Thinking about opening your own child care centre? It’s a real opportunity, but it takes more planning than most people expect. Here’s what it actually costs, how to budget for it, and where to find funding to get started.
Is Opening a Daycare a Good Business?
Yes, if you treat it like a business, not just something you’re good at. Demand keeps increasing as more parents work full-time and need somewhere safe for their children. If you already have experience with children, that’s a real advantage most new business owners don’t have.
But you still need enough children enrolled to cover your costs, a location that fits your budget, and a plan for staffing as you grow. Trust takes time to build, so don’t expect every space filled in your first month. Go in with a clear plan, and this can become a real, lasting business.
How Much Does It Cost To Start A Daycare In South Africa?
Costs depend on where you’re based, how many children you’ll care for, and whether you start from home or a rented space. Here’s what to budget for:
- Premises – rent, or adapting a space in your own home to meet basic safety standards
- Furniture and equipment – cots, safety gates, toys, and age-appropriate materials
- Staff – think of the salaries you’ll have to pay when you have too many students to manage by yourself
- Registration and compliance costs (if you choose to register your daycare)
- Insurance – for your business and the children in your care
- A contingency fund – set a small amount of money aside for any issue you may encounter while setting up your daycare.
Starting small, especially from home, keeps these costs down. Many daycare owners started with just a few children before growing into something bigger.
How To Write A Business Plan For A Child Care Centre
You don’t need a complicated document to start — just a clear plan that covers how your daycare will actually run. Here’s how to build one, step by step.
Step 1: Decide How You Want To Operate
Start with the basics. Will you run this from your own home, or in a rented space? Will you care for a small number of children, or aim to grow into a bigger centre over time? Deciding this early shapes every other step below.
Step 2: Decide What Services You’ll Offer
Get specific. Will you care for babies, toddlers, or a mix of ages? Full-day care, half-day care, or both? Will you provide meals, or ask parents to bring their own? This decision shapes your space, your staffing, and your pricing.
Step 3: Plan Your Staffing And Space
Think about how many children you can realistically care for on your own, and when you’ll need help. As a general guide, every qualified staff member needs an assistant present too — so a room of 20 children aged three to four would need two adults at all times, not one. Even if you’re starting alone, it helps to know at what point you’ll need to bring someone on.
Step 4: Identify The Families You’re Trying To Reach
Look at who’s around you. Are most parents working full-time and needing full-day care? Do they need somewhere close to home, or close to work? Knowing this helps you shape your services around what families actually need — not just what you assume they want.
Step 5: Set Your Pricing
Check what other daycares in your area charge, and use that as your starting point. Decide whether you’ll charge daily, weekly, or monthly, and whether you’ll offer discounts for siblings or longer-term commitments. Your pricing needs to cover your costs and still leave you with an income — if you’re not sure where to start, work backwards from your budget.
Step 6: Think About How Parents Will Find You
Even a simple plan helps — word of mouth from happy parents, a basic social media page, or connecting with local clinics and community groups. You don’t need a big marketing budget to get your first few families through the door.
Step 7: Plan How You’ll Grow
Think beyond your first few months. Will you take on staff once you reach a certain number of children? Is registering your daycare something you’d consider down the line, once your finances are more settled? You don’t need every answer now — just a rough sense of what growth looks like.
Step 8: Put It In Writing
Write down your business model, services, staffing plan, target families, pricing, and growth plan. This becomes something you can adjust as you go, and come back to whenever you need to make a decision.
How To Create A Budget For Your Daycare
A simple budget helps you see, before you start, whether your daycare can actually support itself. Here’s how to build one.
Step 1: List Your Startup Costs
This covers everything you need before you open — premises, furniture, equipment, and any registration costs if you’re registering. Add these up first, since this is the amount you’ll need before you even take in your first child.
Step 2: List Your Monthly Running Costs
This includes rent, staff wages, food, utilities, and supplies you’ll need to replace regularly. These are the costs that continue every month, whether you have two children or twenty.
Step 3: Estimate Your Monthly Income
Multiply what you plan to charge per child by how many children you realistically expect to have — not your full capacity, especially in your first few months. It takes time to fill your spaces, so budget for slower enrolment at the start rather than assuming you’ll be full straight away.
Step 4: Compare Income To Running Costs
Check whether your estimated monthly income covers your monthly running costs. If it doesn’t yet, work out how many children you’d need enrolled to break even — this gives you a clear, realistic target to work toward.
Step 5: Add A Buffer
Set aside a little extra for anything unexpected — a repair, a quiet month, or a slower start than planned. It’s common to underestimate costs and overestimate how quickly spaces will fill, so building this in from the start protects you from an early setback.
How To Get Funding For A Creche
Starting a daycare doesn’t always mean covering every cost yourself. There are a few funding routes worth knowing about before you assume you have to do this entirely on your own money.
Government Subsidies
The government offers a per-child subsidy for registered daycares that serve children from low-income households. This isn’t automatic — it’s a separate application process with its own requirements, so it’s worth looking into early if this applies to the families you plan to serve. Keep in mind this route only applies once your daycare is registered.
Small Business Funding
Some daycare owners apply for small business loans or grants to cover startup costs like renovations, equipment, or first-month expenses. Having a business plan ready makes this process easier, since most lenders want to see one before they’ll consider funding you.
Starting Small To Reduce How Much You Need
If funding isn’t available to you right now, starting small — from home, with a handful of children — lowers how much capital you need upfront. Many daycare owners grew into needing outside funding only once they were ready to expand, rather than needing it from day one.
Funding can help, but it isn’t a requirement to get started. Plenty of daycares begin with personal budget and grow from there.
How To Start A Creche At Home With No Money
You don’t need a large upfront investment to start caring for children in your home. Here’s how you can get moving:
Start With What You Already Own
Look around your home before you buy anything. A safe, clean room with enough space to move around often works as a starting point. Blankets, cushions, and basic toys you may already have at home can cover your first few weeks.
Take A Small Number Of Children First
Rather than preparing for a full centre from day one, start with one or two children you already know — a neighbour, a family member, or someone from your community. This lets you learn what you actually need before spending anything, and gives you real experience to build on.
Charge From The Start, Even If It’s Modest
Even a small amount per child helps you begin covering costs and building up savings for equipment as you go. Waiting until you have “enough” money often means waiting indefinitely — starting small and growing steadily gets you moving now.
Reinvest As You Grow
As more families join, put some of that income back into what you need next — an extra mat, a few more toys, a second cot. This way, your daycare grows in step with what it can actually afford, rather than needing a big investment before you begin.
Starting with no money doesn’t mean staying small forever. It just means your first few months are about proving the idea works, before you need to spend more.
Choosing The Right Location
Where you run your daycare affects who you’ll attract, and how easy it is to keep it full.
| Consideration | What to think about |
|---|---|
| Close to home, or close to work? | Parents usually choose a daycare that fits into their daily routine—either near where they live, so pickup and drop-off is simple, or near where they work, so they can visit during the day if needed. Think about which group is more common in your area before deciding where to base yourself. |
| Your own daily life | If you’re running this alongside other responsibilities, a home-based daycare close to your own family can be easier to manage day to day. A rented space further away might suit you better once you’ve grown and can dedicate more time to it. |
| Access and safety | Wherever you choose, parents will want somewhere safe to drop off and collect their children, with easy parking or walking access. |
You don’t need the perfect location to start. You need one that works for the families nearby and for your own daily life right now — you can always expand or relocate as you grow.
Things To Plan For When Running A Home Daycare
Running a daycare from home comes with real challenges — but knowing them ahead of time means you can plan around them instead of being caught off guard.
Your Home Becomes Your Workspace
Once children are in your home during the day, it stops being just your personal space. You’ll need to keep certain areas child-safe and set aside at all times, which can take some adjusting to if you’re used to your home being just for your family.
Income Can Be Unpredictable At First
In your first few months, you may not have every space filled, which means your income can be inconsistent while you build up enough families to feel steady. Planning for slower months, especially at the start, helps you avoid being caught short.
It’s Physically And Emotionally Demanding
Caring for children all day, every day, takes real energy — and if you’re doing it alone, there’s no one to take over when you need a break. Thinking early about how you’ll manage tiring days, or bringing on help once you can afford it, makes this more sustainable long-term.
Balancing Your Own Family And The Children In Your Care
If you have your own children at home, you’ll need to think about how to give attention to both your own family and the children you’re caring for, especially in the early days before you find your rhythm.
None of these mean you shouldn’t start — they’re simply things worth thinking through now, so you’re prepared rather than surprised once you’re a few months in.
What’s The Difference Between A Daycare And A Child Care Centre?
You’ll come across a few different terms as you plan — daycare, creche, and child care centre are often used to mean roughly the same thing, but it helps to know how they’re typically used.
Term | What it means |
Daycare / Creche | Usually refer to the same kind of setup — a facility that looks after children, often babies and toddlers, while their parents are at work. These terms are often used interchangeably in South Africa. |
Child care centre | A broader term that can include daycares and creches, but may also refer to facilities offering more structured early learning programmes alongside general care. |
For the purposes of this guide, we’ve used these terms interchangeably, since in practice, what matters most is what you’re actually offering — not which word you use to describe it. As you register and market your business, you can decide which term fits best for the families you’re trying to reach.
What’s Next — Meeting the Legal Requirements
Once you’ve got a handle on your business plan and budget, the next step is registration and compliance — the legal side of running a daycare in South Africa.
Skills Academy’s ECD course can help you comply with these regulations — no matric needed. But first, get the legal groundwork sorted.
Our requirements to open a daycare guide walks you through exactly what’s needed — registering with the Department of Social Development, staffing ratios, and facility standards.
Yes, you can open a crèche without formal qualifications. But you’ll still need to meet registration requirements with the Department of Social Development. An Early Childhood Development (ECD) qualification helps you run it well and may be required for certain roles within the centre.
You’ll need documents like your ID, proof of address, and a business plan. You’ll also need health and safety certifications, such as first aid and food handling.
Ratios depend on the children’s ages. Younger children need more staff per child than older ones. For every qualified staff member, an assistant must also be present.
You register your daycare with the Department of Social Development. Contact your local DSD office to start the process. They’ll guide you through the registration requirements step by step.
Registration timelines vary depending on your province and application. It can take a few weeks to several months. Starting the process early helps you avoid delays once you’re ready to open.
Author: Jodie Jacobs
Word Count: 2535
