Sunrise Senior Living is unusual among big senior living brands in one useful way: it publishes actual starting rates on its own community pages, floor plan by floor plan. Most operators make you call. That transparency is real, and it is also incomplete, because every one of those published numbers is a room rate with the care stripped out.
This guide prices Sunrise as of September 5, 2026 using Sunrise’s own published rates, explains the two-part pricing model that turns a $5,000 quote into an $8,000 invoice, and covers who actually pays. Sunrise was founded in 1981 and Seniorly’s provider profile lists 223 properties; Sunrise’s own sitemap carried 217 U.S. community pages the day we checked.
What Does Sunrise Senior Living Cost Without Insurance?
There is no national Sunrise rate card, and Sunrise does not publish one. To get a defensible range we opened 55 Sunrise community pages drawn from the company’s own sitemap on September 5, 2026 and recorded every published floor plan price. Thirty-two of those communities published assisted living rates (90 individual floor plans) and 32 published memory care rates (75 floor plans).
The spread is enormous, and it is geographic. The cheapest published assisted living studio in the sample was $2,554 a month at Brighton Gardens of Dunwoody outside Atlanta. The most expensive published assisted living floor plan was $10,306 at Sunrise of Franklin Lakes, New Jersey. Memory care ran from $4,134 at Sunrise of Lower Makefield, Pennsylvania to $16,173 at Sunrise of East Meadow on Long Island.
| Service/Type | Low | Average | High |
|---|---|---|---|
| Assisted living, all published floor plans | $2,554 | $6,004 (median) | $10,306 |
| Assisted living, entry floor plan per community | $2,554 | $5,228 (median) | $7,448 |
| Memory care, all published floor plans | $4,134 | $8,998 (median) | $16,173 |
| Memory care, entry floor plan per community | $4,134 | $7,888 (median) | $11,978 |
| Independent living, published floor plans | $2,829 | $3,468 (median) | $4,623 |
| Seniorly estimate, assisted living | $3,498 | n/a | $14,995 |
| Seniorly estimate, memory care | $4,320 | n/a | $19,984 |
| Seniorly estimate, independent living | $1,825 | n/a | $8,467 |
| Seniorly estimated average, all care types | n/a | $10,905 | n/a |
| Care level fee (added to room rate) | not published | not published | not published |
| National assisted living median (CareScout 2025) | n/a | $6,200 | n/a |
Seniorly, a referral platform that aggregates Sunrise listings, reports a wider band than Sunrise’s own site does: $3,498 to $14,995 for assisted living, $4,320 to $19,984 for memory care, and an estimated $10,905 average across all care types. The sources disagree because they measure different things. Sunrise publishes entry room rates; Seniorly’s average reflects what residents with care needs are quoted. Take Sunrise’s own numbers as the floor and Seniorly’s as closer to a realistic all-in.
What Drives the Price
The room rate is not the price. This is the single most important line on a Sunrise community page, and it sits in the footnote: room rates exclude care rates unless otherwise stated, and care services are offered separately based on a care assessment and charged in addition to the cost of your chosen room. Sunrise’s Personalized Pricing Model section says the same thing in plain terms, that a nurse determines your care level before move-in and “your care level price is added to your chosen suite cost.”
Metro area. Geography swamps every other variable. In our sample, New Jersey and Long Island communities started above $6,000 for assisted living before any care, while Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan communities started under $3,600. Sunrise of Bridgewater, New Jersey started at $7,448 for its cheapest assisted living floor plan, nearly three times Brighton Gardens of Dunwoody.
Floor plan. Within a single building, the gap between a studio and a two bedroom regularly runs $1,000 to $3,500 a month. At Sunrise of Vienna, Virginia the published assisted living range spanned $5,989 to $9,485. At Sunrise of McLean it ran $5,594 to $7,570.
Medication management, priced separately again. Sunrise’s pricing page states that some services, including medication management, are priced separately from your care level. So a resident can face three stacked charges: room, care level, and add-on services.
Memory care programming. Sunrise’s footnote says Reminiscence (its memory care brand) rates include the program fee and medications, which is why memory care room rates look so much higher than assisted living room rates in our table. Some of that gap is bundling, not a pure surcharge. Our memory care cost guide breaks down the national dementia premium for comparison.
Cash Price vs. Insurance
Almost nobody’s insurance pays for this, and the sooner that is settled the fewer forced moves happen later.
Medicare pays nothing toward the monthly bill. Medicare.gov’s long-term care page states that Medicare does not pay for long-term care, that most long-term care is non-medical, and that “you pay all costs for non-covered services, including most long-term care.” Medigap does not fill the gap. Medicare continues to cover doctor visits, hospital stays, Part D prescriptions and short-term skilled nursing rehab after a qualifying hospital stay while your parent lives at Sunrise. It does not cover the rent, the meals, or the help with bathing.
Medicaid can pay for the care, never the room. KFF’s March 2025 issue brief on assisted living is direct: Medicaid does not cover room and board in assisted living facilities. What it can cover is the home and community-based services delivered inside the building, most often through a Section 1915(c) waiver, which 32 states use for this purpose. Only 10 states require assisted living facilities to accept new Medicaid enrollees at all, and only New Jersey and Oklahoma require all facilities to do so. Ask the specific Sunrise community whether it accepts waiver residents before you spend down.
VA Aid and Attendance is the most underused money in this category. As of December 1, 2025, the Maximum Annual Pension Rate with Aid and Attendance is $29,093 for a veteran with no dependents ($2,424 a month), $34,488 with one dependent ($2,874 a month), and $46,143 when two married veterans both qualify. The net worth limit through November 30, 2026 is $163,699. Because unreimbursed medical expenses (which include senior living fees) are subtracted from income for VA purposes, families who assume they earn too much frequently qualify anyway.
Long-term care insurance, if it already exists. A comprehensive policy covers assisted living and memory care. Tax-qualified policies typically trigger on inability to perform two activities of daily living for 90 days, or severe cognitive impairment. Read the elimination period and the daily benefit cap before you assume it covers a $9,000 memory care rate.
How to Pay Less
Price the same floor plan at three Sunrise communities within driving distance. Because Sunrise publishes rates online, you can do this in twenty minutes without a single sales call. In our sample, Sunrise of Old Tappan, New Jersey started at $2,888 while Sunrise of Madison, forty minutes away, started at $7,083. Same brand, same state, 2.5x the entry price.
Get the care level grid in writing before you sign. Ask for the price of every care level, what triggers a move from one to the next, who performs the reassessment, and how much notice you get before a rate change. Sunrise does not publish these, so the only way to know is to ask, and the only version that counts is the one in the residency agreement.
Negotiate the move-in, not the rate. Communities carry occupancy targets, and end of month, quarter or year is when incentives appear: a waived fee, a discounted first two months, or a rate lock. Our negotiation script tool and our guide to negotiating medical bills use the same posture that works here: ask what discount exists, get it in writing, do not sign the same day you tour.
Audit the invoice line by line every month. Care level changes and add-on services are where the bill creeps. The technique in our guide to reading an itemized hospital bill transfers directly to a senior living statement, and if a disputed balance is ever handed to a collector, our guide to medical bills in collections explains what protections apply.
Compare against the alternatives at your actual care hours. If the need is companionship and a few hours of help a day, in-home care can be cheaper. Compare our Home Instead cost and live-in caregiver cost guides against a Sunrise quote at your real hours per week. If the need is a break for a family caregiver rather than a permanent move, respite care is billed by the day.
Shop the operator, not just the building. Brookdale, the largest US operator, reported average revenue per occupied unit of $6,670 a month in the second quarter of 2026, and publishes regional room rate ranges starting far below Sunrise’s in several markets. Our Brookdale Senior Living cost guide has the comparison, and our assisted living cost guide has the national and state medians to benchmark any quote against.
The Bottom Line
Sunrise’s published assisted living rates ran $2,554 to $10,306 a month across the communities we checked on September 5, 2026, with a median floor plan at $6,004 and a median entry floor plan at $5,228. Memory care ran $4,134 to $16,173, median $8,998. Independent living, offered at only a handful of Sunrise communities, ran $2,829 to $4,623.
Then add care. Sunrise’s own footnote says the published rate excludes it, and the care assessment happens before you move in, which means the real number arrives after you have already fallen in love with the building. Get the care level pricing in writing first, compare three communities in your metro, and settle who is paying before you tour, because Medicare is not.