Welcome to the National Database of Child Care Licensing Regulations—a tool for finding and searching national and state information about child care licensing regulations, agency policies, and requirements for licensed child care centers, family child care homes, and group child care homes. 

There are three search options in the database:

State Profiles to get licensing agency contact information, licensing regulations, and links to other early childhood program standards for the state you choose.

Search All Regulations to find and download child care licensing regulations documents using a keyword search and filters by state, facility type, and date. Click on Search button with no keyword to filter all regulations. 

Search Data Sets to view and download tables of national data about licensing agency policies from the 2017 Child Care Licensing Study and facility requirements from the 2020 Child Care Licensing Study. Some data have been updated in 2023. Updated topics include a date, for example, Group Size Required for Centers (2023). 

Data are organized by category, topic, and facility type. Tables display all states or states you choose. Data tables include national counts. Choose no states to display only counts for all states. You can save results to a PDF file. Click here for an index of the categories and topics included in the Licensing Agency Policies data set and here for an index of the categories and topics included in the Facility Requirements data set.