How much should I charge? A guide for Sydney babysitters and nannies (2026)

Ask "what's the going rate?" in a Sydney parents' group and you will collect forty answers between $20 and $50, most of them from the people doing the paying. This is the other side of that thread: what the market pays, what a second and third child are worth, and the floor the law puts under regular work. It is not a rate card, and no number in it binds you.

Where the market sits

For casual, privately arranged babysitting in Sydney in 2026, most rates land between $25 and $40 an hour. Ongoing nanny work runs higher, mostly between $30 and $45, because holding the shape of a family's week is a bigger job than holding one of its evenings. We keep a guide to how families read those numbers on each side: babysitter rates for the casual end and nanny rates for the ongoing one. What families are asking for, in their own words, is on the ads in babysitting jobs in Sydney.

Where you sit inside the range is mostly experience and what the job asks of you. Starting out with school-aged kids puts you in the high $20s. A few years of real work, or evenings that include the whole dinner-bath-bed routine, put you in the $30s. Newborn experience, an early childhood qualification, or additional needs experience put you above that, and should.

The most common mistake in those Facebook threads is not overcharging. It is a capable sitter asking $20 because a bigger number feels rude. Parents are not offended by a market rate; most of them have already read what daycare costs. A clear rate on your profile reads as someone who takes the work seriously, and a missing one is a question a parent has to ask before they can decide anything, so plenty never message at all.

One child or three: price the job

One seven-year-old asleep by eight and three children under five are both called babysitting, and they are not the same evening. Quote them differently.

For the arithmetic, two structures cover nearly everyone. Either you hold one base rate and add a flat amount per extra child, commonly $5 an hour, or you quote each family a single number for their particular job. Both are fine. What does not work is quoting your one-child rate and discovering the third child at the front door, so ask how many kids and their ages before you name a number, every time.

Ages move the rate more than headcount does. Two under three is not two school-aged children with more noise; it is a job where nobody sleeps and you are never off. A nanny share, where two families engage you at once, works the same way: the rate goes up before it is split, because more children and two sets of expectations is a harder job, not the same job billed twice.

The floor under regular work

Casual babysitting does have an award floor, and much of the market sits under it: in daytime hours anything below $32.18, and in the evening anything below $37.32. Babysitter rates in Sydney sets out the columns. Whether it binds you is the next question. If you do the same hours for the same family most weeks, you are almost certainly their employee, not a contractor, and employment in a private home is covered by the Miscellaneous Award. Most nanny roles sit at Level 2, where the minimum for a casual on weekday daytime hours has been $33.85 an hour since July 2026, and a role that asks for qualifications or real responsibility can classify higher, with a higher floor again. A family paying $28 for three regular nanny days a week is underpaying you, even if you were the one who suggested the number.

Superannuation is owed on top: 12%, once you work more than 30 hours a week for the household. The family's side of this, the tax, leave and insurance that sit on top of your rate, is in the nanny rates guide, and it is worth reading so you know what they are working out while you are quoting. Where the line between babysitting and nanny work actually falls is its own question, with its own guide.

Premiums, minimums and overnights

Some parts of pricing feel awkward to say and are completely standard. Say them anyway.

A minimum booking of two or three hours is normal. Travelling forty minutes each way for a ninety-minute job costs you most of an evening, and pricing that honestly is not being difficult.

Late finishes, public holidays and New Year's Eve carry a premium at every level of the market. Overnights are usually a flat sum rather than an hourly rate, because charging by the hour through eight hours of sleep suits nobody, including you when the baby is up at 2am and the flat sum starts looking thin.

Driving is its own conversation. School pickups mean a licence, a car, fuel and a lot more responsibility, and they show up either in the rate or as a separate travel amount. Settle whose car and whose insurance before the first run, not after.

Certainty is worth something too. Some sitters price a guaranteed weekly booking slightly under their casual rate because it fills the calendar. That is a choice you can make; it is not something a family is owed.

Saying the number

Every awkward money conversation in this line of work happens because nobody had the easy one first. Before the first booking, send one message that covers all of it:

Raising your rate as you gain experience is normal. New enquiries simply get the new rate. Families you already work for get a few weeks' notice, and nearly all of them take a rise better than they would take losing you.

What the work costs you

Your rate is not all profit, and it is fair for the number to reflect that. Paid work with children in NSW needs a paid-worker Working With Children Check, which costs $112 and lasts five years; a volunteer clearance does not cover paid jobs, and parents are told to check. A current first aid certificate costs money to get and to renew. Travel costs you time and fares or fuel on every booking.

However you are paid, the income is declarable. Cash in hand is legal to receive and yours to declare, but income you cannot prove is income you cannot show a real estate agent or a bank, and in this city that matters more than the tax.

One thing here is free: verification. We check your ID and your WWCC status, your profile carries the badge, and parents can filter to verified sitters only. It takes about five minutes and it is the single cheapest thing you can do to support a higher rate.

Where these numbers come from

The market ranges are editorial, drawn from advertised rates around Sydney and what sitters and families report. The award figure comes from the Fair Work minimums current in 2026. We do not handle payments, so we hold no data on what anyone is paid, and we would rather say so than publish an average we cannot stand behind.

The only rate we will ever publish is the one you type on your own profile, and every dollar of it stays yours.