A year of daycare tuition against the cost of one lead

Late June is an odd month to talk about enrollment. Summer camp is running, the classrooms are busy with school-age children, and fall feels settled. It rarely is. The late scramble for fall seats and after-school places starts in July, and the budget for it gets decided now. So this is when directors ask us the money question: what should a center pay to bring a family through the door, and is that figure high or low?

Two sets of numbers published since mid-May make the answer easier to frame.

What a family pays for a year of care

Child Care Aware of America released its 2025 price and supply data on May 13. The national average annual price of child care in 2025 was $13,184, up from $13,128 the year before, and prices rose 23% between 2021 and 2025. That price takes 10% of median income in a two-parent household and 33% for a single parent. In every state with data, center care for two children costs more than median rent.

Two more lines from the same release matter to anyone planning enrollment:

• Supply is shifting. The number of licensed centers fell about 1% from 2024 to 2025 while family child care homes grew about 1.4%, and center supply dropped in 26 of the 43 states with complete data.
• Most families pay it themselves. Only 15% of eligible children receive federal subsidies.

Put together, that describes a parent making one of the largest purchases in the household budget, slowly and carefully, often with fewer centers to choose from than five years ago. It also explains why one enrollment is worth far more than one month’s tuition. In the programs we work with, a family that settles in tends to stay until kindergarten, and a younger sibling often follows.

What the published benchmarks say a lead costs

WordStream by LocaliQ published its 2026 Google Ads benchmarks on May 18. It does not break out child care or tutoring; the nearest category is Education & Instruction, which covers education businesses broadly. For April 2025 to March 2026 the medians were:

• Cost per click: $4.81
• Conversion rate: 13.14%
• Cost per lead: $77.48

The 2025 edition, covering April 2024 to March 2025, put the same category’s cost per lead at $90.02, so search leads got cheaper year over year. They still sit above the 2026 all-industry median of $66.69.

For Facebook and Instagram, the latest WordStream figures for lead campaigns are in its 2025 edition, covering April 2024 to June 2025: a median Education & Instruction cost per lead of $28.22 and a conversion rate of 10.08%. That is a little over a third of the search figure.

Now set the two side by side, as an illustration of the market and not a forecast for any one center. One year of the national average price equals about 170 median search leads in this category. Even if only a small share of inquiries ever tour and enroll, the arithmetic usually favors spending enough to keep the tour calendar full. Tuition is revenue, not profit, and staff ratios and wages take most of it. Still, the comparison explains why a center that switches its ads off in July to save money is so often short of families in September.

Search, Facebook ads and Local Services Ads do different jobs

The cheaper lead is not automatically the better buy.

• Search catches the parent who typed “infant care near me” tonight. Those families are closer to a decision and usually want a tour date, not a brochure.
• Facebook and Instagram lead forms reach parents who were not searching. The lead costs less because the parent is earlier in the decision, and it becomes an enrollment only if someone invites them to tour quickly and keeps in touch afterward.
• Local Services Ads charge per valid lead rather than per click. Google runs Child care and Preschool categories with the Google Verified badge, and its screening asks for liability and professional insurance plus a credential for every teacher. No published benchmark gives a child care figure for these ads, so judge them on your own tours.

Directories sit beside all three. Care.com says more than 45 million families and caregivers have used it since its founding in 2006, and its day care listings put independents next to national brands. Learning Care Group, the company behind La Petite Academy and Childtime, lists more than 1,110 schools. Those chains are bidding for the same parents you are.

Where the money actually leaks

In the programs we look at, the expensive part is rarely the click. It is what happens after it.

• An inquiry that waits until the next morning for a reply, by which time the parent has booked two other tours.
• A tour with no follow-up, so the family that liked you hears nothing while the center down the road sends a note that afternoon.
• A waitlist kept in a spreadsheet nobody updates, so families assume they will never get in and enroll elsewhere.
• Ads still running for a room that filled in May.

A $77.48 search lead that gets a reply within minutes and a tour invitation is worth more than three $28.22 form leads left sitting in an inbox. The benchmark tells you what the market charges; your follow-up decides what you get for it.

What to do this month

• Work out what one enrolled child is worth to you over the time families usually stay, using your own tuition rather than the national average.
• Count last spring’s inquiries, tours and enrollments by source, so you know your own rate from lead to family.
• Set the July and August budget now, room by room, and pause anything aimed at rooms that are already full.
• Agree a reply target for new inquiries and a same-day follow-up after every tour, then check both each week.
• Send Facebook and Instagram lead forms to a tour invitation rather than a download, so the cheaper lead has somewhere useful to go.

The budget question turns out to be a follow-up question. Once the tour process holds, the benchmarks above become a floor to plan against rather than a cost to dread. Our daycare and tutoring page shows the order we work in for a program, and how we run Google Ads and Meta campaigns covers the two paid channels compared here.