How much does childcare cost in Australia?

We track what long day care centres across Australia publish as their daily fee. Here is what those numbers say, before any subsidy.

That is the middle of a wide range. A quarter of centres publish $143 a day or less, a quarter publish $171.50 or more, and the published fees we hold run from $40 to $250. The gap between the 25th and 75th percentile is $28.50 a day, which on five days a week for a 48-week year is about $6,840 before any subsidy.

What families actually pay

Every figure on this page is the fee before the Child Care Subsidy. The subsidy is income-tested and paid directly to the centre, so what lands on your invoice depends on your household income, your activity level, and an hourly rate cap set by the government. Two families at the same centre routinely pay different amounts. Services Australia publishes the current rates and the cap.

This is why comparing centres on the advertised daily fee is still the right first move: the subsidy percentage applies to your fee up to the cap, so a lower daily fee is a lower gap for the same entitlement.

Fees by state

Long day care only. The middle half is the range from the 25th to the 75th percentile, which is a fairer read than the extremes. States with fewer than 30 published fees are left out rather than shown on thin evidence.

The ACT sits highest at $176 a day and the Northern Territory lowest at $134, a difference of $42 a day for the same kind of care.

Nearly every centre publishes a fee, and they still differ

Of the long day care centres in the national register, 94% publish a daily fee. The number is nearly always there, which is what makes comparing on fee worth doing at all. The remaining 6% publish nothing, so a parent comparing those has to ring each one and ask.

What makes childcare hard to compare is not that the fee is hidden. It is that the same kind of care runs from $143 to $171.50 a day across the middle half of the market, and that a centre's rate moves with your child's age band, so the headline daily fee is often not the one you would pay.

How to compare centres near you

Start with the suburb, not the city: fees vary more between two suburbs in the same metro than between two states. We hold every centre in and near each suburb with its published fee, its government NQS quality rating and its last reported vacancy, side by side.

Childcare fees by suburb, or jump to Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth or Adelaide.

Where these numbers come from

Fees are as published by providers to the government's Starting Blocks service and are shown before the Child Care Subsidy. Quality ratings are issued by state regulators under the National Quality Standard. We publish what providers publish; we do not estimate a fee for a centre that does not give one. Figures on this page were computed on 10 September 2026 and change as centres update their fees.