How Much Does Assisted Living Cost in Florida?

Assisted living in Florida had a statewide median price of $5,610 a month in 2025, or $67,320 a year, according to the CareScout Cost of Care Survey. The national median was $6,200 a month. Florida prices ranged from a $3,898 median in the Sebring area to $8,503 in Gainesville, and Medicare pays for none of it.

CareScout, formerly the Genworth Cost of Care Survey, contacted 211,985 long-term care providers between July and November 2025 and completed about 16,000 surveys, 4,944 of them with licensed assisted living communities. The figures are medians, so half the facilities charge less and half charge more. A survey does not replace a facility’s own written fee schedule, and that schedule is the first document to ask for.

1. How Much Does Assisted Living Cost in Florida per Month?

The Florida median was $5,610 a month in 2025, which is $184 a day and $67,320 a year. The median rose 5% over the prior year, so a family budgeting for a move in 2026 should expect a higher figure than the survey shows. At $5,610 a month, $100,000 of savings pays for about 18 months.

The monthly fee usually bundles the room, meals and a base level of help with daily tasks. Many facilities charge more as a resident needs more help, through care levels or added services, so the starting price is rarely the price a resident pays two years later. Ask each facility for its full fee schedule, its rule for raising rates, and its policy if the resident later qualifies for Medicaid.

2. What Does Assisted Living Cost in Each Florida Area?

Prices vary more by area than most families expect. The 2025 medians below come from the same survey.

Medians for the other Florida areas in the survey fell between those figures, including $5,925 in the Palm Bay area, $5,748 in the North Port area and $5,500 in the Deltona area.

3. What Makes One Facility Cost More Than Another?

Two things drive most of the difference, the area and the level of care. Florida licenses every assisted living facility for one or more categories of care, namely standard, extended congregate care, limited nursing services, limited mental health, or memory care services. A standard license covers personal services such as help with bathing and dressing. Extended congregate care lets a resident stay as the resident becomes more impaired, and limited nursing services let the facility provide some nursing care. A facility licensed for more care usually charges more for it.

Memory care for a parent with dementia is a separate license category in Florida. The survey data this page relies on does not publish a separate memory care median, so this page does not state one, and each facility should quote its memory care rate in writing.

The admission agreement matters too. Florida gives an assisted living resident at least 45 days’ notice before a facility relocates the resident or ends the residency, except for a medical emergency or harmful conduct, and the written reasons must go to the resident or the resident’s representative. A family should read what the agreement says will happen if the money runs out, because a facility that takes no Medicaid plan can give notice when private payments stop.

4. How Does Assisted Living Compare With a Nursing Home or Home Care?

A shared nursing home room costs nearly twice what assisted living does, and the gap explains why families try to keep a parent in assisted living as long as the parent’s care allows. The Florida nursing home cost page covers the nursing home side and what Medicare and Medicaid pay there.

5. Who Pays for Assisted Living?

Medicare does not pay for assisted living. Medicare is health insurance, and it pays nothing for long-term personal care in any setting, as our guide to whether Medicare covers assisted living explains.

Florida Medicaid pays for the care services in assisted living, through the Statewide Medicaid Managed Care Long-Term Care program, and not for room and board. A resident needs a nursing-home level of care, income of $2,982 a month or less in 2026 (or a qualified income trust), and $2,000 or less in countable assets, and then waits on a statewide list for release. The facility also has to contract with the resident’s plan. Our page on whether Medicaid pays for assisted living in Florida covers the waitlist and the steps, and the eligibility calculator checks the numbers.

Long-term care insurance pays what the policy says. A policy that reimburses actual charges and a policy that pays a flat cash amount each month are treated differently once a parent applies for Medicaid, because Florida can count a flat cash benefit as income.

What Does Medicaid Planning for Assisted Living Cost?

A Medicaid application, including the eligibility analysis, the verification packet, the filing and the answers to the agency’s requests, is a flat fee from $3,500. A qualified income trust is a flat fee from $750. A Medicaid asset protection trust, which works only when signed more than five years before an application, is a flat fee from $6,000. Advertised fees are honored for 90 days from the posted date, and any government costs are additional and passed through at cost.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common Situations

The daughter comparing two facilities in Naples. A daughter tours two facilities for her father, one at $6,500 a month and one at $9,200. The higher price comes with an extended congregate care license, so her father could stay as his needs grow, and she asks the first facility what happens when he needs more help than its license allows.

The mother with $150,000 and a $2,400 pension. A widow in Jacksonville pays $6,800 a month and draws $4,400 a month from savings. Her son calls before the account falls below $50,000, so the Medicaid screening and the application are underway while there is still time to plan.

Sources of Law

• CareScout Cost of Care Survey, conducted July to November 2025, Florida statewide and metropolitan medians for assisted living, nursing home, home care and adult day care, and the national assisted living median, carescout.com/cost-of-care. Retrieved October 1, 2026.
• Fla. Stat. §429.07(3) (license categories of standard, extended congregate care, limited nursing services, limited mental health and memory care services), 2026 Florida Statutes, retrieved October 1, 2026; §429.28(1)(k) (45 days’ notice of relocation or termination of residency).
• Florida Department of Elder Affairs, Statewide Medicaid Managed Care Long-Term Care Program; Florida Department of Children and Families, SSI-Related Medicaid Program Fact Sheet, updated July 2025 (assisted living personal needs allowance; Optional State Supplementation; Long-Term Care Insurance Partnership); 42 C.F.R. §441.310(a)(2) (room and board). All retrieved October 1, 2026.
• Medicare.gov, Long-term care (Medicare does not pay for long-term care). Retrieved October 1, 2026. 2026 Medicaid figures ($2,982 income cap, $2,000 asset limit, $4,067 maximum spousal income allowance) as verified on our eligibility calculator.
• Case retold below: Crider v. Department of Health & Rehabilitative Services, 555 So. 2d 408 (Fla. 1st DCA 1989). Opinion read in full; retrieved October 1, 2026.

Why a Few Dollars of Income Can Decide Who Pays

Cases with this shape keep coming up, and it is usually a parent whose income sits just over the line. In 1987 an 82-year-old man lived in a nursing home in Plant City. His income was $1,032.90 a month, and the federal Medicaid cap for nursing home care at the time was $1,020, so he was $12.90 over. Two weeks after he applied, a circuit court ordered him to pay his wife $336 a month in support, in a separate maintenance case with no divorce, and the family argued that the $336 was no longer his to spend.

The state denied him, and the appeals court affirmed in 1989. Nothing in the record showed that a judge had actually weighed the couple’s finances, and the order could easily have been an agreement between husband and wife. Income paid in his own name, which he controlled, stayed his income.

In reviewing Florida’s Medicaid decisions on income, I have a few take-home points. The first is that the cost of care and the income cap work against each other. A Florida assisted living resident at the 2025 median pays $5,610 a month, and a parent with income of even a few dollars over Florida’s 2026 cap of $2,982 is shut out of long-term care Medicaid unless the overage goes into a qualified income trust each month. The practice pointer is to compare the gross income, before any deductions, against the cap before the first application, because the trust has to be funded in the month the income arrives.

The second is the spouse at home. Today Florida law protects a spouse at home through a monthly income allowance, up to $4,067 in 2026, and through an asset allowance of $162,660. Avoid building eligibility on an agreed court order, because the state looks past a support order that the spouses arranged between themselves. One limit is worth stating plainly. The income trust that answers this man’s problem was added to federal Medicaid law in 1993, after his case, so the court never had that option in front of it.

Kevin D. Klagge, Esq., admitted in Florida since 2012. The case described above is a decision of a Florida court rather than a matter handled by this firm. Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

Updated on October 1, 2026. Reviewed by Kevin D. Klagge, Esq., Fla. Bar No. 99502. Attorney Kevin Klagge represents families, businesses, and international clients in estate and tax planning, business structuring, and international law, with a focus on Florida legal tools. He litigates estate and business issues in court. General information about Florida law, not legal advice, and no attorney-client relationship is created. Do not send confidential information until we have agreed to represent you.