Childcare Costs in Texas (2024): What Full-Time Care Really Costs, by Source
This page covers childcare prices in Texas, drawn from Child Care Aware of America’s 2024 Affordability Analysis and its January 2025 CCR&R survey cycle. Texas’s figures were asterisked in that report, meaning they were backfilled from an older state Market Rate Survey rather than pulled fresh from the current survey, so treat the age-by-age, center versus family child care prices below as somewhat less current than states with fresh 2025 data.
Average annual price of full-time child care in Texas
| Age group | Center-based care | Family child care (home-based) |
|---|---|---|
| Infant | $11,349 · $946/mo | $10,010 · $834/mo |
| Toddler | $10,921 · $910/mo | $9,957 · $830/mo |
| 4-Year-Old | $10,225 · $852/mo | $9,582 · $798/mo |
| Before/After School | $6,782 · $565/mo | $6,300 · $525/mo |
| Full-Time Summer | $2,260 · $188/mo | $2,100 · $175/mo |
Texas’s prices in this table are flagged by Child Care Aware of America as backfilled from an older state Market Rate Survey, not the current 2025 CCR&R survey — treat them as less current than states without this flag. Source: Child Care Aware of America, Tables I & II, “Child Care in America: 2024 Affordability Analysis.” A cell reading “Not reported” means CCAoA did not publish a price for that age group and setting in this state — it is not zero and was not estimated.
What this actually means for a family’s budget
A year of center-based infant care in Texas costs $11,349. For a family with two children in center-based care, the annual bill of $21,574 runs 34.27% more than the state’s annualized rent, but it actually comes in 10.64% below the annualized mortgage payment, so on this measure childcare costs less than owning a home with a mortgage. Center-based infant care alone is close to a year of average in-state public tuition and fees ($11,260), just 0.79% higher. That $11,349 infant care price is 9.8% of the married-couple median income and 29.6% of the single-parent median income.
National context
This is the flat 2023 U.S. national average annual wage for childcare workers (BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, occupation code 39-9011), not a Texas-specific figure. CCAoA’s report applies this single national number when ranking every state’s childcare-workforce affordability, so it is NOT evidence about Texas wages specifically. (Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2023 Annual Mean Wage: Childcare Workers, bls.gov/oes/current/oes399011.htm)
What we don’t have for Texas
This page relies on one statewide number for Texas, but the U.S. Department of Labor’s National Database of Childcare Prices would break these costs down by county, which is a more precise picture for families comparing specific parts of the state. We weren’t able to pull that county-level data this pass, so everything here reflects Child Care Aware of America’s statewide figures only.
How we built this page
Every figure above comes from Child Care Aware of America’s published “Child Care in America: 2024 Affordability Analysis” report (Tables I, II, III, XI, and XII), which in turn cites U.S. Census Bureau ACS 2023 data for income and rent/mortgage figures, and BLS 2023 data for the national childcare-worker wage figure. Reused here under CCAoA’s own republishing terms, which require visible citation to Child Care Aware of America and a link to childcareaware.org — both are provided throughout this page.
- Child Care Aware of America, “Child Care in America: 2024 Affordability Analysis”. Prices from CCAoA’s January 2025 survey of Child Care Resource & Referral State Networks.
- U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2023, Table B19126 (income) and related housing-cost tables.
- Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2023 Annual Mean Wage: Childcare Workers (occupation code 39-9011).
