Childcare costs in Australia

What childcare charges in Australia

Australia publishes real fee data every quarter, which makes this one of the few countries where you can quote a current national average without inventing it. The Department of Education's Child Care Subsidy data report for the March quarter 2026 put the average hourly fee at $13.75 across all care types, up 4.3% on the March quarter 2025.

By care type:

• Centre Based Day Care: $14.50 an hour — the most expensive, and the type 59% of children in care use.
• Family Day Care: $13.90 an hour.
• Outside School Hours Care: $9.70 an hour — the cheapest.

Centre Based Day Care fees vary sharply by state and territory. In the same quarter the average hourly fee was $16.35 in the Australian Capital Territory, $14.80 in Western Australia, $14.75 in New South Wales, $14.55 in Victoria, $14.10 in Queensland, $14.05 in South Australia, and $13.20 in both Tasmania and the Northern Territory.

Children attended an average of 27.8 hours of care a week across all types, and 34.4 hours a week in Centre Based Day Care. That matters for budgeting: an hourly rate multiplied by a full working week overstates what most families actually use.

How Child Care Subsidy works

CCS is paid directly to your child care service to reduce your fees. You pay the difference, called the gap fee, and since 1 July 2023 that must be paid electronically.

The subsidy percentage applies to the lower of your hourly fee or the relevant hourly rate cap. If your service charges more than the cap, the excess is entirely yours. Getting this the wrong way round is the most common misreading of the scheme.

Your income sets the percentage

Services Australia's standard CCS rates work from your family income estimate:

• $0 to $88,520: 90%
• More than $88,520 and below $538,520: between 90% and 0%, falling by 1 percentage point for every $5,000 of family income above $88,520
• $538,520 or more: 0%

You can still claim above the top threshold; if your actual income turns out lower, the balancing process at the end of the financial year pays what you were entitled to. Estimates can be changed online twice a financial year.

The hourly rate caps

The cap is set by government and reviewed annually, and it depends on the care type and your child's age. For a child below school age:

• Centre Based Day Care (long day care and occasional care): $15.19
• Outside School Hours Care (before, after and vacation care): $15.19
• Family Day Care: $14.08
• In Home Care: $41.31 per family

For a school-aged child, the Centre Based Day Care and Outside School Hours Care caps drop to $13.30, while Family Day Care and In Home Care stay the same. These are the figures Services Australia published as current in July 2026, and they change each 1 July.

How much of a bind is the cap? In the March quarter 2026, when the below-school-age Centre Based Day Care cap was $14.63, 59.1% of centres had an average hourly fee at or under it. Averages in ACT, WA and NSW sat above the cap. So for a substantial minority of families the subsidy is being calculated on less than they are actually charged.

The 72-hour guarantee

From 5 January 2026, families eligible for Child Care Subsidy can get at least 72 hours of subsidised child care each fortnight, for each child. That is the change usually described as the three-day guarantee, and it replaced the previous requirement to demonstrate a minimum level of recognised activity in order to access subsidised hours.

Two further adjustments are worth knowing. Families with more than one child aged 5 or under in care may get a higher rate for the younger children. Additional Child Care Subsidy provides extra help in defined circumstances; 32,760 families accessed it in the March quarter 2026.

Where the budget leaks

The subsidy applies to fees for approved care, and there are costs it does not touch. Enrolment and waitlist fees, late-pickup charges, and days your service is closed but still charges for are outside the calculation. So are absence days beyond your allowance. If your service charges a daily session rate, divide it by the number of hours in the session — not by the hours your child actually attends — to find the hourly fee the cap is compared against, because a 10-hour session booked for a 7-hour day is charged as 10.

Educators and teachers who work for a child care service may be eligible for a discount if their own child attends the same service. It does not apply to Family Day Care or In Home Care employees, and you have to ask your service about it.

Working out your own number

The published averages are useful for sanity-checking a quote, not for budgeting. Do the arithmetic in this order.

1. Get the hourly fee from the service, derived from the session rate divided by session hours.
2. Compare it with the hourly rate cap for that care type and your child's age. Whichever is lower is what the subsidy is calculated on.
3. Apply your CCS percentage from your family income estimate.
4. Multiply the remainder by the hours you will actually book, capped at your subsidised hours per fortnight.
5. Add anything outside the subsidy: enrolment fees, incursions, late fees, and any hours above your subsidised allowance.

Two adjustments trip people up at the end of the financial year. Services Australia withholds a portion of your subsidy as a buffer against overpayment, so your fortnightly gap fee is slightly larger than the raw calculation suggests, with the balance settled when your payments are balanced against your actual adjusted taxable income. And an income estimate that drifts — a pay rise, a second job, a partner returning to work — produces a debt at balancing time. Update the estimate when your circumstances change rather than waiting to be asked.

Where to get help

Services Australia is the governing authority for Child Care Subsidy, and the Department of Education publishes the quarterly fee and usage data that tells you whether a quoted fee is high for your state. Use the Payment Finder or the Starting Blocks calculator for an estimate before you enrol, and ask any prospective service for its hourly fee, its session length and its absence policy in writing.