As of 13 August 2026, AI can estimate your childcare costs in the UK.

What to actually do

1. Hand it to a person

   The route this page recommends

   A person who owns the outcome does this end to end, worth it when the failure is dear.

2. Use a tool built for this

   Second choice

3. Do it yourself

   The distant third

   A chat interface, chat-fluent skill, and roughly 30 minutes until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open the GOV.UK childcare and childcare-support pages for your UK nation, and note which support schemes might be relevant without treating yourself as eligible yet.
   2. Gather each provider’s current written price list or quote, including session lengths, term-time or year-round pricing, meals, deposits, registration fees and holiday charges.
   3. Write down each child’s age, the days and hours needed, the planned start date, school term or holiday pattern, and the local authority or postcode area.
   4. Record any support already confirmed, such as a funded place or an approved childcare account, and mark every unconfirmed item as unknown.
   5. Paste the gathered information into the prompt and ask the chatbot to calculate separate scenarios for each child and for the household total.
   6. Compare every price and support assumption in the answer with the provider’s written quote and the relevant GOV.UK page, then replace unconfirmed figures before using the estimate for your budget.

   Prompt

   Estimate my UK childcare costs from the information below. Use only the figures and facts I provide, and do not invent provider prices, funded hours, tax rules or eligibility. If anything is missing, ask for it or show the result as an explicit assumption.
   
   Household and location:
   - UK nation: [England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland]
   - Local authority or postcode area: [location]
   - Number and ages of children: [details]
   - Relevant work, study or benefit circumstances: [details, or say unknown]
   
   Childcare needed:
   - Provider type for each child: [nursery, childminder, after-school club, holiday club or other]
   - Days and hours needed each week: [details]
   - Term-time, year-round or holiday-only pattern: [details]
   - Start and end dates or weeks needed: [details]
   - Extra charges, deposits, meals, registration fees or late-pick-up charges: [details]
   
   Prices and support:
   - Provider price for each child and what it covers: [paste current quotes or price list]
   - Funded hours or funded place information from the provider: [details, or unknown]
   - Tax-Free Childcare, Universal Credit childcare support or other support already confirmed: [details, or unknown]
   
   Calculate a low, expected and high scenario only where the supplied information supports those scenarios. Show the arithmetic for each child and the household total, separating provider charges, one-off charges, support and the amount I would need to pay. Show the result by week, month and the full period requested, stating the assumptions behind each conversion. Do not treat an unconfirmed scheme or eligibility rule as available. Finish with a short checklist of figures and rules I must verify on GOV.UK and with the provider before relying on the estimate.

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.