Free Childcare Cost Calculator Widget for Your Website
Let your readers, families or employees look up what childcare costs in their ZIP code — daycare centers, in-home daycare, nannies, nanny shares and au pairs — without leaving your page. Free to embed with a credit link.
Customize and Copy the Embed Code
Pick a size and a starting point. The preview updates as you go; paste the code into any page that accepts HTML.
Live preview
Embed code
Keep the “Childcare cost data by ChildcareCostFinder” line under the widget — it’s the main condition of use (see the embed terms).
Who Uses the Widget
Daycares, preschools and family child care homes
Set the starting ZIP code to your own and families researching care see local market rates for centers, in-home daycare, nannies and nanny shares on the same page as your tuition. The comparison usually works in a center’s favor: in every metro and region in our data, full-time infant care at a daycare center costs less than 60% of what a full-time nanny does.
Parenting blogs and newsletters
Posts about going back to work, budgeting for a baby or choosing between daycare and a nanny land better when each reader can check their own ZIP code instead of a single national average. The widget sits inside the post, so readers get a local number without leaving your site.
HR, benefits and people teams
Put it on a benefits or parental-leave page next to your Dependent Care FSA details. Employees can see what care costs where they live before choosing an election — the 2026 limit is $7,500 per household ($3,750 if married filing separately) — and the widget’s “Full calculator” link estimates their FSA and Child and Dependent Care Credit savings.
Local news, journalists and relocation guides
Cost-of-living and child care stories, or “moving to” guides, can let readers compare their current ZIP code with a destination. For fixed figures in a published story, cite or download our open dataset instead, so the numbers in your text don’t change after publication.
What the Widget Shows
For the ZIP code and age a visitor picks, the widget shows the estimated monthly and annual cost of five kinds of care for one child. These are the same figures our main calculator shows before tax savings:
- Daycare center — full-time tuition plus about $350 a year in registration and supply fees.
- In-home daycare — full-time care in a provider’s home (family child care), plus about $150 a year in fees.
- Nanny — 40 hours a week for children under 5, or 15 after-school hours a week plus full summer days for school-age children, with an estimated 10.25% added for employer payroll taxes (Social Security, Medicare and federal and state unemployment).
- Nanny share — one family’s share when two families split a nanny (about two-thirds of a solo nanny), with the same payroll-tax estimate and a $100 coordination fee.
- Au pair — about $22,000 a year per household no matter how many children, covering the weekly stipend (at least $195.75), agency fees, the host family’s education contribution of up to $500, and room and board.
Figures were rebuilt in October 2026 from Care.com’s 2026 Cost of Care Report and Care.com’s local caregiver rates, with metro daycare price levels from the U.S. Department of Labor’s National Database of Childcare Prices and the Economic Policy Institute. A ZIP code is matched to a metro area by its first three digits; ZIP codes outside the metros we track get a regional average for the Northeast, South, Midwest, Mountain West or West, and the rest fall back to the national average. Because fees and payroll taxes are included, widget figures run slightly higher than the base rates in our city cost tables. Full details are in our methodology.
Example: monthly costs the widget shows for an infant
| ZIP code (area) | Daycare center | In-home daycare | Nanny | Nanny share | Au pair |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10001 (New York City) | $2,460 | $1,798 | $4,869 | $3,254 | $1,833 |
| 60614 (Chicago) | $1,815 | $1,153 | $4,487 | $3,000 | $1,833 |
| 85004 (Phoenix) | $1,319 | $1,054 | $4,268 | $2,853 | $1,833 |
| 75201 (Dallas–Fort Worth) | $1,037 | $914 | $3,989 | $2,668 | $1,833 |
| U.S. national average | $1,468 | $1,153 | $4,254 | $2,845 | $1,833 |
Estimated monthly cost for one infant (0–1), full-time, before tax savings or subsidies; October 2026 data. When we refresh the data, embedded widgets update automatically.
Embed Terms
- Free for any website, commercial or non-commercial. No sign-up or API key.
- Attribution required. Keep the credit line that comes with the code, including its link to childcarecostfinder.com, visible next to the widget.
- Don’t modify the figures. Don’t crop, cover, edit or recalculate the numbers inside the widget, and don’t present them as your own survey or as a quote from a specific provider.
- Want the numbers in your own table or chart? The underlying data is published under the CC BY 4.0 license. Download the CSV, credit “Childcare Cost Calculator (Dinnr LLC)” with a link to childcarecostfinder.com, and note any changes you make.
- Estimates, not quotes or tax advice. Local prices vary by provider. The widget is provided as is under our Terms of Service, and we may change or retire it.
Privacy and Page Speed
The widget runs no ads, analytics or tracking scripts, and its code stores nothing in the visitor’s browser. ZIP codes typed into it are looked up inside the browser and aren’t sent to us. If a visitor clicks through to the full calculator, their ZIP code and child’s age are carried over in the link so they don’t have to retype them. Like every page on our site, the widget is delivered through Cloudflare, which may set a short-lived security cookie used to filter bots.
It’s light: a single page of about 4 KB plus our cost-data script of about 18 KB (both compressed), which browsers cache. The embed code uses loading="lazy", so the widget doesn’t load until a reader scrolls near it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the childcare cost widget free?
Yes. There’s no fee, sign-up or API key. Just keep the credit line that comes with the embed code, which links to ChildcareCostFinder, and leave the figures unchanged.
Do I need to update the embed code when the data changes?
No. The widget loads its figures from childcarecostfinder.com each time it’s viewed, so every embedded copy picks up our data refreshes automatically. The current figures were rebuilt in October 2026.
Does the widget work on WordPress, Squarespace and Wix?
It works on any platform that lets you add HTML: paste the code into a Custom HTML block in WordPress, a Code Block in Squarespace, or an Embed HTML element in Wix. Some hosted plans strip iframes from posts, so if the widget doesn’t appear, check your plan’s embed settings.
Can the widget show costs for my area when it loads?
Yes. Enter a starting ZIP code in the generator above and the widget opens with that area’s costs. Visitors can still type their own ZIP code.
Can I change the widget’s colors or figures?
You can choose a light theme, a dark theme, or one that follows each visitor’s device setting. The figures can’t be edited. If you need the numbers in your own format, download our dataset, which is published under CC BY 4.0, and credit the source.
Does the widget track my visitors?
No. It runs no ads, analytics or tracking scripts, and its code doesn’t store anything in the visitor’s browser. ZIP codes are looked up inside the browser and aren’t sent to us. Like every page on our site, it’s delivered through Cloudflare, which may set a short-lived security cookie to filter bots.
How tall should the iframe be?
The default of 600 pixels fits the widget at any width from 300 to 600 pixels, so it also works when a fixed-width frame shrinks on a phone. If the frame is shorter, the widget scrolls inside it instead of cutting anything off.
Questions About the Widget?
If something doesn’t display correctly on your platform, or you’d like to tell us where you’re using it, get in touch.
Contact Us