Home Instead franchise unit economics
Home Instead franchisees run a non-medical in-home senior care agency, billing caregiver hours for companionship, personal care and household help. Across 611 US franchised businesses the average was $2,750,876 of gross sales on 79,658 client hours served, with a median of $2,352,451. Two thirds of the network has been operating more than twenty years.
- Primary source
- Home Instead, Inc., 2026 Franchise Disclosure Document
- Items read
- Items 5 and 6 for fees; Item 19 for sales and any profit figure; Item 20 for the location count
- Population
- 611 of 626 locations
- Our calculations
- Marked on the page with an asterisk. Method
- Last reviewed
- 26 September 2026
Disclosure-based. Not a forecast, not an offer to sell a franchise, and not advice.
Every Home Instead office bills about $34.50 an hour. The average office, the median office and the $13 million office all land within 70 cents of each other. So revenue is a count of hours: the average franchise sells 79,658 client hours a year. That is 1,532 a week, or roughly 51 caregivers working 30 hours each. Growing means adding caregivers who stay, and that is the whole business.
- The hourly rate is $34.50 an hour at every size of office. $34.53 at the average, $34.09 at the median, $34.76 at the largest office in the system.
- The average office sells 1,532 client hours a week. About 51 caregivers at 30 hours each. The median office sells 1,327.
- Two thirds of the network has been running over twenty years. 411 of 611 offices, and only 31 are under five years old.
- An office past twenty years averages roughly $3.1m against $571,000 in its first two. About 1,400 more client hours a week, built one client at a time.
- Fees take 7.2% of the average office's revenue. 5% royalty, 2% marketing fund, $6,000 of technology fee. One of the lightest loads in franchising.
How much does a Home Instead franchise make?
The average Home Instead unit reported $2,750,876 of revenue in the 2026 FDD, and the median reported $2,352,451. The brand’s disclosure document discloses revenue and not profit, so what an owner keeps depends on the cost structure set out below. Fees come off the top first, at about 7% of sales across royalty, brand fund and the rest of the stack. Revenue is not income. Rent, wages, cost of goods and the franchise fees all come out before an owner is paid. The figures for the highest-selling and lowest-selling businesses are below.
Hours
One rate, everywhere.
| Gross sales | Client hours served | Revenue per hour | Hours per week | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Average office | $2,750,876 | 79,658 | $34.53 | 1,532 |
| Median office | $2,352,451 | 69,017 | $34.09 | 1,327 |
| Largest office | $13,070,342 | 376,064 | $34.76 | 7,232 |
| Smallest office | $38,465 | 893 | $43.07 | 17 |
Gross sales and client hours as the brand reported it.
The biggest office in the system charges 23 cents an hour more than the average one. $34.76 against $34.53, on nearly five times the volume. Whatever scale buys in this business, pricing power is plainly outside it. An office billing $13 million is doing exactly what an office billing $2.7 million does, 376,064 times instead of 79,658.
That makes your forecast a staffing forecast. 1,532 hours a week at the average office is about 51 caregivers working 30 hours each, or 38 working 40. Every additional caregiver who stays is worth roughly $54,000 a year at 30 hours a week. Every one who leaves takes the same amount with them until you replace both the caregiver and the client.
The smallest office in the system bills $43.07 an hour and stays the smallest. 893 hours a year is 17 a week, a single client, part time. Charging nine dollars an hour above the system rate produced $38,465 of revenue. Rate is the lever that looks available and delivers least.
Top performers
What separates the top Home Instead performers
Home Instead splits its locations into groups instead of publishing one average. The best group averaged $13,070,342 a year. The worst averaged $38,465. Both run the same brand, on the same agreement, paying the same fees. The middle location sold $2,352,451. The average was $2,750,876. More than half the system is below the number the brand quotes.
Decided before you open
- Trade area and site.A 339.8× gap between bands is not an operating gap. Catchment, daytime population and what sits next door set the ceiling before the first customer arrives.
- Territory, and how much of it is real.This model sells from a territory rather than a building. Two owners with the same brand and different ground are running different businesses, and density decides how much driving sits between jobs.
- What you spend to open.Opening costs $92,640 to $350,550, a 3.8× range inside one brand. The high end usually buys more capacity, so the cheapest build is not always the cheapest route to the top band.
Live operating levers
- Billed hours, the operating driver.This model bills on billed hours. The owner pays for every hour worked and bills only the hours a client accepts, so the job is to keep those two close and to protect the gap between the rate charged and the rate paid. It is worth watching every week, because by the time it turns up in a monthly close the quarter is half gone.
- Fees, and where the minimum bites.Fees run about 7.0% of sales. A minimum sits underneath the percentage, so the low-volume location pays the higher effective rate. The brand charges the weakest locations the most. Work out the sales level where the percentage overtakes the minimum and know which side of it you are on, because the answer changes what an extra dollar of sales is worth.
- The first year.This filing shows how a new location builds up, so the ramp can be underwritten from the document rather than assumed. Read two things out of it: the month sales cross the point where costs are covered, and how much cash you fund before that month arrives. Everything before break-even is paid for by you.
Context you underwrite around
- The reporting screen.611 of 626 locations are behind these figures. Locations open less than the full year, brand-owned, or not meeting the reporting criteria are excluded, so the numbers describe locations that cleared that screen, not the system as a whole.
- What the disclosure leaves out.Item 19 publishes no profit or cost data for franchised locations, no attainment figure. Anything below the sales line has to come from the franchisor or from owners you call.
Years open
What the years actually buy.
| Years in system | Offices | Share of network | Estimated average sales | Estimated hours per week |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 to 2 | 14 | 2.3% | $571,000 | 318 |
| 3 to 4 | 17 | 2.8% | $1,162,000 | 647 |
| 5 to 7 | 21 | 3.4% | $2,012,000 | 1,120 |
| 8 to 10 | 25 | 4.1% | $2,670,000 | 1,487 |
| 11 to 15 | 40 | 6.5% | $2,338,000 | 1,302 |
| 16 to 20 | 83 | 13.6% | $2,614,000 | 1,456 |
| 21 to 25 | 193 | 31.6% | $3,110,000 | 1,732 |
| 26 and over | 218 | 35.7% | $3,156,000 | 1,758 |
The brand reported the office counts and the years-open groups, from its own table of sales against years in the system.
The first five years are the climb. Roughly $571,000 in years one and two, $1,162,000 by years three and four, $2,012,000 by years five to seven. In hours that is 318 a week rising to 1,120, call it 24 caregivers added over six years. After that the curve flattens and the remaining twenty years add about another 600 hours a week.
Every office under five years old sits below $1.5 million. All 31 offices in their first four years sit in the $1,000,000 to $1,499,999 group or below. No office reaches the higher groups in its first four years. Plan the cash to reach year five.
Two thirds of the network is over twenty years old. 411 of 611 offices, and 218 have been running more than 26 years. Benchmarking yourself against the $2,750,876 system average means measuring a young office against a network of twenty-year-old ones. Compare an office with others of the same age.
Where the revenue sits.
| Gross sales | Offices | Share |
|---|---|---|
| $7,500,000 and over | 15 | 3% |
| $4,500,000 to $7,499,999 | 65 | 11% |
| $3,000,000 to $4,499,999 | 118 | 19% |
| $2,000,000 to $2,999,999 | 187 | 31% |
| $1,500,000 to $1,999,999 | 99 | 16% |
| $1,000,000 to $1,499,999 | 76 | 12% |
| $500,000 to $999,999 | 39 | 6% |
| Under $500,000 | 12 | 2% |
As the brand reported it.
Nearly a third of the network sits between $2 million and $3 million. Most offices sit in that group, at about 1,400 client hours a week. A third of the system is above $3 million and 8% below $1 million. So the distribution is tight compared with most of the brands we have looked at.
Fifteen offices bill over $7.5 million. At the system rate that is more than 4,100 hours a week, or something like 140 caregivers. Those offices are run differently from the 187 in the middle group. The hourly rate says they earn the same per hour for it.
Fees and the network
What the fees come to.
| Gross sales | Royalty at 5% | Marketing fund at 2% | Technology | Total | Share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $500,000 | $25,000 | $10,000 | $6,000 | $41,000 | 8.2% |
| $1,000,000 | $50,000 | $20,000 | $6,000 | $76,000 | 7.6% |
| $2,352,451 (median) | $117,623 | $47,049 | $6,000 | $170,672 | 7.3% |
| $2,750,876 (average) | $137,544 | $55,018 | $6,000 | $198,561 | 7.2% |
Ours, applying the disclosed rates.
7.2% is among the lightest fee loads in franchising. The schedule leaves out any required local advertising spend or percentage-based cooperative, and the technology fee is a rounding error at this revenue. Compare that with the wellness studio brands, where fixed fees alone run $28,000 to $31,000 against revenue a tenth the size.
Which means the fee schedule is beside the point here. Every dollar that matters sits in the gap between what you bill a client per hour and what you pay a caregiver per hour. That gap is yours to measure. At an hourly rate of $34.53, one dollar an hour of wage across 79,658 hours is $79,658 a year.
The network of locations.
| Year | Start | Opened | Terminations | Reacquired | Ceased other | End |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 614 | 8 | 1 | 0 | 5 | 616 |
| 2024 | 616 | 17 | 0 | 4 | 10 | 619 |
| 2025 | 619 | 17 | 4 | 2 | 4 | 626 |
As the brand reported it.
The network grew by twelve offices in three years. 614 to 626. This is a mature system where almost all the activity is inside existing territories. That matches a network two thirds of which is over twenty years old.
The transfer market is where a second territory comes from. With openings running at 17 a year against a 626-office base, buying an established office is the realistic route to scale.
Questions we get asked
What is a Home Instead office actually worth per hour?
About $34.50, and the rate changes littlewith size. The average office bills $34.53, the median $34.09 and the largest in the system $34.76. So revenue is a straight function of hours sold: 79,658 a year at the average office, 69,017 at the median. Track hours weekly and the dollars follow.
How many caregivers does the average office need?
Around 51 at 30 hours a week, or 38 at 40 hours, to cover 1,532 client hours weekly. The median office needs about 44 at 30 hours. Each caregiver working 30 hours a week is worth roughly $54,000 of annual revenue at the system hourly rate. That is the number to set recruiting and retention spend against.
What should my office be billing at my age?
Offices average about $571,000 in years one and two, $1,162,000 in years three and four, $2,012,000 in years five to seven, and about $3.1 million past twenty years. Every one of the 31 offices under five years old bills below $1.5 million. Measuring a three-year-old office against the $2,750,876 system average compares it with a network two thirds of which is over twenty years old.
What does the brand cost me?
5% royalty, 2% marketing fund and $500 a month of technology fee, $198,561 a year at the average office, or 7.2% of sales. The schedule leaves out any required local advertising spend or mandatory cooperative. The technology fee can rise by up to 25% a year on 60 days' notice. By the standards of the brands in this series, that is a light schedule. What is left depends on the gap between the hourly rate charged and the hourly wage paid.
Who does bookkeeping for a Home Instead franchise?
Wages is the business, so the close has to reconcile scheduled hours, worked hours and billed hours every period. One hour of overtime billed at the normal rate costs the whole of that hour's profit. Gross Sales for royalty excludes reimbursed caregiver mileage and out-of-pocket expenses, which means those flows need separating from service revenue at the point of entry. Private-pay receivables and any Medicaid or long-term-care-insurance billing age very differently and want tracking apart. Averan provides bookkeeping, controller, and fractional CFO support for franchise owners and has Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisors on the team.
- No profit figure. The filing reports sales and not earnings, so what an owner keeps is not disclosed.
- No cost lines. Wages, rent and cost of goods are not broken out, so margin cannot be rebuilt from the document.
- No attainment figure. The filing does not say how many locations reached the average it publishes.
Questions worth putting to Home Instead
The filing answers what it answers. These are the gaps an owner or a buyer should close directly.
- What do locations at the median spend on wages and rent as a share of sales? The filing reports sales only.
- What separates the highest-selling locations from the lowest: trade area, years open, size, or the owner?
- How long does a new location take to reach the average you publish, and what does the build-up look like month by month?
- At what level of sales do the minimum charges stop applying and the percentage take over?
- How many Home Instead locations closed, were sold, or changed hands last year, and why?
Run your own numbers.
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