Best domiciliary care software in the UK: 2026 buyer's guide

The right domiciliary care software keeps your rota, care records, invoicing and pay on one record, so the visit a coordinator plans is the visit a carer records, and the visit you bill and pay for. Four things should decide your choice. Does the rota connect to care records and finance, or will someone reconcile them by hand every week? Is the product on the NHS assured list? Can carers keep recording when they lose signal? And does the price structure suit the size of your agency? No product wins on all four for every agency, so we haven't named a winner. Use the table to shortlist on facts you can check, then use the "best for" lines to narrow it down to two or three demos.

Birdie makes one of the products in this guide. We've given every product the same information and linked each price and NHS listing to its source, so you can check them yourself.

Prices and NHS listings checked on 22 October 2026.

This guide focuses on rostering and running a home care agency day to day. If care planning, medication and CQC evidence are your main concern, read our guide to care management software for UK home care.

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Domiciliary care software compared: the 2026 shortlist

Every column below can be checked against a public source. "Best for" is based on each vendor's own positioning. Prices exclude VAT.

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Some of these products are built only for home care. Others cover several care settings. A product built for both can still work well for home care, but home care rostering has to handle travel time, runs, continuity and short visits across a geographic patch, which a care home shift rota doesn't. So in the demo, test the rota and the carer app on a real week of your visits.

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Birdie

Who it's for: Birdie is built for home care, from small agencies to large and multi-branch care businesses. Over 1,200 providers use it, and over 68 million care visits were delivered using Birdie in 2025.

How it fits home care: Rostering is template-driven. You build each person's care pattern once and the rota repeats from it, with tasks and medications attached to each visit. Every plan includes drag-and-drop rostering, digital care assessments and plans, eMAR, invoicing and payroll, GP Connect, and the Carer and Family apps (see the plans). Because the rota, the care record and finance share one record, a visit goes from the rota to the Carer App to the invoice and pay run without anyone re-keying it. The Carer App works offline in areas with poor or no signal, so carers can still see care plans, complete tasks and record notes. Everything syncs automatically when they reconnect.

For quality, the Q-Score benchmarks performance against CQC criteria across five key areas and flags potential issues early. Birdie is ISO 27001 and Cyber Essentials Plus certified, and data is hosted in the UK (AWS, London region). In Birdie's State of Tech in Care 2025 survey of 160 homecare providers, Birdie partners reported saving 57% of their time on care planning, 52% on rostering and 45% on finance processes, on average.

Best for: home care agencies that want the rota, care records and finance built as one and working as one.

Price: from £200 a month (excluding VAT), with the final price based on scheduled care hours. There are four plans: Starter, Core, Advanced and Plus. Checked 22 October 2026.

NHS assured: Yes (checked 22 October 2026).

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Access Care Planning (The Access Group)

Who it's for: Access Care Planning is part of The Access Group's wider range of care software. Access says it's built for domiciliary, residential and local authority services.

How it fits home care: Access Care Planning covers digital care plans, eMAR, GP Connect integration, customisable access levels, and records on web and mobile, including offline. Rostering is a separate product. Access recommends pairing Access Care Planning with Access Care Rostering, which it says integrates with care planning, has its own invoicing system and connects to Access Payroll. On its home care page, Access says you can template complete schedules. If you want the rota, care records and invoicing working together, ask which Access products you'd need and how the data moves between them.

Best for: larger or mixed-setting organisations, or groups already using other Access Group products.

Price: price on request. Access says its prices are an annual cost per carer, and that it offers price matching (checked 22 October 2026).

NHS assured: Yes (checked 22 October 2026).

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Nourish

Who it's for: Nourish works across residential care, home care and children's services. Nourish acquired CarePlanner in 2023 and CarePlanner is now part of Nourish, so we've included it in this entry.

How it fits home care: On its home care page, Nourish describes care plans, tasks and assessments linked to visit records, electronic call monitoring, and drag-and-drop rostering and scheduling that takes account of carers' availability and travel time. It says the platform suits services supporting a small number of people right up to multiple branches.

Best for: home care agencies, including former CarePlanner users, who want rostering and care records from a vendor that also covers other care settings.

Price: price on request (checked 22 October 2026).

NHS assured: Yes (checked 22 October 2026).

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Log my Care

Who it's for: Log my Care supports residential care, supported living and home care.

How it fits home care: Its home care page describes care plans carers can see online or offline, rostering with changes sent to carers through its carer app, eMAR with PRN protocols and dose limits shown at the point of administration, and visit data checked against your pay rules for payroll. On the Pro plan, rostering, eMAR and the Family App are add-ons. Most home care agencies need both rostering and eMAR, so ask for the total price with both included.

Best for: very small agencies moving off paper, who are happy to add rostering and eMAR as they grow.

Price: Starter plan free for fewer than 10 people supported; Pro and Outstanding plans on request (checked 22 October 2026).

NHS assured: Yes (checked 22 October 2026).

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CareLineLive

Who it's for: CareLineLive is built for home care, with options from independent providers through to large ones.

How it fits home care: Its website describes drag-and-drop rostering, real-time call monitoring with alerts, and visit check-in and check-out times that feed payroll, invoicing and split billing. Carers use the Carer Companion App, and families can see notes, observations, medication and visit details in the Care Circle Portal. CareLineLive also lists GP Connect, and says MOA Benchmarking, an audit tool for CQC and CIW, is included in the platform.

Best for: small to mid-sized home care agencies that want published per-carer pricing.

Price: £8.10 per carer a month (eRoster), £19.70 (carers' own phones) or £45.00 (managed phones). Minimum £120 a month, onboarding up to £300 and on-site training £600 a day. Contracts are typically 12 months (checked 22 October 2026).

NHS assured: Yes (checked 22 October 2026).

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PASS

Who it's for: PASS, by everyLIFE Technologies, calls itself a home care platform.

How it fits home care: PASS lists care planning, rostering, eMAR, invoicing, reporting, a carer app, electronic call monitoring, GP Connect, and openPASS for family and friends. Its AI tools include Schedule Hero, which drafts ranked cover plans for unassigned visits for a coordinator to review before anything is published, and PASSgenius care note summaries. PASS says it offers 24/7 UK support and is protected to ISO 27001 and Cyber Essentials Plus standards. It also says most services go live within about 30 days of signing.

Best for: small home care agencies that want a published starting price, and agencies interested in AI help with filling gaps in the rota.

Price: Foundation plan from £185 a month for 1–15 people supported, with a 12-month minimum term. Pro and Enterprise plans on request (checked 22 October 2026).

NHS assured: Yes, listed as PASS by everyLIFE (checked 22 October 2026).

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Unique IQ

Who it's for: Unique IQ says it's worked with care providers since 2006, across home care, supported living, complex care and other settings.

How it fits home care: Its domiciliary care page lists visit scheduling and rostering, care planning and eMAR, the IQ:timecard carer app (which its FAQ says works offline), its Family & Client Portal, and finance. It's also building AI into the product, with IQ:careassist for drafting care plans and IQ:careaudit for real-time risk and compliance monitoring.

Best for: agencies that want a long-established home care specialist and are interested in AI-assisted care planning and auditing.

Price: price on request (checked 22 October 2026).

NHS assured: Not listed when we checked on 22 October 2026. If NHS assurance matters to you (see below), ask Unique IQ about its status directly.

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Care Control

Who it's for: Care Control Systems works across residential care, domiciliary care, supported living, large care groups, councils, day centres and specialist colleges.

How it fits home care: Its domiciliary care page lists care plans, eMAR, rotas, payroll, invoicing, a Family App and GP Connect. Its home care rota shows travel time between visits, plans community runs on a live map, tracks check-in times and late arrivals in real time, and feeds directly into payroll. Care Control's website displays ISO 27001 and Cyber Essentials Plus logos. Because it's built for many settings, check in the demo how the rota handles your runs and short-notice changes.

Best for: providers running several care settings or sites who want one system at a single flat rate.

Price: price on request. Care Control says it uses a flat-rate model with everything included and no add-ons, but it doesn't publish the rate (checked 22 October 2026).

NHS assured: Yes, listed as Care Control Systems (checked 22 October 2026).

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How to choose domiciliary care software

A feature list won't separate these products. These questions will.

Does the rota connect to care records, invoicing and pay?

The biggest hidden cost in home care software is reconciliation. If your rota sits in one system, care notes in another and invoicing in a spreadsheet, someone in the office matches actual visit times against planned visits, then against invoices and pay, every week. Each hand-off is a chance for error: a missed visit that still gets billed, a late visit paid at the wrong rate, or a care plan change the rota never picks up.

Ask every supplier one question in the demo: when a carer checks out of a visit, what happens next, and who has to touch it? In a connected system, the actual visit time flows into the invoice and the pay run, and a change to the care plan shows up on the next visit. With separate systems, you'll hear words like "export", "import" or "sync overnight".

Some products in this guide include rostering, eMAR and finance in the core plan. Others sell them as add-ons or separate products. Both can work, but you need to know which one you're buying. For a closer look at rota features, read our guide to home care scheduling software. For invoicing, multiple funders and payroll, see our guide to home care billing software.

Can the rota handle home care?

A home care rota is harder to build than a shift rota. Ask how each system handles:

• travel time between visits, and planning runs across your patch
• continuity, so people see carers they know
• double-up visits and short visits
• matching carers to people by skills and preferences
• changes at short notice, and how carers hear about them

The best test is your own data. Give each supplier a real week of visits and ask them to build it in the demo.

Is it on the NHS assured list?

"NHS assured" means the product is on NHS England's assured list for digital social care records (DSCRs). A DSCR is the digital version of your care plans, visit notes and records, replacing paper. According to the Department of Health and Social Care's guidance on choosing a DSCR, published 29 September 2026, every listed product:

• offers the essential features providers need, such as care planning, recording, reporting and audit trails
• meets national standards for quality and security
• helps you comply with CQC regulations on good governance
• can connect with GP records

Products that stop meeting the standards may be removed from the list, so check the live list rather than a badge on a vendor's website.

This matters even if most of the people you support pay privately, because of GP Connect. Under the same guidance, a CQC-registered provider can only use GP Connect to see a restricted view of a person's GP record if three things are true. Its DSCR must be on the assured list and integrate with GP Connect. It must have reached "standards met" on the Data Security and Protection Toolkit. And it must have signed the National Data Sharing Agreement. For non-clinical staff, such as registered managers and carers, that view covers allergies, medications, immunisations and the last three interactions with the GP practice.

There's a limit to what assurance covers. The guidance says DSCRs "do not normally include rostering or electronic medication administration records (eMAR)". So NHS assurance tells you the care record meets the standard. It tells you nothing about the rota, eMAR or finance, which you'll need to test yourself. For more on how the list works, see our guide to the NHS assured supplier list.

Can carers keep working with no signal?

Home care happens in rural lanes, tower blocks and basement flats, and signal can't be relied on in any of them. If the carer app needs a live connection, carers either stop recording until they're back in signal, or write notes on paper and re-key them later. Both weaken your records, and both cost time.

Ask every supplier three questions, and get the answers in writing:

• What can a carer see and record offline? For example the care plan, medication, tasks, and check-in and check-out.
• For how long?
• What happens to the record when the phone reconnects, and how are conflicts handled?

Birdie, Access Care Planning, Log my Care and Unique IQ all describe offline working on their own pages. For the others, ask.

Security and data

You're putting health information about the people you support into this system, so ask every supplier the same three things:

• Are you ISO 27001 certified? It's the international standard for managing information security.
• Do you hold Cyber Essentials Plus? It's a UK government-backed scheme where an independent assessor tests your technical controls.
• Where is our data hosted? Ask for the country and the hosting provider, and whether any data leaves the UK.

To use GP Connect, your own organisation needs "standards met" on the Data Security and Protection Toolkit, so ask how each supplier helps with that. For reference, Birdie is ISO 27001 and Cyber Essentials Plus certified and hosts data in the UK. PASS says it's protected to ISO 27001 and Cyber Essentials Plus standards, and Care Control's website displays both certification logos.

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What will it really cost?

The headline price is rarely what you end up paying. The GOV.UK guidance says most suppliers price on a minimum term commitment, often a year. The monthly charge may depend on staff numbers, system users or the number of people you support, with one-off costs for extras such as training on top. It also says you may be able to negotiate.

The public prices in this guide show how different the pricing models are:

• Birdie starts from £200 a month, with the final price based on scheduled care hours.
• CareLineLive charges per carer, from £8.10 a month, with a £120 monthly minimum and onboarding up to £300.
• PASS Foundation starts from £185 a month for 1–15 people supported, on a 12-month minimum term.
• Log my Care has a free Starter plan for fewer than 10 people supported. On its Pro plan, rostering, eMAR and the Family App are add-ons.

Because one product charges by care hours, another by carer and another by the number of people supported, you can't compare them fairly on headline prices. Send every supplier the same profile (people supported, weekly care hours, carers, office users and branches) and ask for a written quote that covers:

• the monthly cost at your current size, and at 25% and 50% growth
• any monthly minimum
• onboarding, data migration and training fees
• the minimum contract term, notice period and what happens at renewal
• which features cost extra, now and in future
• hardware, such as phones for carers

Cost your own team's time too. The extra hours in the first month are part of the price.

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Support and switching

Most agencies reading this already have a system, so the real question is whether switching is worth the disruption. Switching does take work: moving information about the people you support and your staff, retraining carers and office staff, and running some processes in both systems for a short time.

Before you sign, ask each supplier:

• What data can you migrate, and who does the work? Care plans, medication, staff records, rota patterns and funder rates all matter.
• What do the first 90 days look like? Ask for names, not just a process diagram.
• What support is included after go-live? Check the channels, the hours and whether there's a cost.
• Can I speak to an agency my size that switched in the last year? The GOV.UK guidance points out that suppliers may only give you the names of their most satisfied customers, so ask those references about the hard parts too.

Check your current contract's notice period before you book demos, so you aren't paying for two systems for longer than you need to. The DSCR switching checklist from Digital Care Hub walks through the steps. If Birdie is on your shortlist, our page on switching to Birdie explains what to expect.

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Domiciliary care software for small or growing agencies

If you're a small agency, perhaps with the owner also acting as registered manager, the right system is the one your team will actually use from week one, at a price that doesn't penalise you for growing.

Price structure matters more than the headline number. Per-carer pricing (CareLineLive) is easy to predict when your team is stable, but it rises with every new carer, including part-time bank staff. Pricing by care hours (Birdie) moves with the work you deliver. A starter plan with a cap (PASS Foundation for up to 15 people, or Log my Care's free Starter for fewer than 10) keeps costs low at first, so work out what you'll pay once you pass the cap, with every feature you need included.

Minimums and contract terms. A 12-month minimum is common. Ask about the notice period and what happens to the price at renewal.

Time to get going. Ask how long a typical agency your size takes to go live, and what the supplier needs from you in that time.

What you'll outgrow. With 15 carers, a basic care-recording tool and a separate rota can feel fine. With 40, reconciling the two becomes a weekly job. Choose for where you expect to be in two years, not where you are today.

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Home care management software for multi-branch agencies

With several branches, the care recording basics matter just as much, but the system also has to support oversight across sites. Ask about these four things:

• Cross-branch reporting. Can you see visit punctuality, missed visits, medication issues and margin by branch in one view, without exporting to spreadsheets?
• Permissions. Can you limit what each branch manager, coordinator and carer sees to their own branch, while head office sees everything?
• Consistency. Can you set care plan templates, assessments, rota patterns and audit forms centrally, so every branch works the same way and evidences care the same way for CQC?
• Finance and payroll load. Can it invoice several funders at different rates and handle pay rules across branches without manual workarounds?

Several products here describe multi-site features on their own pages. Log my Care's Outstanding plan is for groups and multi-site providers, Care Control lists multi-site management, Nourish says its platform works across multiple branches, and Access lists customisable access levels. Birdie has a dedicated offer for large and multi-branch care businesses. In demos, ask to see a live multi-branch account, not a single-branch demo described as if it scales.

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Domiciliary care software FAQs

What is the best domiciliary care software in the UK?

There isn't one best product for every agency. The best domiciliary care software for you keeps your rota, care records and invoicing connected, is on the NHS assured list, works offline for carers, and is priced in a way that suits your size. Use the comparison table above to shortlist two or three products, then test them on your own visits in the demo.

How much does domiciliary care software cost?

Four products in this guide publish a price. These were checked on 22 October 2026 and exclude VAT:

• Birdie: from £200 a month, with the final price based on scheduled care hours.
• CareLineLive: from £8.10 per carer a month, with a £120 monthly minimum.
• PASS: Foundation plan from £185 a month for 1–15 people supported, 12-month minimum.
• Log my Care: Starter plan free for fewer than 10 people supported.

Access Care Planning, Nourish, Unique IQ and Care Control are price on request. Your real cost depends on your size, the features you need, onboarding fees and the contract term, so get written quotes based on the same agency profile.

Does domiciliary care software include rostering and payroll?

Not always. Some products include rostering, invoicing and payroll in every plan. Others sell rostering as an add-on or a separate product, or connect to a separate payroll or finance system. NHS assurance doesn't settle it either: government guidance says digital social care records "do not normally include rostering or electronic medication administration records (eMAR)". Check the rostering column in the table above, then ask each supplier to show you a visit going from the rota to the invoice and the pay run.

Is domiciliary care software the same as home care management software?

Yes, in practice. "Domiciliary care" is the formal term CQC uses for care delivered in people's own homes, and "home care" is the everyday term for the same thing. Both describe software that runs a home care agency: rostering, care plans and visit records, medication, and invoicing and payroll. Care home software is different, because it's built around shifts in one building rather than visits across a geographic area.

Do home care agencies have to use digital care records?

The Department of Health and Social Care's guidance on choosing and implementing digital social care records doesn't describe them as a legal requirement. It's written to help providers choose and set up a system. CQC has its own guidance on digital record systems in adult social care.

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Choosing the right domiciliary care software

Shortlist two or three products from the table. Send each one the same agency profile and the same questions on the rota, offline working, security, total cost and switching. Then judge the demos on your own visits rather than the vendor's script: ask to see a carer check out of a visit, and follow that visit through to the invoice and the pay run.

You can see how Birdie's pricing works on our pricing page.

Want to try Birdie for your business? Hit the demo button below.

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Lucy Ogilvie is Senior Content and Community Lead at Birdie. She founded and runs Flock, a free community for over 4,000 UK social care business leaders.

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