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The Australian MSP Pricing Guide — What to Charge, What the Market Pays, 2026 Edition

Published 24 April 2026 · 15 min read

Pricing is the hardest thing in the MSP business. Charge too little and you burn out; too much and you lose deals. This guide compiles public and practical pricing data across the Australian MSP market in 2026, broken down by model, customer segment, and service tier.

Everything here is based on publicly disclosed pricing, industry reports, and observed market rates. It is not a prescription — your pricing depends on your cost base, your specialty, and your confidence.

The four primary MSP pricing models

Per-device / per-seat managed services — most common, predictable revenue
Per-user managed services — newer model, aligns with seat-based cloud licensing
Hourly time-and-materials — project work, ad-hoc support, overflow
Value-based / block hours — pre-paid pools of hours, typically discounted

Per-seat / per-user managed services — 2026 Australian rates

Based on public disclosures from MSPs ranging from 10 to 500 seats across major AU metros:

Standard tier (monitoring, patching, basic helpdesk)

Metro Sydney / Melbourne: $75 - $120 per user/month AUD
Brisbane / Perth / Adelaide: $65 - $110
Regional: $55 - $95

Premium tier (above + MDR, backup, MFA management, strategy reviews)

Metro: $150 - $220 per user/month
Regional: $130 - $180

Compliance-heavy tier (Essential Eight Level 2+, ISO 27001-aligned)

$250 - $450 per user/month, typically 50+ seat clients only
Government / defence prime contractors: $350 - $600 with additional security requirements

Per-device pricing (legacy model, still common)

Workstation: $40 - $85/month — often bundled with per-user
Server: $120 - $300/month
Network device (firewall, managed switch): $40 - $150/month
Backup-only: $15 - $40/month per device

Hourly time-and-materials rates

When clients need work outside their managed agreement:

L1 support / field tech: $120 - $160/hr
L2/L3 engineer: $160 - $220/hr
Specialist (security, M365, networking, cloud architecture): $220 - $300/hr
Emergency out-of-hours: 1.5-2x the normal rate, often with a $500-$800 minimum callout

Public sector work often requires the hourly rate card to be pre-agreed under a standing panel. Those panel rates have tightened over 2023-2025 — $165 for L2 is now common where it was $180-$200.

Project pricing

Fixed-price projects with measurable deliverables:

M365 migration (50 users): $8,000 - $25,000 depending on complexity
Domain migration (100 users): $15,000 - $40,000
Network refresh (10-site WAN): $30,000 - $80,000 labour + hardware
Server virtualisation (3-host cluster): $12,000 - $30,000 labour
Essential Eight uplift (from Level 0 to Level 1 across 50 endpoints): $25,000 - $60,000

What MSPs actually cost to run (so you know your margin)

Rough numbers for a 10-person MSP:

Salaries: $850k - $1.2M/year (5 engineers avg $120k fully-loaded, 2 senior, 1 sales, 1 admin, 1 principal)
Tools stack (PSA + RMM + security + productivity): $50k - $150k/year
Insurance (cyber + PI + public liability): $15k - $40k/year
Office, utilities, misc: $40k - $80k/year
Tax + super: baked into salary numbers above

Total operating cost: roughly $1M - $1.4M/year for a 10-person shop.

To be profitable, you need $1.2M - $1.8M/year in revenue depending on margin target. Working backwards: if your average client pays $4,000/month, you need 25-40 clients. If you can push average spend to $8,000/month (adding compliance, security, strategic services), you need half as many.

Where margin goes to die

Unbilled work — engineers logging time that never makes it to an invoice. Typical loss: 8-15% of billable capacity. Requires tight time-tracking and automated invoicing from ticket time entries.
Contract scope creep — "just one more thing" for fixed-fee clients. Track it; surface it to the account manager monthly; renegotiate or reprice.
Support escalations on underpriced clients — a $2k/mo client with 30 hours of support this month is losing you money. Have an exit criterion and a reprice conversation.
Tools stack sprawl — $150k/year in SaaS subs often represents 2x the tools you actually need. Audit annually.

Pricing model recommendation by client size

1-10 seats: Per-device + T&M for anything off-script. Small clients don't buy "per-user managed" well.
10-50 seats: Per-user managed services with 2-3 tier options. This is the sweet spot for most AU MSPs.
50-200 seats: Per-user managed + a dedicated CSM / vCIO component. Add compliance tier for regulated clients.
200+ seats: Custom pricing, typically negotiated annually. Include an agreed "growth clause" (what happens if they add 30% more users).

The one-time pricing mistakes

Starting low to win the deal — you'll be stuck there. Raising prices on existing customers is the hardest sales conversation in MSP world.
Not indexing to inflation — AU CPI has been running 3-5%/year. A 3% annual increase should be baked into every contract renewal by default.
No exit fees on shorter contracts — month-to-month clients churn at any price increase. 12-month commitments with a reasonable exit fee dramatically improve retention.
Loss-leader "audit" offerings — a $500 assessment that becomes a $50,000 remediation with a 4% margin is worse than turning down the work.

Raising prices — when and how

Three legitimate triggers for a price increase on existing clients:

Annual inflation index (contractual) — small, automatic, non-negotiable. 3-4% annually.
Scope expansion — they added 15 users, upgraded to premium tier, etc. Price change tracks scope change.
Cost-driven — major tool re-pricing (Microsoft, security vendors). Pass through or absorb.

If none of these apply and you just want more revenue, you're asking the client to pay for your planning mistake. Better to hold pricing and go find new clients at the new rate.

Software cost for running your MSP

A typical AU MSP PSA + RMM + accounting + communications stack:

PSA (ConnectWise Manage): $5,500 - $18,000 USD/year for 10 users
RMM (Tactical RMM self-hosted, or NinjaOne, or Atera): $0 (self-hosted) - $8,000 AUD/year
Accounting (Xero + payroll add-on): $1,800 - $3,000 AUD/year
Social (Hootsuite or similar): $1,700 - $3,000 AUD/year
WhatsApp Business: $3,000+ for serious use

Total tooling cost for a 10-person shop: $15,000 - $35,000 AUD/year.

BBN Suite (all modules bundled) is $7,200 AUD/year flat, unlimited users. That's ~$20k/year saved that goes straight to the bottom line on a 10-person shop, with the added benefit of a single integrated system instead of five with fragile integrations.

See BBN Suite pricing · Compare to ConnectWise