Seven apps for working with a nanny, by what each one is for
Daily Nanny, Baby Connect, Poppins, HomePay, GTM and ours: the nanny's day, their hours and the payroll, compared by price and by what each one covers.
Compare › Apps for working with a nanny
Quick answer
For the day and the hours on iPhone, with the pay worked out: Daily Nanny. For the nanny's own time-limited login, the baby log, shifts, medicines and allergy cards: ours. For the deepest baby tracker every caregiver shares: Baby Connect. For a light day with no record: a group text. For payroll and taxes: Poppins at the lowest flat price, HomePay from the best-known name, GTM for a real clock-in.
Employing a nanny is two jobs that no single app does. One is the day: what the baby ate, whether the nap happened, which medicine was given, what to know before the next shift, and the hours. The other is the paperwork: paying the nanny, withholding and filing household employment taxes, and the W-2 and Schedule H at the end of the year. The apps that do the first do not file taxes, and the payroll services that do the second keep no record of the day.
This list takes the day first and the paperwork second, cheapest first. We make one of the seven and it is marked; we do the day and the hours, not the payroll. Prices are from each product's own pages, checked in October 2026, and where a price is not published we say so.
The list
Daily Nanny
Best for: A nanny's day and their hours in one iPhone app, with the pay worked out
The specialist closest to the whole job. The nanny clocks in or enters a past shift, sets an hourly and an overtime rate and sees what they are owed, and parents mark shifts paid and keep the payment history. Around that sit the day's log of naps, bottles, nursing, meals, diapers, medicine and activities, daily and weekly reports, photos and videos with comments, shared events, and a group message thread, with parents notified as entries come in. One Premium subscription covers the care team. Against it: iPhone and iPad only, about a hundred ratings, a listing that describes no way to limit what the nanny sees or end their access on a date, and a website that did not load when we checked. It works out the pay; it does not run payroll or file taxes.
Cost: Free; Premium $4.99 or $39.99 a year, and one subscription covers the whole care team. Prices from its App Store listing.
Chickadee Bandit
That's usBest for: A nanny with their own login that ends on its own, the baby log, shifts, medicines and allergy cards, and nothing else of yours
A household app, so the nanny's day is several apps on one login. The nanny is a guest: their own login, access for up to a year that ends by itself or when you press End now, and sight only of the apps you grant. In Baby Log they log feeds, diapers and naps under their own name, start a shift and leave a handoff note, and the Shifts tab totals the week's hours. On a care team they see the medicines you mark, tick each dose, and you are told when one is thirty minutes late; they read the children's allergy and doctor cards in Health Cards; they run bedtime from Routines; and you message them in a thread of their own, away from the household's conversation. Against it: hours, not pay — no rates, overtime or paid-shift record, and no payroll or tax filing — and Baby Log is simpler than the specialist trackers, with no sleep predictions or feed reminders.
Cost: $6/mo or $60/yr for the whole household, with every app in the library. The nanny joins as a guest at no extra cost. 30-day trial, no card, no ads.
Baby Connect
Best for: A full baby tracker every caregiver shares, with messages between them
The deepest tracker here: feeds, nursing, solids, pumping, sleep, diapers and potty, medicine, vaccines, temperature and growth against CDC and WHO percentiles, with charts and CSV or HTML reports for a pediatrician. One subscription covers every caregiver, each with their own account, caregivers can message each other, and it runs on iPhone, Android, Apple Watch and the web, with Siri and Alexa. Its pages describe no shift or hours log, and no way to time-limit a caregiver or limit what one sees.
Cost: Not published on its site. Its App Store listing shows a Family plan, up to 5 children, at $29.99 for six months or $49.99 a year, plus a $6.99 option whose period it does not state; Professional, up to 15 children, $14.99. Seven-day trial.
A group text and a shared note
Best for: A nanny you trust with a light day, and no record to keep
Most families start here, and for a part-time sitter it can be enough: a text when the nap starts, a photo at the park, a shared note with the pediatrician's number. It costs nothing and needs no new app. What it lacks is everything that outlives the thread: nothing totals the hours, the allergy instructions are wherever someone last pasted them, and when the nanny leaves, the history leaves in their phone.
Cost: Free, with the phones you already have.
Poppins Payroll
Best for: The lowest flat price for nanny payroll and taxes
One plan, no tiers: federal, state and local tax registration, new-hire reporting, payroll by direct deposit or your own check, quarterly filings, and year-end Schedule H and W-2, with a guarantee to cover any penalty it causes. The nanny can enter a daily total of hours each pay period for you to review, and you allocate regular and overtime hours yourself. In a nanny share each family needs its own account. Workers' compensation is through a partner. It is payroll only: no daily log, no messages.
Cost: $49/mo for one employee, $10/mo more for each additional employee. No setup fee; the rest of the first calendar month free. Extra fees for some state registrations and back taxes, with no amounts published.
Care.com HomePay
Best for: Payroll and taxes from the best-known name, with account management on Plus
Federal and state tax registration, quarterly filings, year-end forms and Schedule H, new-hire reports, automated payroll and direct deposit, with a guarantee to pay or reimburse penalties it causes. Plus adds a dedicated account manager, audit support, tax notices handled for you, and an employee app in which the nanny enters daily hours, overtime, time off and expenses. Workers' compensation is referred to a broker. It is payroll only: no daily log, no messages.
Cost: Essentials $59/mo; Plus $75/mo, with the first month free. Plus adds the employee hours app. Setup and per-employee fees not published.
GTM Payroll Services
Best for: Household staff with a real clock-in, and HR help on the higher plans
Tax IDs, new-hire reporting, self-onboarding, payroll and direct deposit, and federal, state and local taxes filed with a guarantee to pay penalties it causes. Its HomePunch timekeeping is the only true clock-in on this list: the nanny punches in and out on their phone, you can see where each punch was made, and approved timesheets flow into payroll with overtime and leave. Workers' compensation is offered in-house, and HR Platinum reviews work agreements. The year-end W-2 and Schedule H service is priced separately and not published. It says itself it is not the cheapest.
Cost: EasyPay from $70/mo, first employee included, $20/mo for each additional employee. HR Platinum from $132/mo and Diamond from $232/mo, each with a 12-month minimum and a $75 setup fee.
Prices and features are from each product's own site as of October 2026; where a product has a head-to-head page here, its entry restates that page. Products change — always check the other product's site for current details.
Choosing between them
- If you want the day, the hours and the pay worked out in one app, and everyone has an iPhone, Daily Nanny.
- If the nanny should have their own login that ends on its own, see only what you grant, and handle medicines and allergy cards as well as the log, ours.
- If what matters most is the deepest baby tracker, shared by every caregiver with messages between them, Baby Connect.
- If the day is light and nobody needs a record, a group text and a shared note.
- For payroll and taxes, pick one of the three services whatever you use for the day: Poppins for the lowest flat price, HomePay for the best-known name and an account manager, GTM for a real clock-in.
Two jobs, usually two apps
Most families will use one app for the day and one service for payroll, and the useful question is how the hours get from one to the other. Daily Nanny works out what is owed but files nothing. Ours totals the week's hours per person. HomePay's Plus plan, Poppins and GTM each have the nanny enter hours inside the payroll service itself, and only GTM's is a clock-in. If you use a payroll service's own timesheet, the day app does not need to track hours at all.
What a nanny should not see
A family app that adds the nanny like any other adult shows them the household: the calendar, the messages, the records. The baby trackers here share the baby's log only, which is safer. Ours makes the nanny a guest who sees only the apps you grant, and in each of those what a child would see, plus what they log and what you give the care team, with access that ends on a date you set.
The nanny's access when the job ends
Ask this before you choose. With a shared login, ending access means a new password for everyone. With caregiver accounts, it means removing the person, where the app describes a way to, and with ours, pressing End now or letting the date pass. In every case keep the record: the log, the hours and the payroll history are yours.
The feature list is not fixed
Every other product on this page is a fixed set of features: it does what it does, and a need it did not anticipate gets a no. Chickadee Bandit is built from small apps, and a household can add one of its own. An admin describes the app in a paragraph on the Apps page and the hub builds and installs it, using the AI credits that come with every plan; someone who writes code can start from any of the open-source apps and install their own version from a URL. A custom app gets the same checks as the ones we ship: it declares what it reads and writes, keeps its data in your household's own database, and the hub refuses anything it did not ask for.
Where this list comes from
We make one of the products on it, and it is marked. Every claim about another product was checked against that product's own pricing and feature pages on the date above — not against another review site — and where we could not find a published price we say so rather than quote one. The order is by what each product is for, not a ranking of merit.
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