How Much Does a Daycare Owner Make a Month?

The average child care business with no employees, mostly home daycares and babysitters, brings in about $1,740 a month, and its owner keeps roughly 37 cents of each dollar before tax. The babysitters pull that average down. A full-time home daycare with six preschoolers at 2025 average prices brings in about $5,300 a month and leaves the owner about $1,950 before taxes. A for-profit daycare center brings in far more, about $52,700 a month on average, but keeps a much thinner slice: somewhere between under 1% and about 9% of revenue, before income tax.

Those figures come from the Census Bureau, the IRS, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Child Care Aware of America. This guide shows where each one comes from, then helps you work out your own number. The data was checked on September 26, 2026.

How Much Daycare Owners Make: The Data

Child care businesses with no employees are almost all sole proprietorships: 529,554 of the 533,596 in 2023, or 99.2%. The Census industry code for child care also covers babysitting and after-school programs, so the average is pulled down by people who only watch children part of the time.

A center owner's income has two parts: any salary they draw as director, and the business's profit. How the two parts split depends on how the business is set up. In a corporation, the owner's salary is part of payroll. In a sole proprietorship or partnership, the owner takes no wage, and their pay comes out of the profit. That is why no single survey reports "center owner income."

How to Work Out What You Would Make Each Month

1. Count your licensed spots by age group. Your license sets the most children you can have, and your state's ratio rules set how many staff each room needs.
2. Multiply each spot by your monthly rate. Infants need more staff, so they are priced higher. The daycare rate calculator shows the lowest rate that covers a teacher's pay for each age group.
3. Multiply by the share of spots you can keep filled. Opportunities Exchange's Iron Triangle brief notes that some experts say a well-run center can run at 95% enrollment, while others suggest budgeting at a more reachable 85%.
4. Take off tuition you will not collect. Late payers and families who leave owing money cut into revenue, and most programs carry a lot of bad debt, according to Opportunities Exchange.
5. Take off your monthly costs: staff pay and payroll taxes, rent or your home costs, food, supplies, insurance and licensing fees. The daycare rent guide covers rent, one of the largest costs after staff.
6. What is left is your profit before income tax. If you also work as the director and pay yourself a salary, add that to see your full income.

Daycare Revenue by Number of Children

These tables multiply the number of full-time children by Child Care Aware of America's 2025 average price for a 4-year-old (the average of state averages): $10,572 a year in a home and $12,555 in a center. Infant spots bring in more, at $11,673 in a home and $15,636 in a center. This is revenue before any costs, with every spot filled and every bill paid.

Home daycare

Home daycares also have a size limit. In Texas, no home may have more than 12 children in care, counting children related to the caregiver (see the Texas daycare guide).

Daycare center

Fifty preschoolers at the average price comes to $627,750 a year, close to the $632,942 that the average for-profit center took in during 2022. Prices swing widely by state, though. In 2022, full-time home daycare for a preschooler had a median price of $153 a week in Texas and $224 a week in California, according to the Department of Labor's National Database of Childcare Prices. Use the rates in your own area.

How Much Home Daycare Owners Make

In 2023, the 533,596 child care businesses with no employees took in $11.1 billion, an average of $20,886 each. Most took in far less than a full-time home daycare would:

• 42% took in less than $10,000 for the year.
• 80% took in less than $25,000.
• 9% took in $50,000 or more, and about 3% took in $100,000 or more.

The average also changes a lot by state:

Source: Census Nonemployer Statistics, 2023, child care services.

What owners keep comes from IRS tax returns. The last year the IRS reported child day care on its own was 2008. That year, sole proprietors in child day care kept 37.4% of their revenue as net profit, and 86% of them showed a profit. In 2023, the broader social assistance group, which now includes child day care, kept 36.7%. The same group kept 38.8% in 2008, so the share has changed little. That profit is the owner's pay for their own work, since a sole proprietor does not deduct a wage for themselves.

Here is what that looks like for a full-time home with six preschoolers at the 2025 average home price of $881 a month:

Your own costs may run lower or higher than the average. Food, supplies, insurance and the business share of your home are the big lines. The in-home daycare cost guide and the guide to pricing in-home child care per hour help you fill in your own numbers.

The BLS pay figures above leave out the self-employed, which is how most home providers work. About 24% of childcare workers are self-employed, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics notes that their pay depends on the hours they work and the number and ages of the children in their care.

Home Daycare Taxes and Deductions

A home daycare owner pays self-employment tax on top of income tax. The rate is 15.3%: 12.4% for Social Security and 2.9% for Medicare. It applies to 92.35% of your net profit, and you owe it once that amount is $400 or more (IRS Topic 554), and you can deduct half of it when you figure your income tax. The Social Security part stops at $184,500 of earnings in 2026 (IRS Publication 15).

Two rules in IRS Publication 587 help home providers:

• The time-space percentage. If you have applied for, received or are exempt from needing a daycare license, certification, registration or approval, you can deduct part of your home costs even if your family uses the same rooms. Compare the hours the space is used for daycare with the hours in the year (8,760 in 2025). The IRS example is 12 hours a day, 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year: 3,000 hours, or 34.25%. You then apply that to the share of the home used for daycare.
• Standard meal and snack rates. If you provide family daycare in your own home, you can deduct a set amount per eligible child instead of your actual food costs, for up to one breakfast, one lunch, one dinner and three snacks a day. You still need a daily log of each child, their hours and the meals served, and children who live in your home do not count. For 2025, outside Alaska, Guam, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, the rates are $1.66 for breakfast, $3.15 for lunch or dinner and $0.93 for a snack. Those five places have higher rates.

Food program payments (see below) are taxable only to the extent they are more than what you spend on food for eligible children. This is general information, not tax advice. A tax preparer who works with daycare providers can apply these rules to your home.

How Much Daycare Center Owners Make

In 2022, the Economic Census counted 80,633 child care establishments with paid employees. The 60,964 for-profit ones averaged $632,942 in revenue, about $52,745 a month. Payroll took 46% of that revenue, before benefits and payroll taxes.

Newer figures from the Census Bureau's 2024 Annual Integrated Economic Survey put for-profit child care revenue at $44.9 billion and operating expenses at $40.7 billion, which leaves 9.3% of revenue. For nonprofit programs, 3.0% was left. That 9.3% is not take-home profit:

• It comes before income taxes.
• At sole proprietorships and partnerships, the owner's own pay is not payroll, so it sits inside the 9.3%. In 2023, 31% of child care establishments with employees were set up that way, or about 41% of those that were not nonprofits (County Business Patterns).
• Census does not publish a profit figure for child care. The 9.3% is revenue minus the operating expenses the survey collects.
• It is one total for the whole industry, so bigger businesses count for more than small ones.

The U.S. Treasury gives a much lower figure. Its 2021 report on child care supply says most for-profit facilities "operate on razor-thin profit margins that are usually less than 1 percent," and that "a month or two without full enrollment can erase their margins." The 1% figure comes from a 2011 Minneapolis Fed article, not a new survey, so treat it as a warning about risk rather than an exact number.

Here is a center example. It has 60 licensed spots, keeps 85% filled (51 children) and charges the 2025 average for a 4-year-old:

Both lines are before income tax. In a corporation, a salary you draw as director is already counted in costs, so it comes on top of these figures. In a sole proprietorship, your pay comes out of them. For comparison, the median preschool and daycare director earned $59,300 in May 2025.

What Is a Good Profit Margin for a Daycare?

Profit margin is profit divided by revenue. If a daycare takes in $50,000 in a month and its costs are $46,000, the profit is $4,000 and the margin is 8%.

No official benchmark sets a "good" daycare margin. The public data puts typical results here:

• Home daycares with no employees: about 37%, because the owner's own work is not counted as a cost.
• For-profit centers: about 9% in 2024, before income tax and, for many small owners, before the owner's own pay.
• Nonprofit programs: about 3%.
• Treasury's rough figure for for-profit facilities: under 1%.

Margins are thin because child care runs on staff. Estimates of labor costs at centers range from 60% to over 70% of total expenses, according to the Minneapolis Fed. A Center for American Progress model cited by Treasury puts salaries alone at 63% of the cost of infant care and 52% for preschoolers. Ratio rules fix how many teachers each room needs, so an empty spot saves little while it costs a full month of tuition.

You will see figures of 15% or 16% quoted online, and an earlier version of this page used them. No public data source behind those figures could be found, so this page no longer uses them.

A more useful test than any margin is Opportunities Exchange's Iron Triangle. A program stays healthy when three things hold at once: full enrollment, full fee collection, and rates that cover the cost of care for each child. If any side slips, the program loses money.

Is Owning a Daycare Profitable?

For most home providers, yes, at a modest income. In 2008, the last year the IRS reported the line, 86% of child day care sole proprietors showed a profit. The profit is usually a wage for your own time rather than a business return.

A center can be profitable, but the margin for error is small. A few empty spots or a few families behind on tuition can take a month's profit. Supply data shows the strain: Child Care Aware of America counted 1% fewer licensed centers in 2025 than in 2024, the first drop after several years of growth, while family child care homes rose 1.4%.

Public money matters too. Treasury, citing Census Bureau estimates, reports that 47% of the $48 billion in operating revenue for child care services in 2019, mostly center-based care, came from federal and state government. It notes that this likely overstates the government share. Yet only 15% of eligible children receive federal subsidies, according to Child Care Aware of America.

How Subsidy Payments Affect Your Income

Each state sets its own subsidy rates under the federal Child Care and Development Fund. The state must set them using a market rate survey, or another method approved in advance by the federal government such as a cost model, done no more than two years before it submits its plan. That survey or method must reflect differences by location, type of provider and age of child, and states may pay different rates on those grounds (45 CFR 98.45).

How and when you get paid changed in 2026. A 2024 federal rule required states to pay providers in advance and based on enrollment, and to cap family copays at 7% of income. A final rule effective July 13, 2026 removed those requirements, and states may keep them if they choose. The federal floor now is:

• The state pays either in advance or within 21 days of a complete invoice.
• Where practicable, the state does not cut your pay for a child's occasional absences. It can pay on enrollment, pay in full when a child attends at least 85% of the authorized time, pay in full when a child misses five or fewer days in a month, or use another approach it justifies in its plan.

As of March 2026, nine state and territory agencies that run the program had policies to pay all providers in advance, according to their program plans. Ask your state subsidy agency how and when it pays before you count on subsidy families to fill your spots.

Daycare Franchise Profits

Unless the sale is exempt, a franchisor must give you its Franchise Disclosure Document at least 14 calendar days before you sign a binding agreement or pay it any money (16 CFR 436.2). Earnings information, if any, goes in Item 19. The FTC Franchise Rule lets a franchisor include earnings figures but does not require it. If the franchisor gives no figures, Item 19 must say so. If it does, it must have a reasonable basis and written backup for them. For figures based on existing outlets, it must say how many outlets they cover and how many reached them, and it must warn that your results may differ. Read Item 19 closely, and call current franchise owners before you sign.

How to Take Home More

• Keep every spot filled. Keep a waitlist and start enrolling before a child leaves. Every empty spot costs a full month of tuition while your staff costs stay the same.
• Collect every dollar you bill. Put your payment and late-fee policy in writing and use automatic payments.
• Price each age group to its real cost. The rate calculator shows the lowest daily rate that pays the teacher for each room.
• Join the food program. From July 2026 to June 2027, the USDA Child and Adult Care Food Program pays home daycares in the lower 48 states and DC $1.74 for breakfast, $3.31 for lunch and $0.98 for a snack at the Tier I rate (Federal Register). For six children fed breakfast, lunch and a snack on 250 days, that is $9,045 a year toward food at Tier I. Your sponsor sets your tier: Tier I goes to homes in lower-income areas or with lower household income, and other homes get Tier II, which pays $0.62, $1.99 and $0.27, or $4,320 for the same six children.
• Offer the hours families cannot find. Childcare Biz founder Mike Tarantino owned a 24/7 childcare center in Las Vegas from 2017 to 2019. With day, evening and overnight shifts, it grew from no children to 350 enrolled in about two years.
• Know your state's subsidy rates. Where the state pays close to your private rate, subsidy families can fill spots that would sit empty.

For marketing and pricing ideas in more depth, see the guide to running a profitable daycare.

Daycare Owner Income FAQ

Q:

How much does a daycare owner make a month?

A home daycare with no employees takes in $1,741 a month on average (Census, 2023), and the owner keeps about 37% of that before tax, or roughly $640. That average includes part-time babysitters. A full-time home with six preschoolers at 2025 average prices takes in about $5,286 a month and leaves about $1,956 before taxes. A center owner's income depends on the size of the center, how full it stays and whether they draw a director's salary.

Q:

How much do daycare owners make a year?

Home daycares with no employees averaged $20,886 in revenue in 2023, and 80% took in less than $25,000. At the IRS average margin, a full-time home with six preschoolers keeps about $23,470 a year before taxes. For-profit centers averaged $632,942 in revenue in 2022. What the owner keeps from that ranges from under 1% to about 9%, plus any director's salary they pay themselves.

Q:

Is owning a daycare profitable?

Usually, but the profit is modest. In the last year the IRS reported the line, 86% of child day care sole proprietors showed a profit. Centers run on thin margins: for-profit centers kept 9.3% of revenue after operating costs in 2024, and Treasury describes margins as usually under 1%. A center stays profitable only when it keeps spots full, collects every fee and charges enough to cover its cost per child.

Q:

What is a good profit margin for a daycare?

There is no official benchmark. Home daycares with no employees keep about 37% of revenue, because the owner's own work is not a cost. For-profit centers averaged about 9% before income tax in 2024, and nonprofit programs about 3%. The 15% to 16% figures often quoted online have no public data source behind them.

Q:

How much profit does a daycare make per child?

At 2025 average prices for a 4-year-old, a home daycare child brings in $881 a month, and about $326 of that is profit at the IRS average margin. A center child brings in about $1,046 a month. At the 2024 Census average of 9.3%, about $97 of that is left over before income tax. At Treasury's 1%, it is about $10.

Q:

How many kids do you need to make $60,000 with a home daycare?

At 2025 average prices for a 4-year-old and the IRS average margin of 37%, each full-time child adds about $3,900 a year in profit. Reaching $60,000 before taxes would take about 16 children. That is more than Texas allows in a home, which is 12. To get there from a home, you need higher rates, lower costs, or both.

Q:

How much does a daycare with 50 kids make?

Fifty full-time preschoolers at the 2025 center average of $12,555 a year bring in about $52,300 a month, or $627,750 a year. That is close to the $632,942 average revenue of a for-profit center in 2022. After costs, the owner might keep from about $520 to $4,900 a month before income tax, using the range from Treasury's 1% to the Census 2024 average of 9.3%.

Q:

Do daycare owners get paid by the government?

Many do. States pay for children whose families qualify for subsidies, at rates each state sets. Home daycares, nonprofit centers, and for-profit centers where at least a quarter of the children are from low-income families can also join the USDA food program, which pays per meal and snack. Treasury, citing Census Bureau estimates, reports that 47% of child care services operating revenue in 2019 came from federal and state government, though it says that likely overstates the share.