APA for home care in France: who qualifies, 2026 amounts and how to apply

How the Allocation Personnalisée d'Autonomie funds home care in France: GIR 1-4 eligibility, 2026 monthly ceilings by GIR, the plan d'aide, the co-payment and how to apply.

The Allocation Personnalisée d’Autonomie (APA) is France’s main benefit for older people who need help with daily life, and its home-care form, APA à domicile, funds a personalised care plan rather than a cash handout. If you build or run software for a home-care service in France, APA is the money your schedule, your visits and your billing all key off, so it pays to know exactly how it is decided and paid.

This is the deep version of the short APA section in our pillar on AGGIR, GIR and APA. It covers who qualifies, the 2026 amounts by GIR, how the plan d’aide is built, the difference between APA at home and in an establishment, the co-payment, and how to apply. The money figures are this year’s numbers, re-set annually, so read them as “true when checked”.

Who qualifies for APA at home?

Three conditions, and income isn’t one of them. You qualify for APA à domicile if you are aged 60 or over, resident in France, and assessed in GIR 1 to 4 by the AGGIR grid (see the official pour-les-personnes-agees.gouv.fr and the service-public.gouv.fr APA page).

GIR is the gate. The AGGIR grid sorts each person into a Groupe Iso-Ressources from 1 (most dependent) to 6 (autonomous), and only groups 1 to 4 open the door. GIR 5 and 6 fall outside APA, though a pension fund (caisse de retraite) may offer smaller help. The line between GIR 4 and GIR 5 is the one that decides most cases, which is why the assessment visit matters so much.

Income doesn’t change whether you’re eligible. It only sets how much of the plan you pay yourself. Someone in GIR 2 with a comfortable pension still qualifies; they just carry a larger participation. That split, eligibility on dependency and co-payment on income, is worth holding onto, because it’s the part people most often get wrong.

APA à domicile vs APA en établissement: what’s the difference?

Same benefit, two settings, two very different mechanics. APA à domicile funds a plan d’aide for someone living at home. APA en établissement covers the dependency tariff for someone living in a nursing home.

At home, the plan d’aide can pay for home-help hours, téléassistance, respite for a family carer, assistive devices, meal delivery and small home adaptations. The département’s équipe médico-sociale visits, scores AGGIR, and proposes the plan against the ceiling for that person’s GIR. In an establishment, APA works differently: it covers the tarif dépendance set for the resident’s GIR band in that facility, and there’s no household plan d’aide to build. This spoke is about the home-care form, the one that actually drives a service’s rota and reporting.

What are the 2026 APA amounts by GIR?

Each GIR carries a national monthly ceiling for the plan d’aide, and the ceiling rises with dependency. From 1 January 2026 the à-domicile ceilings are:

GIR 1 — €2,080.33 per month
GIR 2 — €1,682.30 per month
GIR 3 — €1,215.99 per month
GIR 4 — €811.52 per month

Read these as ceilings, not cheques. The number is the most the plan d’aide can be valued at for that GIR; the actual plan is built up to it based on real needs, and then the participation is taken off. These amounts are revalued every year, so this year’s figures are a snapshot, not a constant. Confirm the current ceiling on the service-public.gouv.fr APA page before you quote it to anyone.

How does the plan d’aide work?

The plan d’aide is the heart of APA à domicile: it’s the personalised list of help the médico-sociale team proposes after seeing the person at home. It sets what’s funded and how many hours, up to the GIR ceiling.

During the home visit the team scores AGGIR to fix the GIR, then works out what the person actually needs, morning help getting up, so many hours of home help a week, a téléassistance subscription, meals, and so on. That becomes a costed plan, capped at the ceiling for the GIR. The département approves it, and from an operator’s side that approved plan is the reference everything else has to match. Your rota should deliver the hours in the plan. Your billing should invoice against it. When they drift apart is when the effectivité check bites.

How much does the person pay? The APA co-payment

APA rarely pays the whole plan. The beneficiary contributes a participation set by income, so the département’s share and the household’s share together fund the plan.

Roughly, and for this year: below about €933.89 of monthly income there’s no participation at all; the rate then climbs on a sliding scale as income rises, reaching up to 90% above roughly €3,439.31 a month. Those thresholds are indexed and shift each year, so treat the exact euros as this year’s figures. The shape is the durable part: no co-payment at the bottom, a sliding scale in the middle, a capped maximum share at the top. Because eligibility is on GIR and co-payment is on income, two people in the same GIR can end up paying very different amounts for the same plan.

How do you apply for APA?

You apply through your conseil départemental, and the assessment comes to you. The steps are straightforward, even if the timeline varies by département.

File the dossier with the conseil départemental (the request form and the current rules are on the service-public.gouv.fr APA page).
The home visit. The équipe médico-sociale comes to the home, scores the AGGIR grid and fixes the GIR.
The plan d’aide is proposed for APA à domicile, built up to the GIR ceiling.
The département decides and notifies the amount, the plan and the participation.

Because the whole thing runs through the département, the numbers your software carries, the GIR, the plan d’aide, the hours, are the same numbers the département will check later.

What APA means for your care software

APA isn’t just funding; it creates reporting obligations your software has to carry. The département doesn’t take it on trust that the plan d’aide hours were delivered. It runs a contrôle d’effectivité, and that check is backed by télégestion, the electronic time-stamping of each home visit. The décret of 29 April 2024 set the reference period for that control at no less than six months.

So APA quietly sets three things your product must keep aligned: the approved plan d’aide, the télégestion log of visits actually made, and the billing that invoices against the plan. If those three tell different stories, the effectivité check is where it surfaces, and it’s the operator who spends the week reconciling them. We go deeper on the mechanics in our guides to télégestion and contrôle d’effectivité and to the Service Autonomie à Domicile (SAD) reform.

Frequently asked questions

Who qualifies for APA at home in France?

You qualify if you are aged 60 or over, resident in France, and assessed in GIR 1 to 4 by the AGGIR grid. GIR 5 and 6 are not eligible, though a pension fund may offer smaller help. Income doesn’t decide eligibility. It only sets your co-payment. The département’s médico-sociale team scores the grid during a home visit.

What are the 2026 APA à domicile amounts by GIR?

From 1 January 2026 the national monthly ceilings for the plan d’aide are €2,080.33 (GIR 1), €1,682.30 (GIR 2), €1,215.99 (GIR 3) and €811.52 (GIR 4). These are ceilings, not cash paid out. Your actual plan is built up to that limit, then an income-based participation is deducted. The figures are re-set every year.

How do I apply for APA?

File a dossier with your conseil départemental. The département’s équipe médico-sociale then visits your home, scores the AGGIR grid and, for APA à domicile, proposes a personalised plan d’aide. The département decides and notifies you. You can find the request and current rules on the official service-public.gouv.fr APA page (F10009).

How much will I have to pay towards my APA plan?

APA covers a share of your plan d’aide, and you pay the rest as a participation. Roughly, below about €933.89 of monthly income this year there’s no participation; it then rises on a sliding scale up to 90% above about €3,439.31. So APA is never fully means-tested for eligibility, but the co-payment is income-based. Those thresholds move each year.

When APA sets the rules, your software has to follow them

APA turns care into structured obligations: a GIR, a costed plan d’aide, hours to deliver, a participation to bill and a six-month effectivité report to survive. Off-the-shelf packages often treat those as separate modules that don’t quite line up. Building Domihome, the detail that surprised me most was how much of an operator’s week goes into making the plan d’aide, the télégestion log and the billing export tell the same story, so we built them to share one record rather than three. As a nurse before I built software, that reconciliation was the part I most wanted to disappear. See what we did for Domihome, or book an intro call.

This guide is informational and not billing, legal or medical advice. France’s APA rules, ceilings and co-payment thresholds are revalued regularly, and several 2024-2026 reforms around home care are still in transition. Confirm current rules and figures with the official sources, including pour-les-personnes-agees.gouv.fr and the service-public.gouv.fr APA page (F10009). Last verified 14 July 2026.