Travel Nurse Per Diem Rates 2026: Every City’s Ceiling

TL;DR: There is no single per diem number for travel nurses, and no agency sets the ceiling either. The federal government does. Meals and incidentals can be paid tax-free at one of five daily rates ($68, $74, $80, $86 or $92) and lodging at one of 295 published nightly rates, from the standard $113 up to $499. Your city decides which. A 13-week contract is worth $6,154 of tax-free meals at the bottom tier and $8,326 at the top, a difference of $2,172 that has nothing to do with how well you negotiated.

The Short Answer

Two separate numbers make up what recruiters call “per diem,” and they come from two different columns of the same government table:

• Meals and incidentals: $68 to $92 a day. $68 is the standard rate and covers most of the country. Only 33 destinations in the United States qualify for the top $92 tier.
• Lodging: $113 a night as the standard, rising to $499 a night in Park City, UT. This is the line that moves most, because it changes with the season as well as the city.

If your assignment city is not on the federal list, you are on the standard rate: $68 a day for meals and $113 a night for lodging, which works out to $791 a week on housing before anyone negotiates anything.

Where These Numbers Come From

The General Services Administration publishes a per diem schedule for federal employees traveling on government business. The IRS borrowed it as the reference line for everyone else.

Up to the federal rate for your county and your dates, an agency can pay you a flat daily allowance and the tax code treats the expense as already documented, no receipts. Above that rate the money can still be tax-free, but only if you prove what you actually spent, which is the paperwork most agencies will not collect. So in practice the federal number is the working ceiling: it is the last figure that travels without receipts.

Two consequences follow that most nurses never hear stated out loud:

1. The ceiling is not a target. It is the outer edge of what can be tax-free. An agency offering you $400 a week for meals is under the ceiling, not shorting you on a legal maximum: the ceiling is a wall, not a price.
2. The ceiling resets every October 1. Federal fiscal years start then. This year the standard lodging rate moves from $110 to $113 a night while the standard meal rate holds at $68. A contract signed in August and worked into November is measured against two different tables.

The Five Meal Tiers

Unlike lodging, meals do not vary continuously. Every city on the list sits in one of five bands, and the band does not change with the season.

Meals per day	Per week	13-week contract	US cities at this tier	Examples
$68	$476	$6,154	17	Wallops Island, VA, Sandusky, OH, Muskegon, MI
$74	$518	$6,697	70	Kill Devil Hills, NC, Vero Beach, FL, Sebring, FL
$80	$560	$7,240	104	Big Sky / West Yellowstone/Gardiner, MT, Naples, FL, Sun Valley / Ketchum, ID
$86	$602	$7,783	71	Key West, FL, Fort Walton Beach / De Funiak Springs, FL, Boca Raton / Delray Beach / Jupiter, FL
$92	$644	$8,326	33	Park City, UT, Nantucket, MA, Martha’s Vineyard, MA

Read the fourth column carefully. 17 destinations share the $68 standard meal rate, and the list of places that qualify for $92 spans only 16 states. That is why two nurses on identical-looking contracts can have very different tax-free ceilings without either agency doing anything unusual.

Lodging Is the Line That Actually Moves

The meal ceiling is flat within a tier. The lodging ceiling is not, and housing is where the money is, so this is the half worth checking before you sign.

Park City, UT runs from $227 a night in its quiet season to $499 in peak. San Francisco, CA sits between $232 and $325 depending on the month, and New York City, NY between $189 and $358. Same hospital, same unit, same contract length, a ceiling that differs by a few hundred dollars a week purely because of when you arrive.

Agencies often quote the annual average or the season that flatters the package. Ask for the nightly ceiling for your exact start and end dates, and get the number in writing.

The 75 Percent Rule Nobody Applies

Your first and last day of travel are reimbursed for meals at three-quarters of the daily rate, not the full rate: $51 instead of $68 at the standard tier, $69 instead of $92 at the top.

On a 13-week contract that is two days at the reduced rate and 89 at the full rate, so the true ceiling is $6,154 at $68 and $8,326 at $92, not the $6,188 and $8,372 you get by multiplying blindly. Small, but it is exactly the kind of rounding that makes an offer look compliant when it is a few dollars over.

What the Ceiling Does Not Tell You

Staying under the federal ceiling is necessary and not sufficient. Two other things have to be true before a single dollar of stipend is tax-free, and neither is about rates:

• You need a tax home you actually return to and pay for while away. Let go of your apartment and the stipend stops being a reimbursement.
• Your agency needs to run an accountable plan, meaning it asks for documentation. A flat weekly stipend with no paperwork is taxable in full even if it sits far below every ceiling in the table above.

Both are covered in detail, with a checker for your own offer, in Is Per Diem Taxable? The 3 Tests That Decide. Read that one before you sign anything; this page tells you the number, that page tells you whether you keep it.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much per diem do travel nurses get?

Up to $68 to $92 a day for meals and $113 to $499 a night for lodging, depending on your assignment county and season. Actual agency offers vary widely and sit below those ceilings more often than not: the ceiling caps the tax-free portion, not the pay.

What is a good per diem for a travel nurse?

A good per diem is one that is high enough to cover your real costs in that city and documented under an accountable plan. A $1,000 weekly housing stipend sits comfortably under the ceiling in a city where the limit is $1,100 a week, and over it in a city where the limit is $791, which is why the honest answer needs your specific city, not a national average. Search the table above for your number.

Is per diem the same as a housing stipend?

No, and conflating them is where people lose money. Housing is tested against the lodging column and meals against the M and IE column, separately. A blended “stipend” figure on an offer letter is an agency word, not a tax category. Ask for it split into two lines before you sign.

Does per diem change by state?

Not by state. It changes by county and by named destination, so two cities in the same state can sit in different tiers. Search the table above rather than assuming your state’s biggest city sets your rate.

Do travel nurses get paid between contracts?

Per diem is a reimbursement for expenses on assignment, so there is no per diem during an unpaid gap week, and gap weeks are one of the most common ways a strong annual rate turns into a weak actual income. The free budget spreadsheet has a column for unpaid weeks specifically because blending them into an average hides the problem.

Sources we checked

Every figure on this page came from one of the documents below, not from another blog. Links checked 10 October 2026.

• IRS Publication 463 – Travel, Gift, and Car Expenses: The tax-home definition, the temporary-versus-indefinite assignment test and the one-year rule every per-diem answer on this page rests on.
• GSA FY2027 per diem rate file (XLSX, effective 1 October 2026): The workbook the city-by-city lodging and M&IE ceilings on this page were read from.
• GSA per diem rates: The FY2027 lodging and M&IE schedules the housing and per-diem figures on this page are measured against.
• GSA FY2027 per diem master rate files: The downloadable master file the standard $113 CONUS rate and every named-destination rate come from.
• IRS Publication 15 (2026), Employer’s Tax Guide: The employer side of the same rule: a non-accountable travel payment is wages and carries income tax, Social Security, Medicare and FUTA.