How we make money
Comparison sites work best when you can see how they are paid. This page explains it in plain terms — and, just as importantly, what money can never change on NurseryMatch.
Free for parents, always
Searching, comparing, shortlisting, enquiring and reading reviews are free, with no registration required to search. We will not charge parents to see information about childcare — that data comes from public registers (Ofsted, the Care Inspectorate and CIW, used under the Open Government Licence) and from parents themselves.
Where revenue comes from
NurseryMatch is an early-stage service, and right now our focus is being useful, not maximising revenue. The ways the site is designed to earn are:
- Provider subscriptions. Any nursery can claim its profile and reply to enquiries for free. Paid tiers add extras like enhanced profiles and analytics.
- Featured placement. Providers can pay for promoted visibility. Anything paid-for is always labelled ("Featured") and never changes a nursery's Ofsted grade, rating, review score or position in normal search results.
- Advertising. Clearly-marked ad slots from ad networks or relevant local services. Advertisers get no say in our content or rankings.
- Data and API partnerships. Aggregated, anonymous area intelligence (for example family-friendliness scores for property sites) — never personal data.
What money can never change
- Search rankings. Results are ordered by relevance, distance and quality signals. No nursery can pay to rank higher in ordinary results.
- Inspection data. Ofsted, Care Inspectorate and CIW grades are shown exactly as published, including poor grades and enforcement notices — for paying providers too.
- Reviews. Providers cannot pay to remove or reorder genuine parent reviews.
- Fee estimates. Our fee figures follow a published methodology (how we estimate fees) and are labelled by source. A provider's payment status has no effect on them.
- Your personal data. We never sell it. Analytics are cookieless and GDPR-compliant (see our privacy policy).
Questions?
If anything on the site looks like it conflicts with the promises above, tell us and we will fix it or explain it.