age support ratio of about 3.3 working-age residents per senior. The demand the subsidy framework is absorbing is growing quickly.

The cost that isn't on any invoice: unpaid family care

The largest cost of eldercare in Singapore never appears on a facility bill, because families absorb it in unpaid time. The Duke-NUS TraCE study (an academic study, 2024) valued the unpaid care given to Singaporeans aged 75 and over at about S$1.28 billion a year — roughly 11% of government health spending — working out to about 33 hours a week and about S$15,959 a year for each primary carer.

One caveat matters: the S$1.28 billion figure is measured for care recipients aged 75 and over only, so it is not directly comparable to all-ages caregiving totals from other countries. It is reported here to show that the visible, subsidised cost of formal care is only part of what eldercare actually costs a Singapore household. The full picture of family caregiving cost has its own page.

Figures we left out, and why

A few numbers that circulate in this subject are absent from this page on purpose.

There is no single all-in “cost of eldercare in Singapore” figure here, because none exists officially. Means-testing means the real cost is a range that depends on income, care level and facility — quoting one number would misrepresent all of them.

The gross nursing-home fee appears only as a clearly-labelled indicative range, never as a headline and never in the source list below. No agency publishes it as a single figure; the range varies by facility and ward type, and dressing it up as an authoritative number would be exactly the kind of mis-citation this page is trying to avoid.

We also do not convert Singapore dollar figures into other currencies to compare them with Australian or New Zealand costs. The subsidy mechanics differ so completely between the three countries that an exchange-rate comparison would be meaningless; each country's page reports its own official figures in its own currency.

Where a free daily check-in fits — and where it doesn't

Nothing on this page is solved by an app. What eldercare costs, how much the state subsidises, and what insurance pays out are policy questions, and the levers for them are subsidies and services, not software.

There is one narrow, unpriced risk that sits alongside the cost, especially for the roughly 88,000 Singapore residents aged 60 and over who lived alone at the 2020 Census. It is the discovery gap: if something goes wrong at home when you live alone, how long before anybody knows? That is the only thing a daily check-in addresses, and it addresses nothing else. It is not care, it is not a substitute for eldercare, and it does not reduce a care bill.

I'm Alive is a daily check-in app. You confirm you're okay once a day; if you don't, the people you chose are told. The daily check-in is free (Check In, $0) and works on iPhone and Android anywhere in the world, including Singapore — nothing is fitted to your flat and there is no hardware to buy or qualify for. The free plan lets you name one emergency contact and, if you go quiet, alerts them up to once a month with a push and an email (no SMS). Stay Protected ($29.99/year, or $3.99/month in the app stores) raises that to unlimited alerts with SMS escalation and up to ten contacts; Complete Safety Net ($39.99/year) adds last-known location on alerts, where available. There is also a one-time Stay Connected & Travel Safely upgrade at $4.99 (one contact, alerts capped at up to five a month). More frequent check-ins are a paid option — up to two windows a day on Stay Protected and three on Complete Safety Net; the free plan and the one-time upgrade check in once a day. It alerts your own trusted contacts — it never calls emergency services, and it is not a medical device.

If this is an emergency in Singapore, call 995 for an ambulance or 999 for the police. For caregiver support and eldercare service information, the Agency for Integrated Care (AIC) hotline is 1800-650-6060.