Background Community-based palliative care is associated with reduced hospital costs for people dying from cancer. It is unknown if reduced hospital costs are universal across multiple life-limiting conditions amenable to palliative care. The aim of this study was to determine if community-based palliative care provided to people dying from non-cancer conditions was associated with reduced hospital costs in the last year of life and how this compared with people dying from cancer. Method A retrospective population-based cohort study of all decedents in Western Australia who died January 2009 to December 2010 from a life-limiting condition considered amenable to palliative care. Hospital costs were assigned to each day of the last year of life for each decedent with a zero cost applied to days not in hospital. Day-specific hospital costs averaged over all decedents (cohort averaged) and decedents in hospital only (inpatient averaged) were estimated. Two-part models and generalised linear models were used. Results The cohort comprised 12,764 decedents who, combined, spent 451,236 (9.7%) days of the last year of life in hospital. Overall, periods of time receiving community-based specialist palliative care were associated with a 27% decrease from A 112(A 110-A 114)perdecedentperdayto A82 (A 78-A 85) per decedent per day of CA hospital costs. Community-based specialist palliative care was also associated a reduction of inpatient averaged hospital costs of 9%(7%-10%) to A 1030perhospitaliseddecedentperday.Hospitalcostreductionswereobservedfordecedentswithorganfailures,chronicobstructivepulmonarydisease,Alzheimer’sdisease,Parkinson’sdiseaseandcancerbutnotformotorneuronedisease.Costreductionsassociatedwithcommunity-basedspecialistpalliativecarewereevident4monthsbeforedeathfordecedentswithcancerandbyoneto2monthsbeforedeathfordecedentsdyingfromotherconditions.ConclusionCommunity-basedspecialistpalliativecarewasassociatedwithhospitalcostreductionsacrossmultiplelife-limitingconditions.