MapleCub Data Lab · City snapshot · 2026
Toronto child care, in numbers — 2026 snapshot
Toronto has 856 licensed child-care programs, 19.6% of everything Ontario publishes — with what the registry does, and does not, record about them.
- Computed 2026-08-11
- N = 856 programs
- 20,516 across eight registries
- CC BY 4.0
856
licensed programs
831
centres
25
licensed family homes
57.7%
publish opening hours
2.9% of Toronto’s licensed programs are family homes: 25 of them, against 831 centres. That is the 26th-highest family-home share among Canada’s 30 largest municipal child-care markets. That mix is set by provincial licensing law more than by local demand: some provinces license each home individually, others license home care through agencies that never appear as separate records. Altogether MapleCub lists 856 licensed child-care programs in Toronto, 19.6% of all the licensed programs Ontario publishes.
Toronto publishes opening and closing times for 494 of its programs (57.7%) and age ranges for 710 (82.9%). Where hours are known, 121 programs open by 7 a.m. and 369 stay open past 6 p.m. The remaining 362 programs have not published a schedule anywhere we can read it. Both counts are floors.
The numbers
| Measure | Value | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Licensed programs | 856 | 19.6% of Ontario's 4,374 licensed programs. |
| Centres | 831 | 97.1% of the city's licensed programs. |
| Licensed family homes | 25 | 2.9% of the city's licensed programs. |
| Age ranges published | 710 (82.9%) | Programs whose served age groups are recorded, so an infant or school-age filter can find them. |
| Opening hours published | 494 (57.7%) | Both an opening and a closing time on file. 362 programs publish neither. |
| Open by 7 a.m. | 121 | 24.5% of the 494 programs with known hours. Partial data — a program with no published schedule is not counted either way. |
| Open past 6 p.m. | 369 | 74.7% of the 494 programs with known hours. Same partial-data caveat. |
| Reduced-fee programs | Not published | Ontario's registry does not distinguish which licensed programs offer the reduced fee. |
| French-language programs | 33 (3.9%) | Programs the provincial registry identifies as French-language. |
| Programs with a public rating | 413 (48.2%) | Average 4.46 out of 5. Matching requires name agreement, so this undercounts rather than overcounts. |
Source: MapleCub Canadian Childcare Dataset — Aug 2026 · computed 2026-08-10 · N = 856 · CSV · Toronto, Ontario; visible listings only
Centres or homes: where Toronto sits
Toronto sits at 2.9%. The 30 largest municipal markets hold 9,998 licensed programs between them, 48.7% of the national dataset, and they do not run on the same kind of supply: Saskatoon and Regina are family-home cities, while 4 Quebec cities have no individually licensed homes at all.
Source: MapleCub Canadian Childcare Dataset — Aug 2026 · computed 2026-08-10 · N = 9,998 · CSV · community = normalized city name within a province
What this snapshot cannot tell you
Program counts are not space counts: no province in this dataset publishes licensed capacity for Toronto in a form that survives comparison, so 856 counts licences a parent can look up rather than rooms with a free spot. Opening hours come from provider-published schedules rather than the registry, which is why 362 of 856 programs have none on file. And every figure here is a snapshot of 2026-08-11 — licences open and close weekly.
Ontario's registry does not distinguish which licensed programs offer the reduced fee. Every row in that column carries the same value, so any percentage computed from it would carry the look of a finding without the substance of one. This page prints the sentence instead.
Looking for a place, not a statistic?
Browse all 856 licensed programs in Toronto with filters for age group, hours and subsidy, or read the national picture these numbers came from.
Cite as: MapleCub, “Toronto child care, in numbers — 2026 snapshot,” 2026-08-11, https://www.maplecub.ca/research/toronto-childcare-snapshot. Released under CC BY 4.0. More open data: MapleCub Data Lab.