Care Percentage Calculator
Work out your child care percentage from nights or days per year for shared custody and Centrelink or Child Support purposes, free in your browser.
Your weekly care pattern
Pick the year, then turn on each day of the week the child is in your care. We count those days across the whole year.
Days in your care
Results
Choose a year and your care days, then press Calculate.
Before you rely on this: First-pass guide only. Verify safety-critical or regulated work against the relevant standards, your project requirements and a qualified professional.
How to use this calculator
- Choose the year you want to work out.
- Turn each day of the week to “Yes” if the child is in your care that night.
- Press Calculate — it counts those days across the whole year for your care nights and percentage.
How it works
If you have the child on the same days each week, your nights for the year are just how many times those weekdays occur that year. The calculator counts every matching day from 1 January to 31 December.
Your care percentage is those nights divided by the days in the year; the other parent gets the rest. In Australia this percentage maps to 'care levels' (regular, shared, primary care and so on) used in child support.
Worked example
Monday, Wednesday and Friday in 2026. Each of those weekdays occurs 52 times in 2026, so 3 × 52 = 156 nights ÷ 365 = 42.7% — shared care.
Frequently asked questions
Should I count days or nights?
Use nights — each day you toggle on counts as an overnight, which is how child support and most parenting arrangements are measured.
What about holidays or one-off changes?
This counts a fixed weekly pattern only. For specific date blocks use the Nights in Care calculator instead.
Related tools
- Nights in Care Calculator
- Parenting Nights Per Year Calculator
- Child Support Estimator (Australia)
- Custody Nights Percentage Calculator
- Pocket Money Savings Calculator
- Conception Date Calculator
Explore more in Family, Parenting & Custody.
Cite this tool
Zerdly. (2026). Care Percentage Calculator. Retrieved from https://www.zerdly.com/tools/care-percentage-calculator/
Tip: Enter any known values to calculate the remaining results.
All calculations run in your browser. Your inputs are never saved or transmitted.