What a nanny costs in Sydney (2026 guide)

An hourly rate is the number families compare when they start looking for a nanny. It is rarely the number they end up paying. What follows is general guidance on the Sydney market and on what sits on top of the rate. It is not a rate card, and no nanny is bound by it.

What people are paying

For a nanny privately engaged in Sydney in 2026, most asking rates land between $30 and $45 an hour. Within that:

Plenty of arrangements are agreed above and below that. Treat the bands as where the conversation usually starts. Nannies in Sydney lists the ones nearest the city, with the rate on every profile that names one, and if you want the numbers for your own streets rather than for the city, find a nanny near you shows them suburb by suburb.

What moves the rate

A nanny costs more per hour than a casual babysitter because the job is a different one. A babysitter takes an evening. A nanny takes responsibility for the shape of a day, usually while you are not there to be asked. Our babysitter rates guide covers the casual end, and where the line between the two arrangements sits is set out in babysitter vs nanny.

Within nanny work, ages do most of the moving. Two children under three is not two school-aged children with more noise. It is a different job, and it is priced as one.

After that it is scope. Kids' meals, their laundry, the school run, activities, keeping the week organised: each addition is real work, and a nanny who is quoting properly has counted them. Driving deserves its own conversation, because whose car it is and whose insurance is carrying the school run are not small questions.

Hours that cost a nanny something cost you something. Starts before 7am, finishes after 7pm and weekends all carry a premium, and so does a roster that changes week to week, because it stops them taking other work around you.

Overnight nanny rates follow the same logic as an overnight babysitter's: the awake hours at the hourly rate and a flat amount for the sleeping block, with Sydney agencies charging $35 to $45 an hour straight through as the benchmark. How that is usually split, and what a night with a baby who wakes does to it, is in overnight babysitting rates. A night nanny for a newborn, feeding and settling through the night, is a different and specialist job priced above every band on this page, and this guide does not cover it.

Certainty goes the other way. A nanny on a guaranteed 25 hours a week can quote lower than one whose hours you might halve at a fortnight's notice, and most will.

The rate is not the cost

This is the part that catches families out, and it is worth getting straight before you agree a number with anyone.

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.

That makes you an employer, with the things an employer carries:

None of that is exotic, and services exist that run the payroll for a household. But it does mean $40 an hour is not a $40 an hour arrangement. Work the on-costs into the number at the point you agree it, because they now land in every pay run rather than at the end of a quarter.

How much of this bites depends on the arrangement rather than on what you call it. Super is owed on domestic work over 30 hours a week, leave accrues to permanent staff and not to casual ones, and the wage thresholds take time to reach, so a genuinely occasional babysitter engages far less of it. What you do not get to do is pick the label. If the same person is doing your Wednesdays every week, the arrangement has decided, and which side of that line you are on is worth being honest about early, because your obligations follow it.

How much does a nanny cost 3 days a week?

Three eight-hour days is a 24-hour week. At $35 an hour, the middle of the band above, that is $840 a week gross, or $720 at $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.

What the on-costs add depends on how you engage them. For a 24-hour week:

Casual or permanent part-time is also what decides the award floor, and at the bottom of the band the two answers differ. 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; evenings after 7pm, weekends and public holidays carry more. Permanent part-time it is $25.74, rising to $27.08 after three months, 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.

Three days is also where a centre place becomes the obvious comparison, and where sharing a nanny with another family is worth pricing beside it.

Is a nanny cheaper than childcare?

For one child, almost never. For three, it depends on your subsidy.

The comparison is not rate against rate. A centre place is subsidised and a nanny you hire yourself is not, and a centre charges per child while a nanny charges the household. In the March quarter of 2026 the average hourly fee for centre based day care in NSW was $14.75, against $14.50 nationally, and above the $14.63 cap then in force, so Sydney families were already paying part of the fee unsubsidised. Child Care Subsidy pays a percentage of the fee up to that cap, which rises to $15.19 an hour for centre based day care from 6 July 2026, and fees have been rising about 4% a year, so expect a gap. What percentage of the fee under the cap 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, from the band above.

Two children sits in between and usually still favours the centre. Three, or a household whose income has taken the subsidy near nil, is where a nanny becomes genuinely competitive, and a nanny share narrows it 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 one route that puts an educator in your own home on the subsidy is In Home Care, and it is deliberately narrow. To be eligible a family has to be eligible for Child Care Subsidy, show that no other approved care is available or suitable to them, and meet at least one of three tests: non-standard or variable working hours, geographic isolation, or complex or challenging needs. You apply through your state's In Home Care Support Agency, which assesses you and refers you to an approved provider. Sessions are charged per family rather than per child.

So the educator is the provider's, not someone you nominate, and it is not a way to get the nanny you found subsidised. It is a separate programme that happens to run in your home, built for shift workers and families a long way from a centre. If that is not you, a privately engaged nanny is paid in full, and that is the number to plan around. 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. 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. Work out who is paying what, and who is doing the withholding, before the first day rather than after it.

Where these numbers come from

They are editorial ranges, drawn from advertised rates around the Sydney market and what families and nannies report paying. We do not hold a dataset of Sydney nanny salaries, and we are not going to publish one we cannot stand behind.

The childcare fees, the subsidy cap and the award minimums are not ours. They come from the Department of Education, Services Australia and Fair Work, each links to the page it came from, and each is current at the date given beside it. Childcare 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.

Nannies here set their own rate on their own profile, and where one is named you see it before you message anybody. We take no cut and never touch the payment, so what you settle on is between the two of you. The only number we will ever put in front of you is one a real person typed about their own work.