Childcare Costs Calculator (Tax-Free Childcare)

Childcare costs in the UK vary significantly by type, age and region. The Coram Childcare Survey 2026 (published March 2026) puts a part-time nursery place of 25 hours a week for a child under two at an average of £189 a week in England for families who do not qualify for funded hours, £166.33 in Wales and £133.08 in Scotland. After-school clubs average £69 a week in England. A full-time place costs more again and the bill multiplies with each child, which is why the figure worth knowing is the cost after government support rather than the headline fee.

Free hours do most of the heavy lifting. Every 3 and 4-year-old gets 15 hours a week in term time, roughly 38 weeks a year, whatever the parents do. Working families where each parent earns over £203 a week and neither earns above £100,000 have gained far more since the expansion began. Eligible 2-year-olds picked up 15 hours from April 2024, the entitlement reached down to 9 months from September 2024, and it doubled to 30 hours from 9 months in September 2025. Settings can stretch the entitlement over more weeks at fewer hours, so 30 hours across 38 weeks becomes about 22 hours a week year-round. Extra hours, food and consumables are usually charged on top.

Tax-Free Childcare (TFC) is the main government scheme for working families. For every £8 you pay in, the government adds £2, up to a maximum of £2,000 per child per year (£4,000 for disabled children). Both parents must earn at least the equivalent of 16 hours at minimum wage and no more than £100,000 each. That 20% top-up covers each child under 12, or under 17 where the child is disabled. Applications go through the Childcare Choices service on gov.uk, eligibility has to be reconfirmed every 3 months, and the money can be spread across several providers and several children. TFC does not sit alongside workplace childcare vouchers, which closed to new entrants in October 2018.

Universal Credit takes a different route, and the calculator shows the most it could repay on the same bill as a comparison line. The childcare element reimburses up to 85% of registered costs, capped at £1,071.09 a month for one child and £1,836.16 a month for two or more. The money arrives in arrears, after you have already paid the nursery, and the Flexible Support Fund exists to bridge that first bill. Only registered childminders and nurseries qualify, so an informal arrangement with grandparents does not. You can claim the UC element on whatever paid hours remain after your free hours, but you cannot get it and Tax-Free Childcare at the same time. You can switch from one to the other, and gov.uk advises waiting for the Tax-Free Childcare decision before ending a UC claim.

Order matters when the schemes are combined. Take every free hour you are entitled to first, then put Tax-Free Childcare against whatever is left. Some employers add to that with an on-site nursery at a discount, and anyone already receiving workplace childcare vouchers can keep using them even though the door shut to newcomers and salary sacrifice childcare schemes have been scarce since 2018. Childminders are often cheaper than nurseries and more flexible about hours, though they provide no holiday cover when they take leave themselves.

Grandparents who help out can claim something back for themselves. Specified Adult Childcare credits give a family member who looks after a child under 12 a National Insurance credit towards their own State Pension, provided the child's parent receives Child Benefit and the carer is under State Pension age. Only one credit is available per family per week rather than one per child. The form is CA9176 on gov.uk and claims can be backdated to April 2011. Each credited year is worth roughly £360 a year of extra State Pension for life, yet only 19,000 claims were made in 2023 against an estimated 100,000+ eligible families.