How Much Is Before and After School Care? 2026 OSHC Fees Compared

Before school care costs $16 to $33 a session and after school care $27 to $46, before the Child Care Subsidy, across the 25 outside school hours care (OSHC) services whose 2026 fee schedules we read. The typical session is $22.25 before school and $37 after school. A family on the top 90% subsidy pays about $3.70 of that $37 afternoon, but a short morning session can leave the same family paying more than half the fee, because the subsidy stops at $13.30 an hour.

Fees as published by each service for 2026, read on 17 September 2026. Subsidy rules are the 2026–27 figures published by the Department of Education.

Key takeaways

• After school care: $27–$46 a session, median $37 across 25 services in seven states and territories. Before school care: $16–$33, median $22.25 across 24.
• After school costs more at every service that runs both: $6 to $22 more, median $12.30. That's mostly because the session is longer (a median of 3 hours against 2).
• The subsidy has a ceiling of $13.30 an hour for school-age children. 7 of the 15 before-school sessions we could time are priced above it, against 4 of 15 after-school sessions.
• Five mornings and five afternoons for a 40-week school year comes to about $11,850 at the median fees before the subsidy. That drops to about $1,185 at the 90% rate and $4,740 at 60%.
• That full week fits the 3 Day Guarantee. It uses about 50 hours a fortnight, under the 72 subsidised hours every eligible family now gets.
• Most services open at 6:30am or 7am and close at 6pm. 12 of the 20 that publish an opening time open at one of those two times, and 17 of 24 close at 6pm.

How much does after school care cost in 2026?

A regular after-school session costs $27 to $46, and the middle of the 25 services charges $37. The cheapest in our sample were Beacon Hill OOSH on Sydney's Northern Beaches ($27) and OSHClub at Parramatta East Public School ($27.20). The dearest was CatholicCare Tasmania ($46), just ahead of Uniting at MLC School Burwood ($45.60) and Communities at Work in Canberra ($45.10).

Here is every service we counted, grouped by state. "Regular" means the permanent or recurring booking price. OSHClub prices by how far ahead you book, so we used its cheapest advance-booking price. Session times are shown where the fee schedule itself gives them.

One operator can charge very different prices at different schools, so check your own school's page. On 17 September, TeamKids' venue pages listed before-school care at $17.77 at Chilwell Primary in Geelong and $27.56 at Port Melbourne Primary. Those pages don't show a fee year, so they aren't counted in our table.

The number that matters: at every service that runs both, an afternoon costs more than a morning. The median gap is $12.30 a session.

How much does before school care cost?

A regular before-school session costs $16 to $33, with a median of $22.25. Launceston Church Grammar School was the cheapest at $16 for an hour. Star of the Sea in Rockingham and OSHClub at Riva Primary in Piara Waters, both in Perth's south, were the dearest at $33.

Morning sessions are short and vary a lot in length. Among the 15 services that publish both times, the median session is 2 hours. They range from 45 minutes at Pulteney Grammar in Adelaide to 2 hours 45 minutes at Star of the Sea, which opens at 6am.

Casual bookings cost more almost everywhere they're priced separately. The median casual loading is about $4 a morning and $4.50 an afternoon. Across the 32 casual prices we could compare, that's 5% to 32% above the regular rate. If you know your work days, a permanent booking is usually the cheaper way to buy the same care.

What time does before school care start and finish?

Most before-school programs open at 6:30am or 7am. The NSW Department of Education says "most services operate before school from 7am, and after school until 6pm", and our wider sample mostly agrees:

Morning care ends when school starts, and the services we timed finish between 8:15am and 9am. In the afternoon, 17 of the 24 services that publish a closing time close at 6pm. Four close at 6:15pm, two at 6:30pm, and one at 5:50pm.

Being late is expensive, and the charges vary enormously. Normanhurst OOSH charges $1 a minute after 6:15pm. Star of the Sea charges $5 a minute per child after 6pm. The Hutchins School in Hobart charges $40 for each 15 minutes, and CatholicCare Tasmania $50 for every 10 minutes or part of it. Put your service's late fee in your phone before the first pickup.

What will you actually pay after the Child Care Subsidy?

The Child Care Subsidy (CCS) pays your percentage of the session fee, up to $13.30 an hour for a school-age child, straight to the service. You pay the rest, which is called the gap fee. The 2026–27 rules, from the Department of Education:

• Your rate: 90% for family income up to $88,520. It drops 1% for every $5,000 above that and reaches 0% at $538,520.
• The cap: your rate applies to "the hourly fee or the relevant hourly rate cap, whichever is lower". For school-age children in OSHC the cap is $13.30 an hour from 6 July 2026 (Family Assistance Guide 3.5.3).
• Your hours: since 5 January 2026, every CCS-eligible family gets at least 72 subsidised hours a fortnight, or 100 hours in some cases (for example, more than 48 hours of work or study a fortnight). If you've never claimed CCS, you need to claim before the guarantee applies.
• Withholding: Services Australia holds back 5% of your subsidy each fortnight and pays what you're owed after the end-of-year balancing.
• Absences: up to 42 subsidised absence days per child each financial year.

Here's what the median $37, 3-hour afternoon costs at different rates. That session works out at $12.33 an hour, so it sits under the cap:

The yearly column is before withholding. For every afternoon of the week, the year comes to $7,400 before the subsidy, $740 at 90%, $2,960 at 60% and $5,180 at 30%.

Who's eligible: the child must be 13 or under and not yet at secondary school. There are limited exceptions, for example for older children with a disability. The service must be CCS-approved, and approved care includes vacation care. The higher rate for second and younger children applies only to children aged 5 or under, so it rarely helps with OSHC unless your younger child is still 5.

Why does a short morning session cost so much more?

Because the subsidy is capped per hour, a session priced above $13.30 an hour leaves a gap bigger than your percentage suggests. A 45-minute session at $22 works out at $29.33 an hour. The subsidy only counts $13.30 of each hour. So a family on the full 90% gets $8.98 off and still pays $13.02, or 59% of the fee.

This is mostly a before-school problem. Morning sessions are short, so even a modest fee becomes a high hourly price:

Longer sessions stay well under the cap. Community OOSH Services' 2½-hour morning at $23 is $9.20 an hour, so a 90% family pays 10% of it. We've assumed each service reports the session for the hours it publishes. The hours on your own statement are what count, so check them. Two questions worth asking before you book:

1. What session times do you report for the subsidy?
2. Is there a longer or shorter session option, and what does it cost?

OSHC or after-school activities: what fits your 3–6pm?

OSHC is supervised care that attracts the subsidy. A swim squad, dance class or music lesson is not an approved child care service, so you pay its full price. At a high subsidy rate, an afternoon of OSHC can cost less than the activity you'd swap it for. One afternoon a week for a school year is about $1,480 before the subsidy and $148 at 90%. By comparison, community sport averages $4,567 a child a year once registration, equipment, coaching and travel are counted (Frontiers in Sports and Active Living, 18 August 2026). We unpack that study in what kids' sport really costs, including the state vouchers that can take the edge off.

Most families end up with a mix: OSHC on the days nobody can get to the school gate, and one or two activities on the days someone can. What you can swap in depends heavily on your suburb. Our directory lists 7,951 kids' activities nationally. 6,926 of them are sport, and just 65 are music. In 2,116 of the 2,863 suburbs with any listed activity (73.9%), every listing is a sport. If your child would rather paint or play piano, see our guide to activities for kids who don't like sport.

A few non-sport providers with full profiles in our directory:

• The Learning Lounge, guitar and piano lessons in Turramurra, NSW
• U Create Art Studio, art classes for children in The Gap, QLD
• Esteem Dance Company, a dance studio in Wangara, WA
• Just For Fun The Dance Company, dance classes in Woodville Park, SA

Browse what's near your school in New South Wales (2,301 listings), Victoria (2,052), Queensland (1,581), Western Australia (844) or South Australia (703), or search all activities. The state-by-state picture is in our Kids' Activity Index.

How do you get an OSHC place for 2027?

Enrolling at a school doesn't guarantee an OSHC place, so sort it out well before the first day. The federal 3 Day Guarantee page says plainly that "families are not guaranteed a place with a provider". In Queensland, the education department says that where a school has OSHC, "all children enrolled at the school are eligible for OSHC registration". In South Australia, OSHC services are prioritised for children attending the school, and "each OSHC service determines their own fees".

1. Find out who runs your school's OSHC. It may be the school, a parent committee or a commercial operator, and each sets its own prices. In NSW, the department points parents to Starting Blocks to find a service.
2. Claim CCS and give the service your and your child's CRNs (Centrelink reference numbers), otherwise you'll be charged the full fee.
3. Ask when 2027 bookings open, and whether permanent places are limited.
4. Ask the money questions: permanent versus casual price, booking cut-offs, joining fees, late fees, and the session times reported for CCS.
5. Watch for fee rises. Services already in the federal worker retention payment program must not raise fees by more than 5.8% between 8 August 2026 and 7 August 2027. The cap is a condition of that payment, so a service outside the program isn't covered by it. Ask yours which applies.

Starting school next year? Our 12-month countdown to the first day puts OSHC alongside everything else on the list. You can check what your school offers on its AroundSchools profile.

Before you sign, check these five things

• Ask for a fee schedule with the year printed on it. Several large operators publish prices without a year, including Camp Australia, TeamKids, YMCA, Amana and TheirCare — about 20 such pages across the ones we read. A price with no year attached is worth one email to confirm. The highest we saw on those undated pages was $51.05 for an after-school session at The Y WA in Kalgoorlie.
• In the Northern Territory, ring the service and ask. The NT prices that are published, including YMCA NT's list and Camp Australia's Larrakeyah page, carry no year, so the NT is not in the table above. Ask the service what a 2026 session costs and get it in writing.
• Read these figures as a guide, not a ranking. Twenty-five services is a sample. WA has two in the table and the ACT one, so no row here should be read as "the cheapest state".
• Check the hours your service reports, not the hours on the brochure. The subsidy is worked out on the hours the service reports, and those can differ from the program times on its website.
• Confirm the price on your own service's page before you budget. OSHC is run school by school, and every price in this article comes from an individual provider's own published schedule.

Frequently asked questions

How much is after school care per day?

A regular after-school session costs $27 to $46 before the subsidy at the 25 services we checked, with a median of $37. Before school care costs $16 to $33, median $22.25. Casual bookings usually cost a few dollars more.

How much is after school care after the subsidy?

For the median $37, 3-hour session: about $3.70 at the 90% rate, $11.10 at 70%, $18.50 at 50% and $25.90 at 30%. That's before the 5% withholding, which you get back at balancing. Sessions priced above $13.30 an hour cost more than these percentages suggest.

What time does before school care start?

Most services open at 6:30am or 7am. Of the 20 we checked that publish an opening time, 7 open at 6:30am, 5 at 7am and 6 at 7:30am. The earliest was 6am (Star of the Sea, Rockingham).

Is before and after school care covered by the Child Care Subsidy?

Yes, if the service is CCS-approved. Approved care includes before school, after school and vacation care. The subsidy is paid to the service, and you pay the gap fee.

What age is before and after school care for?

The subsidy covers children aged 13 or under who don't attend secondary school. There are limited exceptions, for example for some older children with a disability. OSHC is therefore built around primary-school children.

Is vacation care more expensive?

Per day, yes, because the days are much longer. Community OOSH Services charges $83 for an in-centre day from 6 July 2026, and CatholicCare Tasmania $95.23 for a 7am–6pm day. The 72-hour guarantee works out to 7.2 hours a day across ten days. Ten 11-hour days add up to 110 hours, more than both the 72-hour and the 100-hour levels, and hours beyond your entitlement aren't subsidised. Check how many hours your service reports for a holiday day.

How we checked

• Which fees we counted: we read before- and after-school fees on each provider's or school's own page or PDF on 17 September 2026. We counted a service only if the schedule states a 2026 date (a year, a term or an effective date).
• Checking: figures were read directly or through a text-only reader when a site blocks automated requests. We re-checked the highest-risk figures ourselves.
• Hourly prices and subsidy maths: we only calculated these where the fee schedule publishes both start and end times. Out-of-pocket costs use the 2026–27 CCS rules: your percentage × the lower of the hourly fee and $13.30 × the session hours. They're rounded to the cent and exclude the 5% withholding unless stated.
• Activity counts: these come from the AroundSchools directory as at 17 September 2026.

Related reading

• What kids' sport really costs in Australia
• Activities for kids who don't like sport
• Starting school in 2027: your 12-month countdown
• Help with school costs in every state
• School holiday dates and programs

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