Childcare allowance caps at 11,23 euro an hour: everything above it is yours alone

Dutch childcare allowance is not calculated on what your nursery charges. It is calculated on what the government has capped that charge at. For 2026 the maximum hourly rates are 11,23 euro for day care, 9,98 euro for out-of-school care and 8,49 euro for childminder care. Anything your provider charges above that line is not touched by the allowance at all, however generous your reimbursement percentage happens to be, because the percentage only ever applies to the part beneath the cap. A second ceiling sits on the hours: in any calendar month in which you or your partner worked, a maximum of 230 hours per child enters the calculation and the rest falls outside it. Many families who have recently arrived only discover this when the first payment lands and the bill looks nothing like the estimate. The cause is almost always these two ceilings rather than a mistake on the application.

Written as a sum you can drop your own numbers into: take your nursery's real hourly rate, subtract the matching cap, multiply by the hours you actually use in a month, and that is the slice the allowance will never reach. Then take the part beneath the cap and multiply it by the share you are not reimbursed for. Add the two and you have your genuine monthly outlay. A worked example: day care at 12,50 euro an hour for 130 hours a month. The amount above the cap is 12,50 minus 11,23, which is 1,27 euro, times 130 hours, which is 165,10 euro, and all of it is yours. The part beneath the cap is 11,23 times 130, or 1.459,90 euro; even at the highest published reimbursement rate of 96 percent, the remaining 4 percent still comes to 58,40 euro. Together roughly 223,50 euro a month, and that is the floor, calculated on the most favourable percentage, not the ceiling.

• The three 2026 caps: 11,23 euro an hour for day care, 9,98 euro for out-of-school care and 8,49 euro for childminder care, each form of care using its own figure with no crossover
• The hours side: in a calendar month in which a parent or partner worked, at most 230 hours per child enter the calculation, so contracted hours beyond that simply do not count
• Who this changes: families comparing two nurseries, or reading a first contract quote. A one euro gap in the hourly rate is 130 euro a month at 130 hours, and every cent of that gap is carried by you
• Limits and next step: the highest published reimbursement rate is 96 percent and applies to the lower income band, with your own band to be confirmed against the official table. Copy the hourly rate and monthly hours from your contract, run the sum above, and only then check it against the official calculator
• Easy to miss: the allowance is paid on the hours and income you declared, so a change in either has to be reported promptly or it is reclaimed at the annual settlement

Hokimi field note: when choosing between nurseries, treat the hourly rate and the amount above the cap as two separate questions. One charging 11,20 euro and one charging 12,80 euro look 1,60 euro apart, but the first sits almost entirely inside the supported range while the second leaves 1,57 euro an hour resting wholly on you. That distinction appears in no brochure. Sources: source 1, source 2.