Clear Care Connect vs A Place for Mom — Which is Better for Finding Senior Care in 2026?
When your family needs senior care, every resource matters — and the difference between two websites can quietly shape which facility your parent moves into. A Place for Mom is the best-known senior care referral service in the country, and its advisors have guided hundreds of thousands of families through a move. Clear Care Connect works differently: it is a research tool built on government inspection data, not a referral network, so nothing you look at is filtered by who pays a placement fee. Both tools help families, and this page is honest about where A Place for Mom is the better choice. The short version of the difference: Clear Care Connect shows the government inspection record on every facility, never sells your contact information, and never lets a facility pay its way up the results. This is one of the hardest decisions a family ever makes, and you deserve to make it with the full record in front of you.
Clear Care Connect vs A Place for Mom at a glance
| Feature | Clear Care Connect | A Place for Mom |
|---|---|---|
| Total facilities listed | 22,379 verified facilities across 52 states and territories | Not publicly disclosed as a facility count; the company works with a nationwide network of contracted senior living communities and home care providers and says it helps roughly 700,000 families a year |
| Government inspection data | Yes — real CMS star ratings, inspection reports, deficiency history, penalties and fire safety data | CMS star ratings, deficiency citations and penalty records are not published on its community listings. A 2024 Washington Post investigation reported the company does not independently assess facility safety records |
| Do they sell your contact information | Never — we do not sell leads or charge facilities for referrals | Free to families because senior living communities and home care providers pay referral fees when a family moves in; the contact details you submit are shared with advisors and communities |
| Paid placement affecting results | No — results are never influenced by which facility pays more | Referrals go to communities that have a contract with the company. In 2024 the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging opened an inquiry into whether its marketing as an unbiased service matches how referrals actually work — allegations, not adjudicated findings |
| CMS penalty and deficiency history | Yes — full penalty records and deficiency details available | No published penalty or deficiency history on listings; families must look up CMS records separately |
| Cost to families | Completely free to search, with no sales pressure | Free to families; facilities pay the referral fee |
| Coverage | 52 states and territories | United States and Canada |
| Facility types covered | Nursing homes, assisted living, memory care, home health, adult day programs and CCRCs | Assisted living, memory care, independent living, home care, nursing homes, senior apartments and care homes |
| Medicaid eligibility estimator | Yes — free Medicaid eligibility and spend-down estimator covering 11 service types in all 51 states and DC | No comparable eligibility estimator published |
| Free senior care cost data | Yes — free state-by-state senior care cost data, downloadable as CSV with no email required | Cost guidance is published, but detailed pricing is typically gated behind a contact form or advisor call |
| Senior care glossary | Yes — 155-term searchable senior care glossary with plain-English definitions | Limited or no dedicated glossary of senior care terms |
| Head-to-head comparison pages | Yes — 8 published head-to-head comparisons, including this one | None — competitors are not compared side by side |
The data privacy difference
Many senior care finder websites operate on a referral model. When a family submits an inquiry, their contact information becomes a paid lead, and that lead is often passed to several communities at once. The result is familiar to anyone who has done it: a phone that rings for weeks, from numbers you do not recognise, at the single most stressful moment your family has faced in years.
A Place for Mom is transparent that its service is free because communities pay referral fees, and that an advisor will contact you after you submit an inquiry. Whether that is welcome depends entirely on where your family is in the process.
Clear Care Connect never sells contact information and never charges facilities for referrals. There is no partner network standing behind a form. When you request a tour, that request goes directly to the one facility you chose, and nowhere else. You can search all 22,379 facilities without creating an account, and nothing you look at generates a sales call.
The government data advantage
Clear Care Connect pulls data directly from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the federal agency that inspects and certifies senior care facilities. That means real inspection history, the actual deficiency citations a surveyor wrote down, penalty records including civil money penalties and payment denials, fire safety inspection results, staffing measures and the official five-star ratings.
That gap matters most with nursing homes, where CMS publishes exactly which facilities were cited for resident-care violations. A 2024 Washington Post analysis found that a substantial share of the company's award-winning communities had been cited for serious violations affecting resident care.
This matters because government inspection data reveals what marketing materials are designed to hide. A brochure will show you a sunlit dining room. An inspection report will show you whether residents went without prescribed medication, whether call lights went unanswered, whether the building failed a life safety code check. Both are true; only one of them is written by someone with no financial interest in your decision.
Facility coverage
Clear Care Connect lists 22,379 verified facilities across 52 states and territories. Every facility is matched against CMS government records before it is published, so a listing is evidence that the facility exists in the federal record — not that someone paid to appear.
A Place for Mom's network reaches the United States and Canada, but only contracted communities appear in its referrals. Clear Care Connect lists facilities because they exist in the government record, not because they signed anything.
Coverage spans the care types families actually move between: skilled nursing homes, assisted living, memory care, hospice, home health, adult day programs and continuing care retirement communities. You can start in a state hub such as nursing homes in California or Texas, narrow to a city, and compare facilities side by side without ever entering a phone number.
Where A Place for Mom wins
A Place for Mom has by far the larger human advisory team, and for many families that is the deciding factor. If you want a person on the phone who knows the assisted living market in your county, can shortlist communities that have open beds this month, and will coordinate tours for you, it is genuinely good at that.
It also covers Canada and product categories like senior apartments and independent living where government inspection data barely exists, and it has decades of placement experience behind its advisors. Clear Care Connect gives you the records; A Place for Mom gives you a guide.
Frequently asked questions
Is Clear Care Connect better than A Place for Mom for finding nursing homes?
For nursing homes specifically, Clear Care Connect gives you more of what actually predicts quality: CMS star ratings, inspection findings, deficiency citations, penalty history and fire safety results, on every facility, with no referral relationship behind the listing. A Place for Mom is stronger if you want a human advisor to shortlist communities and coordinate tours for you. Many families use both.
Does Clear Care Connect sell my information like other senior care finder sites?
No. Clear Care Connect does not sell leads and does not charge facilities for referrals. When you request a tour, that request goes to the single facility you chose and nowhere else. Search is free and does not require an account.
How many facilities does Clear Care Connect list compared to A Place for Mom?
Clear Care Connect lists 22,379 verified facilities across 52 states and territories, each matched to government records. A Place for Mom does not publicly disclose a facility count; it works with a contracted nationwide network and reports helping about 700,000 families a year.
Does A Place for Mom show government inspection data?
Its community listings do not publish CMS star ratings, deficiency citations or penalty history. Reporting in 2024 found the company does not independently assess facility safety records, so families need to check Medicare.gov or Clear Care Connect separately for inspection history.
Find senior care with complete government data and zero sales pressure
Search 22,379 verified facilities across 52 states and territories. See real CMS inspection reports, official star ratings, penalty history and fire safety records alongside estimated monthly costs. No account is required to search, and no contact information is ever sold. When you are ready to tour, your request goes to that facility alone.
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Sources
- aplaceformom.com (About / How it works)
- Washington Post investigation, 16 May 2024
- U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging inquiry letter, 17 June 2024