A clearer starting point
About What Daycare Costs
Childcare is a large part of a family budget. We make public price data easier to find and compare before you contact providers.
Who makes this site?
What Daycare Costs is published by Moss Digital Publishing. It is an independent reference site, not a government service, childcare provider directory or quality-rating service. We have no government affiliation or endorsement.
What you can do here
Find a county through your ZIP, compare age groups and care settings, download a price table, or estimate a budget for multiple children. The launch set contains 500 counties, plus a page for every state and Washington, DC. ZIP matches outside that set explain the coverage limit.
Dates and limits stay beside the numbers
The source observations are from DOL's 2022 study year. Inflation estimates are labeled separately and are not current provider quotes. Comparisons describe price, never quality or availability. Unknown values stay unknown.
Read the complete method for source definitions, imputation, typical-county medians, income ratios and search-indexing rules. To check a questionable number, use the county CSV and linked source workbook; verify current fees directly with the provider.
Sources & data dates
- Prices
- DOL Women’s Bureau NDCP, study year 2022. County estimates from state market-rate surveys; some values are standardized or imputed.
- Inflation
- BLS day care and preschool CPI-U (not seasonally adjusted), September 2026. These are adjusted estimates, not new local observations.
- Income & population
- Census ACS fields distributed in the DOL workbook’s 2022 rows: MFI (family income, DP03) and TOTALPOP (DP05). Income share uses 2022 prices only.
- Retrieved
- 2026-11-03 (DOL); 2026-11-03 (BLS)
- Method
- Units, typical-county benchmarks, ZIP matching and limitations