Our story
Why we built this.
We started DaycareSquare after one of us spent six weeks trying to find daycare for a 9-month-old in a city he had lived in for fifteen years. He came out the other side with a child enrolled and a list of grievances about the search experience.
The big sites felt like marketplaces, not directories. Rankings were quietly sponsored. Contact info was paywalled. The "five top picks" in every neighborhood happened to be the five who paid for the rank. The cost data was either marketing copy or stale federal averages from 2019. The reviews were 4.9 stars across the board because anything below got moderated away.
We built DaycareSquare to be the page we wished we had found in week one. An editorial directory, in the old sense: a guide compiled by people who care more about being right than about being everywhere. A directory where the ranking is the ranking, where premium is clearly labeled, where cost ranges are sourced and dated, and where a daycare with three stars stays at three stars.
We cover daycare across all 50 states and 121 metro areas, and we are adding more. Our cost ranges draw on the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Child Care Aware, and state cost surveys, plus operator submissions — every figure sourced and dated. We write everything in plain English. We do not run sponsored content. We do not run pop-ups. We do not sell your email.
That is the whole thing. Thank you for trusting us with the search.
Fredrik FilipssonCo-founder, DaycareSquare · Updated June 2026
