How Much to Charge for Home Daycare: Weekly and Monthly, Worked

October 17, 2026 · Pricing a service business

To work out how much to charge for home daycare, start from the income you want to keep, gross it up for the tax you set aside, add your yearly costs and the food each child eats, and divide by the children you will enroll and the weeks you charge for. That gives the lowest weekly rate per child that pays you. In the illustrative example below, that floor is $223.11 a week, or $966.81 a month. Convert it to a monthly rate by multiplying by 52 and dividing by 12, not by multiplying by 4 - the shortcut gives away 4 weeks of care per child every year.

This post does not quote what other providers charge. A floor built from your own numbers tells you the least you can charge; what families near you will pay is a separate question, and only your own local inquiries can answer it.

The home daycare rate formula

profit needed       = income you want to keep / (1 - tax set-aside share)
revenue needed      = profit needed + yearly costs + food and supplies a year
weekly floor        = revenue needed / (children enrolled x weeks charged)
monthly equivalent  = weekly floor x weeks charged / 12
daily equivalent    = weekly floor / days open a week

Every input is yours. The tax set-aside is a share you choose, from last year’s return or a tax professional, not a computed tax. The number of children is whatever you plan to enroll, and it can never be more than your own license allows. Licensing rules differ by state, by the ages of the children and by license type, so copy your capacity from your license rather than from anything you read online, including this page.

Worked example: the weekly floor

These figures are illustrative, chosen to show the method. The provider wants to keep $45,000 a year, sets aside 20% of profit for tax, has $4,000 of yearly costs besides food, spends $30.00 per child per week on food and supplies, and enrolls 6 children, charging 52 weeks a year, 5 days a week.

Check it the other way: 6 children at $223.11 for 52 weeks covers the costs and the food and, after the 20% set-aside, leaves exactly $45,000. Charging less means keeping less than the income you started from.

Divided by 10 hours open a day, the floor is $4.46 per child per hour open. That figure is useful for pricing drop-in or extended hours, but it is the weekly rate that pays the bills.

How much to charge for in-home daycare per month

A month is not four weeks. A year has 52 weeks, so a month averages 4.33 of them. Billing a weekly rate times 4 every month collects 48 weeks of tuition for 52 weeks of care.

At a weekly rate of $225, the correct monthly rate is $975.00. Billing $900 instead loses $75.00 a month, $900 a year per child - 4 weeks of care given away. Across 6 children that is $5,400 a year.

The shortcut also hides a floor problem. $225 a week is $1.89 above this provider’s floor. Billed at $900 a month, it works out to $207.69 a week over the year - below the floor of $223.11. A rate that clears the floor on paper can fail it on the invoice.

Going the other way, a monthly rate turns into a weekly one by multiplying by 12 and dividing by 52: $1,000 a month is $230.77 a week.

The cost of an empty slot

The floor assumes every slot is full every week. An empty slot changes almost nothing about your costs: rent or mortgage, insurance, equipment and your own hours stay the same. Only the food goes down.

At $225 a week, one slot empty for 8 weeks loses $1,800.00 of tuition and saves $240.00 of food, which offsets only 13% of the lost tuition. The empty slot costs $1,560.00. Left empty for a whole year, it costs $10,140.00.

If that slot never fills, keeping the same income means each of the other children paying $264.00 a week instead of $225: $39.00 more, a 17.3% raise. That is the insight the calculator pack is built on - the rate is set by how many children actually enroll, not by how many your license allows. Here is the floor from the worked example at lower enrollments:

With 3 children the floor is $416.22 a week. A rate set on a full roster quietly pays less than you planned for every week a slot stays open, which is why a waiting list, a deposit to hold a spot or a notice period for leaving all have a dollar value you can compute.

How much can you charge for home daycare?

Your floor is the lowest rate that works; the most you can charge is set by what families near you will pay and by your license, which caps how many children you can take. Revenue can never be more than your rate times your licensed capacity times the weeks you charge for, so if the floor at your licensed capacity is above what local families will pay, the gap has to close through costs, hours or income wanted - not through enrolling more children than the license allows.

Then check what the rate pays you per hour. In the example, 6 children at $225 for 52 weeks bring in $70,200. After costs, food and the 20% set-aside, the provider keeps $45,472. The daycare is open 50 hours a week, and there are another 10 hours a week of prep, cleaning, shopping and paperwork. Over 49 working weeks (3 weeks closed) that is 2,940 hours, so the pay is $15.47 an hour - $18.56 if you count opening hours alone.

Closure weeks: billed or not

The example bills all 52 weeks, including the 3 weeks closed for vacation and holidays. If closed weeks are not billed, the weekly rate has to rise from $223.11 to $236.77 to raise the same money. Each family pays $11,601.67 a year either way; what matters is that your contract says which one you use.

If you are comparing the parent’s side of the same decision, see daycare vs nanny cost.

How these were calculated

Profit needed is income / (1 - tax set-aside). Revenue needed is profit needed + yearly costs + food per child per week x children x weeks. The weekly floor is revenue needed / (children x weeks), the monthly equivalent is weekly x weeks / 12, and the daily equivalent is weekly / days open. The empty-slot cost is tuition not collected minus food not bought; the cover rate is (rate x children - food x empty slots) / (children - empty slots). Pay per hour is (revenue - costs - food) x (1 - tax set-aside) / hours worked. Every figure on this page was computed twice: once by the code behind the product below, and once by an independent program that adds the year up week by week and child by child. The two agree to the cent. All incomes, costs, rates and enrollment figures are illustrative inputs, not market rates, and licensed capacity comes from your own license. Business use of the home is not computed; IRS Publication 587 covers it. None of this is financial, legal or tax advice.

To run this on your own income, costs and enrollment, the pack below has seven linked calculators, including food per child, part-time and infant rates, closure weeks and your real hourly pay.