About DaycareCalc
DaycareCalc exists to help parents get reliable numbers on what childcare actually costs and which subsidies they might qualify for, before they make decisions that will reshape their household budget for years. Most of the answers you'd want are buried in state CCDF plans, IRS publications, and county licensing databases. This site pulls those numbers together in one place.
Who runs this
One person. Zac Randles, in Sacramento, California. There is no team page because there is no team. No fictional staff of "childcare experts," no stock photos with invented bios, no advisory board.
The reason that matters: a lot of sites in this space project authority they don't have. We'd rather be small and honest than pretend to be a credentialed institution. The numbers on this site come from federal agencies, state plans, and government data releases. The work here is collecting them in one place and keeping them current, not inventing expertise.
What this site is not
DaycareCalc gives you ballpark numbers and points you at the right authorities. It does not replace people who are actually credentialed to advise on your specific situation:
- For subsidy eligibility decisions, your state's CCDF caseworker is the one whose answer counts. We can tell you whether you're likely in range; they decide.
- For tax credits, a tax preparer or CPA will know the interactions with your full return. We can show you the rules from IRS Pub. 503.
- For custody-related questions about who claims a dependent or who pays for care, talk to a family law attorney.
- For broader household financial planning around childcare costs, a CFP can run the whole picture. We just do the childcare math.
How the numbers get here
Where each class of number comes from (federal poverty guidelines, CCDF plans, WIC, Head Start, IRS Pub. 503, BLS, state market-rate surveys) is laid out on the methodology page. Every figure traces to a named source.
No affiliate model, no ads from daycare providers
We don't take referral fees from daycare chains, nanny agencies, or au pair services. Rankings on comparison pages aren't pay-to-play. If a generic display ad runs on a page, it's served by a third-party network and has no influence on the numbers shown.
Something looks wrong?
Email hello@daycarecalc.com with the page and the number. If you have a source, send it. Bad data is the failure mode we care most about catching.
Built in Sacramento, CA. Last updated June 2026.