Preschool fees Singapore parents pay went down this year, which is not a sentence anyone expected to write about the cost of anything in 2026. Since 1 January 2026, full-day childcare at Anchor Operator preschools is capped at $610, and Partner Operator preschools at $650. Both figures are before GST, and both are $30 lower than the year before.
The bigger change is still coming. From January 2027, the household income ceiling for the means-tested Additional Subsidy rises from $12,000 to $15,000 a month. More than 60,000 families are expected to benefit.
If your household sits somewhere between those two numbers, you have been paying full whack on the means-tested portion and are about to stop.
The two caps, and which one applies to you
Not every preschool is fee-capped. The caps apply to government-supported operators, and the difference between the two schemes matters when you are comparing centres.
- Anchor Operator (AOP): full-day childcare capped at $610 before GST
- Partner Operator (POP): full-day childcare capped at $650 before GST
Private centres outside both schemes set their own fees and are frequently multiples of these numbers. That gap is the single biggest lever on your monthly outgoings, and it is worth checking a centre’s status before you fall in love with the classroom.
How the subsidies stack
Two subsidies sit on top of the capped fee, and they work differently.
- Basic Subsidy. Available to Singapore Citizen children in licensed centres. The amount depends on whether the mother is working, and on whether it is infant care or childcare.
- Additional Subsidy. Means-tested on gross monthly household income, currently up to a $12,000 ceiling. From January 2027 that ceiling becomes $15,000.
ECDA runs a subsidy calculator that does this arithmetic for you. Use it before you sign anything, because parents routinely budget off the headline fee and forget the subsidies entirely.
What the 2027 change means in practice
A dual-income household earning, say, $13,500 a month currently falls above the ceiling and receives no Additional Subsidy. From January 2027 that same household comes into scope.
The exact amount depends on where you land in the income bands, so it is not a flat windfall. But it moves a large slice of Singapore’s middle-income families from zero to something, which is the point of raising the ceiling in the first place.
Places, not just prices
Cheaper fees are useless if there is no vacancy within a sane distance of home. On that front the picture has improved.
- The target of 80% of preschoolers being able to get a place in a government-supported preschool was met by end-2025
- Close to 40,000 more full-day places are being added at Anchor Operator preschools between 2025 and 2029
- That includes roughly 6,000 infant care places, which is the tightest segment of all
- KidSTART is being scaled nationwide, with priority enrolment for children from lower-income families
Infant care remains the pinch point. If you are expecting and planning to return to work, get on waitlists earlier than feels reasonable, because the maths on infant places has not fully caught up with demand.
A short checklist before you enrol
- Confirm whether the centre is AOP, POP, or neither, since only the first two are fee-capped
- Run the ECDA subsidy calculator with your actual household income, not a rounded guess
- Ask what the fee covers, because meals, materials and enrichment are sometimes billed separately
- Check the GST treatment, since the caps are quoted before GST
- Ask about the deposit and the notice period for withdrawal, which is where families get caught
One last thing worth saying out loud. A capped fee does not mean a compromised centre, and plenty of parents assume otherwise. AOP and POP centres operate under quality requirements as a condition of the scheme, and the ones near you are worth walking into before you write them off.
Fee caps, subsidy rates and the calculator are all published on the ECDA website.
