What Signal Homecare costs
Working out what support at home costs is unexpectedly hard. Prices are quoted by the hour, by the week, by the month, and rarely in a way you can compare. This page puts the numbers side by side, including ours, and is honest about what each one actually buys.
When you're wondering about another call
Most families don't arrive here choosing between Signal Homecare and care visits. They arrive wondering whether the visits need to increase.
Say there's already a call in the morning and another in the evening. Those are working. It's the long middle of the day that sits with you — the hours nobody sees, when you find yourself ringing for no particular reason.
So the question isn't whether to replace the calls that are already there. It's whether to add another one.
A lunchtime call every day is seven. Weekdays only is five.
7 extra visits a weekone every day
Adding 7 extra visits a week would cost £4,550 a year, on top of the care you already pay for. Signal Homecare is £660 — 15% of that, or about what those visits would cost over 8 weeks.
This isn't a swap. The morning and evening calls stay either way, and Signal Homecare won't make anyone lunch or keep them company. What it can do is show you whether the day is unfolding the way it usually does — so if that extra call is needed, you'll see it coming, and if it isn't needed yet, you'll know that too.
Based on a 30-minute visit at £25 an hour — £12.50 a visit. £25 is the figure Age UK gives for privately arranged care at home; real rates run from about £25 to £38 an hour depending on where you live and what's needed. NICE sets 30 minutes as the shortest a home care visit should normally be, with briefer ones kept for specific tasks or "to check if someone is safe and well". Treat these as a starting point, not a quote.
Our price, in full
One hardware cost, one monthly charge, no long-term contract.
£399 one-off for the hardware, then £55 a month for the service. That's £1,059 in the first year and £660 a year after that. The monthly charge is rolling — you can stop whenever you want, and there's no minimum term.
What that covers
- Two door sensors — usually the front and back doors.
- Two motion sensors — typically the downstairs hall and the upstairs landing, though you can put them wherever the day actually happens.
- One temperature sensor, so a house that's got too cold doesn't go unnoticed.
- Two smart plugs for the kettle and the television, or whatever else marks out an ordinary day in that particular home.
- 24/7 system monitoring, so if a sensor drops offline we know about it, and so do you.
That's the kit, and it's the same for every home. What changes is where things go, which is worth thinking about properly — the sensors only tell you something useful if they're covering the parts of the day you're actually wondering about. Additional sensors are available at extra cost.
Setting it up is designed to be something you can do yourself. The sensors stick on, there's nothing to wire in, and the hub handles the rest. Most people have it done within an hour.
For a limited time, we'll come and do it for you instead — included, not an extra. We'll talk through the layout and the daily routine, and place everything around the person rather than around the house.
The wider picture
The extra call isn't the only thing families weigh up. Here is what the realistic options cost across a year, for one person, in the UK. Cheapest first.
Scroll the table sideways to see every column.
| Option | What it costs | What it actually is |
|---|---|---|
| Council telecare | Varies; often means-tested | A pull-cord or pendant linked to a monitoring centre, arranged through adult social services. Usually an installation charge and then a monthly fee. Worth asking your council about first. |
| Personal alarm, bought privately | About £408 year one, then about £324 |
A pendant or wristband. From around £27 a month plus an £84 setup fee. Fall-detection versions start nearer £34 a month. Someone presses it, a monitoring centre answers. |
| Signal Homecare | £1,059 year one, then £660 |
£399 hardware, then £55 a month. Seven sensors covering doors, movement, temperature and appliance use, a routine learned over time, and 24/7 system monitoring. No cameras or microphones. |
| Home care visits | £12.50 a visit; £4,550 a year for a daily call |
Around £25 an hour, and a visit is normally at least half an hour. Someone comes to the home and helps in person with washing, dressing, medication, meals. The only option here that does that. |
| Residential care home | About £67,500 | UK average of £1,298 a week if you fund it yourself. Accommodation, meals and round-the-clock care. |
| Live-in care | About £62,000–£78,000 | £1,200–£1,500 a week. A carer lives in the home. Keeps the person where they are, at close to care-home cost. |
| Nursing home | About £79,800 | UK average of £1,535 a week. Residential care with qualified nursing on site. |
A personal alarm costs roughly half what we do, and we're not going to pretend otherwise. The honest question isn't which is cheapest, though — it's which one answers the thing you're actually worried about. That's the next table.
What each option actually does
Price only means something next to capability. Here's where each option genuinely helps, including where we don't.
Scroll the table sideways to see every column.
| Personal alarm | Camera system | Signal Homecare | Home care visits | Residential care | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Works without anyone pressing anything | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Notices gradual change, not just emergencies | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | Partly | ✓ |
| No cameras or microphones | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Nothing to wear, charge or press | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Gives hands-on help | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Responds in an emergency | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | Partly | ✓ |
| The person stays in their own home | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ |
A personal alarm answers an emergency and we don't. A carer does things no sensor can. If what you need is hands-on help, or a response when someone falls, buy that instead of us, or as well as us.
What this comparison isn't
Putting these numbers next to each other is useful, and it's also easy to misread. So, plainly:
Signal Homecare is not a cheaper alternative to care. It doesn't wash anyone, cook anything, or help someone out of a chair. If those are the things that are needed, no amount of sensors will do them. Nothing on this page is an argument for taking away care that someone already relies on.
It is not an emergency response service. It notices patterns over hours and days. It doesn't summon help in the moment. If someone is in immediate danger, call 999.
We're not claiming it delays a move into care. That claim gets made a lot in this market. We don't have the evidence for it, so we're not going to make it.
And it might tell you the opposite of what you hoped. If the days stop looking the way they used to, Signal Homecare will show you that, and the answer may well be that more care is needed, sooner than you thought. We'd rather be the thing that told you than the thing that reassured you.
What Signal Homecare is for is the deciding — the stretch where you're weighing up whether to change anything at all, and going on how the last phone call felt. It gives that decision something to stand on. It sits alongside care, and it works best when the people who know the person best are the ones reading it.
Where these numbers come from
All third-party figures checked in August 2026. Care costs move; if you're reading this much later, treat them as indicative and check the sources directly.
- Age UK: How much does care cost? — home care at around £25 an hour.
- Age UK: Factsheet 46, Paying for care and support at home (May 2026).
- NICE: Home care for older people, quality statement 4: length of home care visits — the 30-minute minimum used for the cost of a single visit.
- Age UK Personal Alarms: Compare personal alarms and pendants — subscription and setup fees.
- NHS: Personal alarms, monitoring systems (telecare) and key safes — council telecare arrangements.
- carehome.co.uk: Care home fees and costs — UK average weekly fees for self-funded residential and nursing care.
- Age UK: Paying for a care home.
- Homecare Association: A Minimum Price for Homecare — background on why hourly rates vary between private and council-arranged care.
Want to talk the numbers through?
We're happy to have a straight conversation about whether Signal Homecare is worth it for your family — including if the answer is no.
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