NDIS Education
Registration Groups: The Thing That Decides Everything Else
Your groups decide your pathway, the Practice Standards you are assessed against, the kind of audit you face and what it costs. Choose them carelessly and every later decision is wrong.
The Short Answer
What are NDIS registration groups?
Registration groups are the categories of support a provider registers to deliver, such as assistance with daily personal activities or therapeutic supports. There are 37 of them. The groups you choose decide your audit pathway (verification or certification), which NDIS Practice Standards and modules apply, how long your audit takes and what registration costs.
01What They Are
A Registration Group Is a Category of Work, Not a Job Title
The NDIS Commission does not register you as "a support worker" or "a physio". It registers you to deliver particular classes of support, each with a code and a name — household tasks, community nursing care, specialist positive behaviour support, and so on.
There are 37 of them. You apply for the ones that cover what you actually deliver, and only those.
Everything downstream follows from that choice. Each group is classified by the risk of the support it covers, and that classification decides whether your application is assessed by a desktop verification or a full certification audit. It also decides which Practice Standards modules you are measured against, which in turn decides how much documentation you need and how long the audit takes.
Applying for groups you do not deliver pulls in standards you do not need, modules you will not use and an audit larger than your business. Providers routinely pay for a certification audit because one optimistic group was ticked on an application. Removing it later means varying your registration, which is its own process.
Work out which groups apply to you →02How It Cascades
One Choice, Four Consequences
- Your groups are setYou nominate the classes of support you intend to deliver when you apply through the Commission’s portal.
- Your pathway followsLower-risk groups are assessed by verification — a desktop review of documents and evidence. Higher-risk groups require certification, which is a full audit of your organisation.
- Your standards followCertification means the Core Module of the Practice Standards, plus any supplementary module your groups trigger — high intensity daily personal activities, specialist behaviour support, early childhood, specialised support coordination, or SDA.
- Your cost and timeline followMore groups and more modules mean more documentation, a longer audit and a larger auditor fee. The auditor is independent and prices on your scope.
03Getting It Right
How We Decide Which Groups You Need
Three questions, in this order
- What do you actually deliver today, in plain language — not what you might deliver one day.
- Which registration groups cover that work, including the ones people forget because the group name does not match the job title.
- Which of those you are genuinely resourced to be audited against right now. Anything else can be added later by varying your registration.
The third question is the one most providers skip, and it is the one that saves money. A registration can be varied as the business grows. An audit you were not ready for cannot be un-failed.
Sources
- NDIS Commission: Apply for registration
- NDIS Practice Standards and Quality Indicators
- NDIS Commission: Mandatory registration
Checked against these sources on 12 October 2026.
Tell Us What You Deliver
We work out which registration groups cover it, which pathway that puts you on, and what it will cost — before you pay anything.
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
How many registration groups are there?
37. The list is maintained by the NDIS Commission and does change — classes get added and the Commission has done so more than once. We check your groups against the current list when we scope your application rather than against a list in a document.
Can I add a registration group later?
Yes. It is called varying your registration, and it is a normal part of growing. Depending on what you add, it can trigger a further audit or a change of pathway — adding a certification group to a verification registration moves your whole registration to certification. That is worth knowing before you add it, not after.
What happens if I apply for a group I do not deliver?
You will be audited against it. The auditor will look for evidence of a service you do not provide, you will not have it, and at best you will spend the audit explaining why. At worst it is a corrective action. It also pulls in standards and modules you did not need, which you have already paid to document.
Do registration groups decide what I can charge?
Indirectly. Price limits are set by support item in the NDIA’s Pricing Arrangements and Price Limits, and the support items you can claim against relate to what you are registered to deliver. The Commission sets what you may deliver; the NDIA sets what it will pay.
I am a sole trader. Do groups work differently for me?
No. The groups are the same and the standards are the same. What changes is scale — a sole trader’s evidence is smaller and simpler, and the documentation should be written to fit a one-person business rather than copied from a template built for a fifty-staff organisation. That is the most common reason a sole trader’s audit goes badly.
Keep Reading
More NDIS Guides
- The NDIS, Explained for People Who Want to Work in ItHow the NDIS works for providers: the NDIA, the Commission, participants, plans and where your business sits.Read the guide →
- Supports Under the NDIS, and Which Ones You Can Be Paid FromCore, Capacity Building and Capital supports explained for providers: what each budget funds, how flexible…Read the guide →
- The NDIS Price Guide, and How to Read ItHow NDIS Pricing Arrangements and Price Limits work: support items, line item numbers, price limits,…Read the guide →
From Insights
By Profession
Checked against the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission and NDIA published guidance on 7 October 2026. NDIS rules and price limits change — confirm anything you are about to act on against ndiscommission.gov.au or ndis.gov.au, or ask us.
One Conversation Tells You Where You Stand
Fifteen minutes with someone who has done this thousands of times. We will tell you what applies to you, what it costs and how long it takes — and if you do not need us, we will tell you that too.