About this site

What this site is

Elder Care Cost Guide is a free reference site for the cost of long-term care in the United States. It publishes national and state median figures for in-home care, adult day care, assisted living and nursing homes, and provides calculators that turn those medians into a monthly and annual estimate. You do not need an account and we do not ask for payment.

How the numbers are produced

Every figure on this site comes from a named public source. The national medians are drawn from Data: CareScout Cost of Care Survey — 2025 national medians (fieldwork July–November 2025), and the per-state figures from the same survey’s ranked tables by state. Programme rules (Medicare, Medicaid, VA and tax treatment) are linked to the agency that publishes them. We do not project state figures down to a city, and we do not round a number up to look better.

The full sourcing and methodology policy is on the methodology page.

Editorial standards

• No number without a source — every figure carries the source next to it.
• Published figures are printed as published; we do not adjust medians by hand.
• Estimates, not promises — actual prices vary by provider and location, and we say so on every cost page.
• Errors are corrected rather than hidden: use the contact route below and we will fix the page and note the change date.

Who runs it

Elder Care Cost Guide is an independent publisher. It is edited and published by Cindy Liao, who has worked in building-materials and export trade since 2012 — long enough to have spent years reading specification sheets, quotations and survey tables for a living, and to insist that a published figure can be traced back to the document it came from. The site is not run by a care provider, takes no placement or referral fees, and is funded only by the advertising disclosed below.

How a page gets published

1. Source first. A page is only started when a named public source covers the question — the survey table, the agency rule page, or the published fee schedule.
2. Draft against that source. Figures and programme rules are taken from the document, and the source and its date are attached to the figure, not to the page footer alone.
3. Editor review before publishing. The editor checks each number back against its source, and the site will not publish a new page that has no registered source — a build-time gate blocks it.
4. Date-stamped corrections. When a figure is wrong or a source changes, the page is corrected and the change is noted rather than quietly overwritten.

Automation is used to assemble tables and to check that pages meet these rules; it is never used to invent a figure. The methodology page sets out exactly where automation is and is not allowed.

How the site is funded

This site is supported by advertising served through Google AdSense and, on some pages, by affiliate links. Advertising does not influence the figures we publish — the cost data comes from a fixed public survey, not from advertisers. The full disclosure, including how to opt out of personalised advertising, is in our Privacy & Disclosures page.

Contact and corrections

To flag an error, suggest a calculator, or ask about any figure on the site, use the contact form. We read every message and reply by email when one is provided.

Not professional advice

This site provides cost estimates only. It is not medical, legal, financial or eligibility advice. Talk to a licensed professional before making care decisions.