30 Hours Free Childcare Calculator

The UK government provides free childcare hours for children from age 9 months to school age, expanding significantly from 2024/25. From September 2025, working parents of children aged 9 months to 3 years are entitled to 30 hours per week of free childcare during term time (38 weeks per year), or the equivalent stretched over more weeks at fewer hours. That comes to 1,140 free hours a year per child. The first step of the expansion, 15 hours from 9 months, arrived in September 2024.

All 3 and 4-year-olds are entitled to 15 hours of free childcare per week (the universal entitlement), regardless of parents' working status. Working parents of 3 and 4-year-olds receive an additional 15 hours (30 hours total). To qualify for the working parent entitlement, each parent must earn at least £10,575 per year (16 hours/week at the National Living Wage) and neither can earn more than £100,000. Expressed weekly, the floor is £203, and for a double-earner household with toddlers the entitlement can be worth £15,000 or more a year.

Both parents in a couple have to be working, while a single parent is judged on their own earnings alone. Self-employed parents face the same income test and evidence it through Self Assessment or business accounts. Being on maternity or paternity leave does not break eligibility as long as you are returning to work. Applications go through the Childcare Choices service on gov.uk, where an automatic check runs, and the code has to be confirmed every 3 months rather than once a year.

Some 2-year-olds from disadvantaged backgrounds qualify for 15 hours of free childcare even if parents are not working. This covers families on certain benefits, looked-after children, and children with an Education Health and Care Plan. This calculator checks your eligibility for each scheme based on your child's age and circumstances, which matters because a household can qualify under one route and fail another.

Tax-Free Childcare sits alongside the free hours rather than replacing them. Pay in £8 and the government adds £2, making £10 towards a bill, a 20% top-up worth up to £2,000 a year per child under 12, or £4,000 for a disabled child under 17. The same income rules apply, over £203 a week and under £100,000 a year for each parent. The money is spent at registered providers, meaning nurseries, childminders and school clubs, and it cannot be combined with workplace childcare vouchers, which closed to new entrants in 2018.

Universal Credit offers the alternative route. Its childcare element reimburses 85% of registered childcare costs, capped at £1,071.09 a month for one child and £1,836.16 a month for two or more, but it pays in arrears once you have already settled the bill. The Flexible Support Fund exists to cover that first upfront payment. Informal arrangements with grandparents do not qualify. You can stack the UC element on top of your free hours, though not at the same time as Tax-Free Childcare, so lower-income households usually take the UC element while mid-income families do better with the top-up.

Family members who help out have a claim of their own. Specified Adult Childcare credits give a grandparent or other relative looking after a child under 12 a National Insurance credit towards their 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. The claim uses form CA9176 and can be backdated to April 2011, with each credited year worth roughly £360 a year of State Pension for life, yet only 19,000 claims have been made against an estimated 100,000+ eligible grandparents.