How Much Does Therapy Cost in Melbourne in 2026?

Privately, a session with a psychologist in Melbourne runs to roughly $220 to $290, against the profession's suggested fee of $330. With a Medicare rebate you would be out of pocket by something in the region of $120 to $190.

These are guiding estimates. Therapists set their own fees.

Private session ranges are based on prices found advertised on multiple blogs, not official authoritative sources. Use with caution.

Now the part that makes Melbourne different from every other Australian city. Victoria runs its own free mental health system, and it does not go through Medicare at all.

Mental Health and Wellbeing Locals

These are Victorian Government services, and the state's own health channel puts the terms as plainly as anyone could want:

"Free support and you don't need a GP referral, Medicare card or mental health care plan."

Sometimes you just need someone qualified to talk to. Find a counsellor near you — independent, professional, and ready to listen.

Find a Counsellor

Read that again if you have ever been told that mental health care in Australia starts with a trip to the GP. In Victoria, for adults, it does not have to.

• Who: Victorians aged 26 and over experiencing mental health or wellbeing concerns, including people with co-occurring alcohol and drug needs.
• Cost: free. Not bulk-billed, not rebated. Free.
• Who you see: a multidisciplinary team: psychologists, mental health nurses, social workers, occupational therapists, psychiatrists, peer workers and care coordinators.
• Where: around twenty Locals now operate across Victoria and the network is still growing, so check the Better Health Channel's finder for your nearest rather than assuming.

If you are on a student, work or temporary visa, this is the line that matters: no Medicare card is required. A large number of people in Melbourne assume they are locked out of public mental health care because they are not permanent residents. For this service, they are not.

If you are under 26, the Locals are not designed for you, but headspace covers 12 to 25 and Victoria also runs Mental Health and Wellbeing Hubs.

University clinics, and what they actually publish

Melbourne has an unusually dense cluster of published-fee training clinics. These are real prices from the clinics' own fee pages, not estimates.

Clinic	Standard	Concession	Notes
MTHC: Psychology (Carlton) clinical psychology, adults	$50	$30	Formerly the University of Melbourne Psychology Clinic
Monash Krongold Clinic (Notting Hill) short-term counselling, 4–6 sessions of 50 minutes	$70	$50	Healthcare card rate. Learning and education focus

Three things to know before you book one of these.

First, they are teaching clinics. Krongold says so directly: its staff are "provisional psychologists under close supervision from registered psychologists". That is not a lesser service, and a trainee with a light caseload often gives you more attention than a fully booked practitioner, but you are entitled to know who you are seeing.

Second, neither offers Medicare rebates. Krongold states it plainly. At $50 a session that hardly matters; it matters if you were planning to claim.

Third, and this is the trap: the University of Melbourne clinic has two entirely separate streams. The $50 figure above is the trainee clinical psychology service. The same clinic's registered-psychologist intervention is $215 a session, and its assessments run from $900 to $2,765. Anyone quoting a single price for "the University of Melbourne clinic" is quoting the wrong one. Ask which stream you are being booked into.

Note also that the University of Melbourne clinic has renamed itself MTHC: Psychology, so older references to it under the university's name will not find it.

More free and low-cost support in Melbourne

Other non-profit and university services publish reduced fees, but each sets its own conditions. Check the gates below before you call, because most of these services turn on eligibility rather than price.

• Swinburne Psychology Clinic: psychology and counselling for individuals of all ages in the Melbourne community. Fees are on a sliding scale of $1 per hour for every $1,000 of family income, with a minimum of $20 and a maximum of $80 per consultation. A $10 administrative fee applies at the first appointment. People who are unemployed or hold a pension or healthcare card pay $20 a session. Both self-referrals and referrals from health professionals are accepted. The clinic does not see Swinburne psychology students, walk-in crisis cases or medico-legal matters. The anticipated wait for allocation is roughly 8 to 10 weeks.
• Cairnmillar Institute Community Clinic: individual counselling and psychological assessment. Individual counselling is free when you are seen by a student clinician. Assessments are low-cost rather than free, at $50 to $750 depending on the type and your concession status, and ASD assessments are excluded from this stream. Anyone aged 4 or older can attend, with no referral required and no stated income test. The clinic sees individuals only, so couples and family therapy are charged at standard rates. Access begins with a 30-minute intake triage call.
• Mind Australia: community mental health support delivered through a range of separately funded programmes. Fees depend on the programme. Mind lists free government-funded services, NDIS-funded services and services labelled as paid, and non-NDIS clients may be charged a direct fee. Some allied health work is billed to private health insurance or Medicare without bulk billing. Eligibility also sits at programme level. NDIS services require an NDIS plan. Allied health services take self-referrals through MindConnect on 1300 286 463 and are open to all ages. Individual programmes carry their own age bands, such as 12 to 25 for early psychosis. Mind is one of the providers behind the Mental Health and Wellbeing Locals described above, which serve people aged 26 and over with no Medicare card or referral needed.
• EACH: mental health programmes across Victoria and several other states. EACH states that most of its services are free or low cost because of government funding, and that any fees are given upfront. Each service is labelled individually, and while most read "No fee" or "No or low fee", some are marked full fee. Eligibility is set per programme rather than organisation-wide. Most Victorian mental health programmes are restricted to named catchments. The youth outreach programme covers Maroondah. The NDIS mental health occupational therapy service covers Casey, Greater Dandenong, Cardinia, Monash, Knox and Mornington Peninsula, and additionally requires being an eligible NDIS participant aged 14 or over.

If you are paying privately

The Australian Psychological Society publishes a National Schedule of Suggested Fees. For 2026–2027 the standard 46 to 60-minute consultation sits at $330: and the APS is explicit that this is "a suggestion only" and that "the fee at which a service is set is at the discretion of the individual psychologist".

In practice many Melbourne psychologists charge below it. Ranges of roughly $240 to $290 for a psychologist, and less for counsellors and provisional psychologists, are commonly advertised, but these are advertised prices rather than a published schedule, and we are not going to dress them up as one.

We are not publishing prices by suburb. You will see figures quoted separately for the inner suburbs. We have no evidence that a Fitzroy psychologist charges differently from one in Footscray in any systematic way, and nobody collects that data.

The Medicare rebate, and the $47.50 worth knowing

With a Mental Health Treatment Plan from a GP, Medicare covers up to 10 individual and 10 group sessions per calendar year. The benefit is fixed:

• Clinical psychologist: $149.05 a session
• Registered psychologist: $101.55 a session

That is a $47.50 difference for the same fifty minutes, turning entirely on whether the practitioner holds a clinical endorsement. Over ten sessions, $475. Worth asking before you book.

Private health extras cover can offset the remaining gap, but limits and waiting periods vary so much by policy that any figure we published would be wrong for most readers. Ask your fund what your annual psychology limit is and whether a waiting period applies.

Who is who

• Psychiatrist: a medical doctor, regulated by the Medical Board of Australia under AHPRA. Can prescribe.
• Psychologist: registered with the Psychology Board of Australia, also under AHPRA. The clinical endorsement is what drives the higher rebate.
• Counsellor and psychotherapist: self-regulated in Australia. There is no mandatory government registration, though many belong to PACFA or the Australian Counselling Association. Their sessions generally attract no Medicare rebate.
• Accredited mental health social worker: can deliver Medicare-rebated sessions under Better Access.

If you need someone now

• Lifeline: 13 11 14
• Suicide Call Back Service: 1300 659 467
• Beyond Blue: 1300 22 4636
• Kids Helpline: 1800 55 1800

Mental Health and Wellbeing Locals and the university clinics are not crisis services and say so themselves.

Sources

• Better Health Channel, Victorian Government, Mental Health and Wellbeing Locals: the free access statement quoted above, the age range and the service finder.
• health.vic.gov.au, Mental Health and Wellbeing Locals: scope, delivery partners and the number of Locals operating.
• Monash University, Krongold Clinic fees: the 2026 fee structure, the supervision statement and the Medicare position.
• Australian Psychological Society, what it costs: the 2026–2027 suggested fee and the discretion statement.
• Medicare Benefits Schedule, Item 80010 and Item 80110: the rebate amounts, current at 1 July 2026.

Reviewed July 2026. Clinic fees are from each clinic's own published schedule. Medicare figures are from the MBS item pages and were current at 1 July 2026. Private session ranges are drawn from advertised prices rather than a published schedule.