Most expensive and cheapest childcare in Australian capital cities

As families struggle to cope with soaring fees, here’s the costliest — and cheapest — daycare near you. SEARCH YOUR AREA.

Struggling young families could be facing an increase in childcare fees of up to $3120 this year.

Founder and CEO of the childcare comparison app KindiCare, Benjamin Balk, said an expected fee increase of six per cent would add between $1560 and $3120 per child to a family’s annual costs before subsidies, with the average rise being $1854.

It comes as new data from KindiCare revealed the most expensive and cheapest suburbs for childcare across Australia’s capital cities.

Childcare costs are escalating for Australian families. Picture: iStock.

It found that parents in Sydney’s Neutral Bay were forking out the most for long day care in the country, with fees on average now at $173.50 a day.

The cheapest suburb in an Australian capital city was Kingston on the outskirts of Hobart, where families paid on average $87.20 a day.

The data included fee rises from two of the country’s biggest providers.

For profit provider G8, which had 470 centres introduced a six per cent increase in February and not-for-profit Goodstart, with 664 centres increased its fees by 4.9 per cent, earlier this month.

Mr Balk said he expected more providers to follow suit with fee rises between six to eight per cent.

He said parents were facing a triple whammy with childcare fee increases, as well as rising housing and living costs.

“Childcare providers, both profit and not for profit, are feeling the squeeze but the people it is going to hurt most are families and children,” Mr Balk said.

He said an average family in Sydney with two children under five attending long day care full time was already paying upwards of $60,000 a year in childcare fees before government subsidies.

KindiCare founder Benjamin Balk with his family. Picture: Kristy Jauncey Photography

In some suburbs in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, that cost could blow out to $100,000 a year before subsidies.

Mr Balk said the recent introduction of an increased subsidy for second and subsequent children attending childcare, representing an additional $1.7 billion over three years, helped only a small number of families.

He said for many it was “simply not enough given the other household costs pressures and rising inflation”.

Which is the most expensive and cheapest suburb for childcare where you live? Picture: Andrea Obzerova / iStock

REA Group Director of Economic Research, Cameron Kusher said in the 12 months to February 2022, national home prices had increased by 19.3 per cent, while national advertised rental rates were 4.7 per cent higher, although they were up by much more outside of Sydney and Melbourne.

He said it was “increasingly becoming difficult to save big enough deposits quickly enough to enter into the market”.