Rates
Overnight babysitting rates: how a night is priced, and what to agree first
An overnight is the one babysitting job not priced by the hour. How families and babysitters split a night into awake hours and a sleeping block. What a waking child changes, and what to settle before the door closes.
An overnight is the one babysitting job that is not priced by the hour, because ten hours of a sleeping house at an evening rate suits nobody. This guide sets out how families and babysitters usually price a night instead, what a child who wakes does to the sum, and what to settle before you leave. It is general guidance rather than a rate card, and no babysitter is bound by it.
What is the going rate for a babysitter to stay overnight
Start from the hourly rate, because the night is built out of it. In Sydney, casual babysitting runs at about $25 to $40 an hour, and babysitter rates in Sydney sets out what moves a babysitter within that range. An overnight takes whatever their ordinary evening rate is and applies it to the hours they are up.
The evening, from arrival until the children are asleep, is ordinary babysitting at the ordinary rate. The morning, from the first child waking until you are back, is the same. The block in between is a flat amount the two of you agree, and it is the only number in the arrangement that takes a conversation.
By the hour, all night
The agency shape
- Fourteen hours, 7pm to 9am, at $30 an hour is $420, sleep included
- The same rate at 2am as at 8pm
- How agencies price it, with a booking fee on top
Awake hours, plus a sleeping sum
The private shape
- 7pm to 9pm and 7am to 9am at $30 is $120 of awake time
- The ten hours between are one round figure, agreed in advance
- Two numbers to agree instead of one
Where the round figure lands is between the two of you, and there is no published number for it. What makes sense is well under the hourly rate, because a night's sleep in a spare room is not ten hours of bath and bedtime, with the awake hours paid in full on top.
What an agency charges for the same night
For a benchmark, Sydney agencies price overnights by the hour and do not discount the sleep. One lists $35 an hour for an overnight babysitter, $40 with three or more children and $45 for a baby who needs feeding and settling, on top of a booking fee. The same 7pm to 9am night at that rate is $490 before the fee, and a privately agreed night usually comes in under it.
The difference is what the agency does: it finds the babysitter and it checks them. Booking directly, those two jobs are yours, and what the badge covers is the part we do.
Do babysitters get paid for the hours the children are asleep
Yes. A babysitter who stays the night cannot leave, cannot switch off, and is up the moment anyone stirs. The flat sum pays for being the adult in the house, not for sleeping, which is why it is never zero.
If the same person does your overnights every second Friday, you may be their employer, and the floor is then Fair Work's. The Miscellaneous Award sets a casual's minimum after 7pm at $37.32 an hour, current from 1 July 2026 and rising to $39.27 after three months, and it prices hours: nothing in it says an hour is free because the children are asleep. Take advice before treating any of the night as unpaid. A single overnight is usually not employment, and most families never reach the question.
Who does overnights, and who should not
Overnight babysitters are ordinary babysitters who know your family. The usual shape is a night with a family the babysitter already knows, and a first booking is the wrong night to do it, on both sides. No field on a profile says whether someone does overnights, so ask in the first message. A nanny you already employ staying over is priced the same three-part way, and nanny rates in Sydney has the rest of what an employed nanny costs.
A newborn who needs feeding and settling through the night is not a broken night but the whole job. That is night-nanny work, a specialist service with its own market, and outside this guide.
Nobody under 16 should be the only person responsible in a house for twelve hours, and how old do you have to be to babysit says why. At 16 or 17, an overnight is for a family they know well, with a parent of their own reachable all night.
What to settle before the door closes
The practical side is the same as any booking, plus a bed. One message, before the night, covering:
Agree all of this in one message
- The hourly rate for the awake hours, and the flat sum for the sleeping block
- When you expect the children asleep and awake, so both of you are doing the same arithmetic
- What a broken night pays, and from when
- Where the babysitter sleeps, whether there is a monitor, and where the food is
- When you will be back, and what happens to the sum if it is later
- Two numbers that will be answered at 3am, allergies and doses in writing, and the street address for an ambulance
Pay the agreed total on the morning, in full, however the night went.
If you are the babysitter
Quote the night as one total and say what it assumes: the hours you expect to be awake, the sum for the sleeping block, and what changes if you are up in the night. A family that hears "$220 for the night, more if someone is up" can say yes in one reply. What to charge for babysitting covers the rest of pricing a job rather than an hour.
Where these numbers come from
The hourly range is editorial and the agency figures are one agency's published rates. Nobody publishes what a sleeping block is worth, and we are not going to invent one: we never touch the money, so we see no night's total, and babysitters keep all of what you agree. The award figures are Fair Work's and move every July, and the hourly rates babysitters near you ask are on their own profiles.
