Rates
What a nanny costs in Australia (2026)
Nannies in Sydney and Melbourne start at $30 to $35 an hour, counted from 215 profiles. Here is what a day or a full week costs, and what sits on top.
The middle nanny in Sydney starts at $35 an hour, and in Melbourne at $30, going on the rates they list on their profiles here. That rate is rarely what a nanny ends up costing you. This is guidance, not a rate card, and no nanny is bound by it.
How much is a nanny per hour in Australia
A nanny here sets a range: the rate they start from and the top of it. On 3 October 2026, 215 sitters in Greater Sydney and Greater Melbourne who offer regular nanny work had set one, and this is what they were asking.
Greater Sydney
Median start: $35 an hour
- 167 nannies with a rate
- Half start between $30 and $35
- The top of the range: $45 at the median
Greater Melbourne
Median start: $30 an hour
- 48 nannies with a rate
- Half start between $28 and $35
- The top of the range: $40 at the median
These are asking rates, not what anyone was paid. A median is the middle nanny in the list, so a few unusual rates do not move it. Most of them take casual evenings too and set one rate for both, so the bottom of each range is often a babysitting rate. Where a nanny sits comes down to experience and the job:
$30–35
an hour
Early in the work
Real experience with children behind them, but this is one of their first ongoing roles. School-aged children, part-time, often the afternoon shift.
$35–45
an hour
The common range
Someone who has run a household's week before. Full days with under-fives, a routine to hold, meals, the school run, and the admin that comes with a child's day.
$45+
an hour
Specialist
Newborn or multiples experience, an early childhood qualification, additional needs experience, or hours that genuinely eat someone's evenings.
Nannies in Sydney and in Melbourne list them closest first, with the rate on every profile that names one, and find a nanny near you goes suburb by suburb.
What moves the rate
A nanny costs more per hour than a casual babysitter because a babysitter takes an evening and a nanny takes the shape of a day, usually while you are not there to be asked. Babysitting rates covers the casual end. Within nanny work, ages do most of the moving, and the rest is what else the job carries.
What moves a nanny's rate
- The children's ages. Two under three is not two school-aged children with more noise, it is a different job
- Scope beyond supervision: kids' meals, their laundry, the school run, activities, keeping the week organised
- Driving, because whose car it is and whose insurance carries the school run are not small questions
- Hours that cost the nanny something: starts before 7am, finishes after 7pm, weekends
- A roster that changes week to week, because it stops them taking other work around you
- Certainty, which goes the other way: a guaranteed 25 hours a week can be quoted lower than hours you might halve at a fortnight's notice
Overnight nanny rates split the awake hours from the sleeping block the way an overnight babysitter's do, which overnight babysitting rates works through. A night nanny for a newborn, feeding and settling through the night, is a specialist job priced above every band on this page, and this guide does not cover it.
The rate is not the cost
A nanny working regular hours in your home is almost always your employee rather than a contractor. Fair Work is direct about it: a nanny in an employment relationship in a private home is covered by the Miscellaneous Award, which sets minimum pay, leave and overtime. An ABN and an invoice do not change that on their own, and if the same person does your Wednesdays every week, the arrangement has already decided which side of that line you are on.
That makes you an employer, with the things an employer carries:
What sits on top of the hourly rate
- Super at 12%, owed to a domestic worker who works more than 30 hours in a week regardless of what you pay them. Since 1 July 2026 it is paid with each pay run rather than quarterly
- PAYG tax withheld from their wages, which means registering with the ATO for a withholding number even though you are not a business
- Paid annual leave and paid personal leave if they are permanent part-time or full-time rather than casual
- Workers insurance, which each state runs its own scheme for. In NSW you need it once your estimated annual wages pass $7,500
None of that is exotic, and services exist that run the payroll for a household. But $40 an hour is not a $40 an hour arrangement, so work the on-costs into the number when you agree it.
How much does a nanny cost per week: 2, 3 or 5 days
Three eight-hour days is a 24-hour week. At $35 an hour, the Sydney median start, that is $840 a week gross, or $720 at Melbourne's $30 and $1,080 at $45. As a casual over 48 paid weeks, the $35 version is a little over $40,000 before anything else is counted; permanent part-time you pay through leave, so 52 weeks and $43,680.
A day rate is the same arithmetic: an eight-hour day at $35 is $280, and a ten-hour day $350, so ask how many hours the day covers. Two days is a 16-hour week, or $560.
Full time is 38 ordinary hours under the award, which at $35 is $1,330 a week and $69,160 a year in wages, with super of $8,299 on top because the week is past 30 hours. Five eight-hour days is 40 hours and $1,400 before the overtime loading on the last two.
A 24-hour week, costed
- No super, because super on domestic work starts above 30 hours in a week and 24 is under it. Stretch the days and that changes
- Workers insurance: at $840 a week, permanent part-time, that is about $43,700 a year in estimated wages, well past the NSW $7,500 threshold, so budget for a policy from the start
- Leave, if you engage them permanent part-time. As a casual instead there is no paid leave, but the award adds a 25% casual loading to the hourly rate
Casual or permanent part-time is also what decides the award floor. A nanny's hours are mostly weekday daytime ones, and for those the Miscellaneous Award minimum from 1 July 2026 is $32.18 an hour for a casual in the first three months and $33.85 after that; permanent part-time it is $25.74, rising to $27.08, plus leave. So $30 an hour clears the permanent part-time minimum and falls short of the casual one, which is why the two of you should settle which it is before you settle the number.
Is a nanny cheaper than childcare?
For one child, almost never. For three, it depends on your subsidy.
Child Care Subsidy pays a percentage of the fee up to an hourly cap, which for centre based day care rises to $15.19 from 6 July 2026. In the March quarter of 2026 the average NSW fee was already $14.75 an hour, above the cap then in force, so part of a Sydney fee is unsubsidised before the percentage is worked out at all. What percentage you get depends on your family income, which is why the numbers below stop before the subsidy is applied.
Take a ten-hour day at the NSW average, and a nanny at $35 an hour, the Sydney median start. The on-costs above sit on the nanny column only.
One child, one ten-hour day
$147.50 against $350
- Centre: $147.50 before the subsidy, and the subsidy comes off that.
- Nanny: $350, with nothing subsidising it.
Three children, one ten-hour day
$442.50 against $350, before the subsidy
- Centre: $442.50 before the subsidy, because each child draws a fee and a subsidy of their own.
- Nanny: still $350, because the rate is per family rather than per child.
- The nanny is cheaper before the subsidy and dearer after it, unless your income puts your subsidy near nil.
Two children sits in between and usually still favours the centre, and a nanny share narrows the gap further.
None of that makes them the same purchase. A centre is regulated, staffed by qualified educators and open whether or not one particular person is unwell. A nanny is one person, in your home, on your hours, and on the day they are sick you have no care at all. Price is one input, and which arrangement you are actually buying is another.
Can you claim a nanny on Centrelink or the Child Care Subsidy?
No, not for a nanny you hire yourself. Child Care Subsidy is only paid for care at an approved child care service, and a private arrangement between you and a nanny is not one, whatever qualifications the nanny holds.
The educator is the provider's, not someone you nominate, so it cannot subsidise the nanny you found. Otherwise a privately engaged nanny is paid in full, and the rest of the process is in how to hire a nanny in Sydney.
Sharing a nanny between two families
A nanny share is two families using one nanny at the same time, usually alternating whose house it happens at. It is the main way families get nanny-shaped care at something closer to daycare money.
The rate goes up, because more children and two sets of expectations is a harder job, and the cost per family goes down, because that higher rate is split. Whether it works has less to do with the maths than with the two families: you are agreeing on nap routines, screens, sick-child rules and what happens when one family goes away for three weeks.
The part people forget is the paperwork. Both families are usually employers of the same person, each for their share of the hours, and the super threshold is counted per employer. Settle who is paying what before the first day rather than after it.
Where these numbers come from
The asking rates are counted from the profiles on AusBabysitters on 3 October 2026: every active sitter in Greater Sydney or Greater Melbourne who offers regular nanny work and had set a rate, with any group of fewer than 20 left out, which is why no other city has a figure yet. We count again each time this guide is updated.
The bands are our editorial reading of those rates and of what nannies write about their own work. The childcare fees, the subsidy cap and the award minimums come from the Department of Education, Services Australia and Fair Work, each linking to the page it came from. Fees are reported quarterly and wage rates move every July, so once those dates are behind you, take the number from the source rather than from here.
