Psychology Practice Fees: Should You List Them Online?

12 August 2026·7 min read

Quick answer: Yes, list session fees and Medicare rebate details on your website. It filters out enquiries that were never going to book and saves reception a string of "so what's the gap?" calls. Competitor visibility is the real trade-off, but hiding your fee doesn't stop clients comparing — it just makes you harder to enquire with. The one exception is genuinely bespoke pricing, where a clear range plus an easy way to ask beats forcing a single number ✨

Every practice manager has had this call: a promising enquiry, ten minutes of gentle rapport-building, and then the flinch when the fee comes up — because nobody said it out loud until now. 💖 That flinch is expensive. It's the awkward pause before someone says "I'll think it over" and never calls back, and it's the fifteen-minute conversation your reception staff didn't need to have if the number had simply been on the page. The real question isn't whether fee transparency helps conversion — it does — it's whether the discomfort of publishing a figure in black and white is worth what you get back in cleaner enquiries and fewer no-shows from people who couldn't actually manage the gap.

What most psychology practices get wrong

Treating the fee like a secret until intake. Plenty of practices only reveal the session fee once someone has booked a slot. By then the client has invested hope in the process, so a surprise $80 gap feels like a bait and switch, even when it wasn't meant that way.
Quoting the Medicare rebate as if it answers everything. "You get a rebate under a Mental Health Treatment Plan" is true and incomplete. People need the actual arithmetic — fee minus rebate equals gap — spelled out in dollars, not left as homework after a stressful call to their GP.
Burying pricing three clicks deep, or not publishing it at all. A "Fees" link hidden in a PDF, or no mention anywhere on the site, tells anxious first-time clients that money is going to be an uncomfortable conversation before the clinical work has even started.
Writing the fees page in clinical, defensive language. Pages full of "as per our policy" read like a hospital admissions form. People are already nervous about starting therapy — the fees page is a chance to sound human, not like a compliance document.
Forgetting the cancellation policy is part of the money conversation. Clients don't just want to know what a session costs — they want to know what happens if they need to reschedule, because that's often where real cost anxiety shows up.

Copy-paste template: your "Fees & Rebates" website section

Use this as a starting structure. Swap in your real numbers and adjust the tone to match your practice, but keep the five components — clients scan for all five, and missing one is what generates the "quick question" phone calls.

1. Session fee
"A standard 50-minute session is $[fee]. This covers individual therapy sessions with [name/title]. [If applicable: Sessions for couples, families, or extended assessments are priced separately — see below / get in touch.]"

2. Medicare rebate note
"If your GP has referred you under a Mental Health Treatment Plan, you may be eligible for a Medicare rebate of $[rebate amount] per session, for up to [number] sessions per calendar year. Rebates are paid directly to your nominated bank account after each session, usually within a day or two."

3. Gap payment
"After the rebate, your out-of-pocket cost is $[fee minus rebate] per session, payable on the day. We can process your Medicare claim for you on the spot using [HICAPS / Medicare app / manual claim], so you're not left to sort it out yourself."

4. Cancellation policy
"We ask for at least [24/48] hours' notice if you need to reschedule or cancel. Sessions cancelled with less notice than this are charged at [full fee / a $X cancellation fee], as the appointment time is held exclusively for you. We understand things come up — if you're dealing with an emergency, just let us know."

5. How to ask about concession rates
"We hold a limited number of reduced-fee places for clients experiencing financial hardship. If cost is a barrier to getting support, please mention this when you enquire — we'll always try to find a way to make it work, or point you toward a service that can."

How this looks for different practices

Solo private practitioner: Anna runs a one-person practice above a café in Torquay, seeing 18 clients a week. Before she published fees, a third of her enquiry calls ended with "I'll have a think and call you back" — and most never did. Her site now states the $220 fee, the $96.65 Medicare rebate, and the $123.35 gap in one sentence, plus a note that she holds two concession spots. No-shows from price-shocked first sessions dropped, and the calls she gets now open with clinical questions, not cost ones.

Group multidisciplinary practice: Everwell Allied Health in Springvale runs six psychologists alongside OTs and speech pathologists, and used to run one generic "fees" page for the whole clinic — enquiries kept landing on the wrong reception line. They split the page by discipline, with psychology fees ($240 standard, $260 for clinical psychologists) clearly separated and rebate eligibility explained per item number. Reception now spends far less time triaging pricing questions across four services.

Niche practice (anxiety and trauma specialisation): The Steady Room in Fremantle specialises in trauma-focused therapy and charges a premium $260 session fee to reflect specialist training and longer intake assessments. Rather than hide the higher price, they added a short line explaining why intake runs 90 minutes instead of 50, and what that buys a client who's had a hard time being heard elsewhere. Naming the fee alongside the "why" turned a higher number into something that reads as thorough, not expensive.

The mechanics: how to actually publish this

Start with your real numbers — pull your current session fee, your most common Medicare item rebate, and your cancellation window from your policy documents. Write the section in plain English using the template above, then have someone outside clinical practice read it and flag anything that sounds cold.

Put the page where people actually look: linked from your main navigation and again from your "Book Now" page, not buried in an FAQ. If clinicians charge different fees, list fees per clinician or service type rather than a single blended number that misleads people about who they'll see.

Review the numbers whenever Medicare rebate indexation changes (usually annually) and whenever you adjust your own fees, so the page never quietly falls out of sync with the front desk.

💡 The gap figure matters more than either number alone. Clients don't do the maths in their head under stress — they just see two numbers and feel confused. Always show the fee, the rebate, and the resulting gap as three explicit lines, even if it feels repetitive to you. What's obvious to your reception team is not obvious to someone Googling this for the first time.

Mistakes to avoid once your fees are live

Letting the page go stale after a fee increase. Nothing undermines trust faster than a client discovering at their session that the website number was wrong three months ago.
Publishing a rebate amount without the "up to X sessions per year" caveat. Clients who assume the rebate applies indefinitely are unpleasantly surprised later in the year, and that surprise lands on reception, not your website.
Making the concession pathway invisible. If reduced-fee spots exist but aren't mentioned anywhere, the people who need them most are the least likely to ask.
Copying a competitor's fee wording word for word. Tempting once you see a page you like, but rebate rules and your own cancellation terms need to be accurate to your practice, not theirs.

Frequently asked questions

Will listing fees make it easier for competitors to undercut us?

It makes your fee visible, yes, but people can usually find it anyway by calling and asking, or checking directories. Most clients aren't comparison-shopping psychologists on price alone — fit, availability, and specialisation matter more than a $20 difference.

Does this apply the same way if we bulk-bill or offer sliding-scale fees?

Not exactly. If your fee genuinely varies by circumstance, a fixed number can be misleading. Publish a typical range and a warm invitation to discuss individual circumstances, rather than hiding pricing entirely or forcing a figure that doesn't reflect reality.

Should we list Medicare rebate amounts if they change each year?

You can, but rebate amounts are set externally and do change with indexation, so add a line like "current as of [month/year], please confirm with us" rather than presenting the figure as permanent. A small caveat here protects you more than it costs you in polish.

What if a client can't afford our fees even with the rebate?

That's what the concession pathway is for — a brief, low-pressure line inviting people to ask about reduced fees, without requiring proof of hardship publicly. Some practices also keep a short list of lower-cost services to refer people to if there's genuinely no fit internally.

Please note: general information, not medical advice — check current official guidance before relying on it.