An NDIS business in Australia is worth 2.5x to 5x its annual EBITDA. A support coordination business generating $400,000 in EBITDA typically sells for $1.4 million to $2 million. A direct support provider generating the same EBITDA will likely sell for $1 million to $1.4 million. The gap comes down to one thing: margin quality — and in the NDIS sector, service type determines margin almost entirely.
The National Disability Insurance Scheme now supports more than 660,000 Australians with a federal budget of $42.8 billion in 2024-25. That scale has created a significant market for NDIS businesses — and a meaningful buyer pool.
Why NDIS Valuation Is Different from Other Healthcare
NDIS businesses share some DNA with general healthcare practice valuations — government-funded revenue, recurring participants, and sector-specific compliance requirements. But the valuation mechanics are distinct enough to deserve separate treatment.
Three things set NDIS valuations apart.
First, the NDIS price guide sets your rates. You can’t charge more than the legislated price limits, which means revenue growth comes from participant volume, not pricing power. Buyers price this constraint into multiples — particularly for commodity services like basic daily activities.
Second, registration risk is real. NDIS-registered providers are audited by the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission. A compliance failure can result in registration suspension, which effectively destroys the business overnight. A clean audit history is worth real money; an unresolved finding is a deal-killer.
Third, staff are the product. In direct support and SIL businesses, support workers are delivering the service. The sector has notoriously high turnover, and many operators run thin because of wage pressure from the Fair Work Commission’s care sector pay decisions. Buyers scrutinise workforce stability hard.
What Your Service Type Determines
Support Coordination and Plan Management: 3.5x to 5x EBITDA
These are the high-multiple services, and the reason is simple: you don’t need a van, a property, or shift workers. A support coordinator builds a caseload of NDIS participants, helps them implement their plans, and earns a consistent hourly fee — typically $93-$110 per hour under current price limits. Done well, a support coordination team of eight generates $1.5 million in revenue with 40-45% EBITDA margins.
Plan management is similar: you’re managing the financial administration of participant plans, collecting a monthly fee per participant. It’s recurring, low-labour, and increasingly technology-driven. Buyers understand this model. When a good plan management business hits the market, you’ll see competitive bidding.
The ceiling on multiples in this category is participant concentration. If your top 20 participants represent 60% of revenue, buyers will discount accordingly — participants can change providers with minimal friction.
Direct Support (Core Supports): 2x to 3.5x EBITDA
Direct support — daily activities, community access, assistance with household tasks — runs on people. You’re rostering support workers to participant shifts, managing payroll, and trying to hit margins against NDIS price limits that don’t always keep pace with Award wage increases.
Buyers value these businesses, but carefully. A direct support operation doing $3 million in revenue with 12% EBITDA margins and 18 support workers is genuinely complex to run — and to buy. The multiple reflects that complexity. Businesses with strong systems, low turnover, and a geographic concentration that makes rostering efficient will push toward 3.5x. Businesses where the owner is doing half the rostering from a personal mobile will struggle to reach 2.5x.
Supported Independent Living (SIL): 3x to 6x
SIL businesses are valued differently again because they typically combine a long-term participant relationship with either property ownership or a stable lease. A well-structured SIL home with four participants on 12-month service agreements, a competent house leader, and a compatible property arrangement can look almost like a property income stream — and buyers treat it that way.
The range is wide because the risk is high. A SIL business built on short-term participants, ageing properties, and informal rostering arrangements won’t get to 3x. One with robust NDIS Supported Living funding agreements, modern housing, and a capable operations team can reach 6x.
The Five Factors That Move Your Multiple
1. Compliance record. A clean NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission audit history is the floor requirement. An unresolved major non-conformity will stop a deal. A history of moderate findings with documented remediation still hurts — expect buyers to knock 0.5x off the multiple.
2. Participant roster quality. How many participants do you support, and how high are their plan values? A support coordination caseload averaging $5,000 per participant annually is worth more than one averaging $2,200. Buyers will ask for a de-identified participant list and analyse plan value distribution.
3. Owner dependency. If you are the relationship holder for most participants — if they’d follow you rather than stay with the business — you have personal goodwill, not commercial goodwill. This is the single biggest value gap in the sector. Read how goodwill is valued when selling a business if this applies to you.
4. Workforce stability. Annualised staff turnover above 40% is a flag. It means your service quality is inconsistent, your compliance risk is elevated, and a buyer is inheriting a recruitment problem. Below 25% turnover — achievable with the right culture and rostering practices — materially supports a premium multiple.
5. Technology and systems. Businesses running purpose-built NDIS software (ShiftCare, Lumary, CareView, or similar) with automated rostering, incident management, and NDIS portal claims processing look far more transferable than those running on spreadsheets and a phone. Buyers pay for systems that work without the founder.
What the Market Looks Like Right Now
Private equity has been consolidating the NDIS sector for several years — not with the same aggression as dental or childcare, but methodically. Platform businesses are being built by acquiring smaller operators, standardising their systems, and presenting a scaled care model to institutional investors.
A broker I spoke with recently described a deal where a Perth-based support coordination business with 340 participants and $1.4 million in revenue sold for 4.7x EBITDA — above expectations. The buyer was a national platform looking to establish a WA footprint; the seller had invested in CRM technology and had two coordinators who owned their participant relationships independently of the founder. That combination is exactly what platform buyers are paying premiums for.
The market right now is bifurcated. Businesses with systems, compliance, and transferable operations are getting strong interest from consolidators. Businesses where the answer to most operational questions starts with “the owner usually handles that” are taking much longer to sell, at much lower multiples.
How to Calculate Your NDIS Business Value
Work through it in three steps.
Step 1: Normalise your EBITDA. Take your net profit and add back interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation. Then add back any owner salary that’s above what a replacement manager would cost, personal expenses run through the business, one-off costs, and any capital expenditure treated as an expense. This is your normalised EBITDA.
Step 2: Apply a service-type multiple. Support coordination and plan management: 3.5x-5x. Mixed model with meaningful direct support: 2.5x-4x. Pure direct support: 2x-3.5x. SIL with good contracts: 3x-6x. Adjust down for compliance issues, high participant concentration, or owner dependency. Adjust up for technology, workforce stability, and geographic diversification.
Step 3: Account for working capital and liabilities. NDIS businesses typically carry debtor balances — NDIS portal claims can take 3-5 business days to process, but a backlog of unsubmitted claims represents real cash. Buyers will want clean working capital at settlement. Outstanding NDIA audits, pending compliance actions, or participant complaints in investigation can affect the final number significantly.
Understanding your after-tax outcome is just as important as the gross sale price — take early advice on the tax implications of selling your business in Australia before you go to market.
The Red Flags That Kill NDIS Deals
Some issues are disclosed, negotiated around, and priced in. Others stop deals entirely.
Things buyers can work with: participant concentration in a specific geography, one coordinator who handles most plan reviews, older rostering software, a lease expiring in two years.
Things that kill deals: an active NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission investigation, a participant safeguarding incident that hasn’t been reported, underpayment of Award wages to support workers (the Wage Theft Prevention Act has made this a criminal matter), or financials that can’t be reconciled with NDIS portal payment data.
If you’re 12-24 months from going to market, preparing your business should start with a compliance review — not the financials. Clean up any reporting gaps, close out any open findings, and get a compliance specialist to run a gap analysis against the NDIS Practice Standards. The cost is $5,000-$15,000. The value to a deal is multiples of that.
If you’d like a confidential estimate of what your NDIS business is worth, use the valuation calculator for a starting point, or get in touch to discuss your situation directly. NDIS businesses have sector-specific nuances that generic calculators don’t handle well — a conversation is usually more useful.