Daycares in Iowa

3,305 licensed child care providers in Iowa, drawn from the state licensing agency's public records. Each profile carries the license number, status, and capacity on record. Where the state publishes nothing for a field, or the daycare is not licensed, the profile says so plainly.

Browse 470 Iowacities →

Averaged across every licensed provider on record, excluding this state from the comparison.

Parent sentiment

-0.2 vs Other states average

Average parent review rating on Google or Yelp.

Iowa3.2
Other states3.4

549 providers sampled

Daycare Index Rating

-6 vs Other states average

Average Daycare Index Rating across the providers here that carry a score. Each score is built only from the public record available for that provider, and whatever the data cannot answer is excluded rather than guessed at. See scoring guide.

Iowa45
Other states51

233 providers sampled

Iowa over time

Every dated record we hold for Iowa, bucketed by calendar year. Each panel names its own coverage: a line appears once a year carries enough observations to be a point rather than an anecdote, and says why it is empty when it is.

Safety index trend

Iowa publishes inspection outcomes, but not in a form this pipeline can read, so there is no violation-rate line to draw here. Read that as a gap in what we can see, not as a finding. An empty inspection history is not a clean record.

Parent sentiment trend

20172026

Average star rating across every dated parent review on record for Iowa. Reviews are counted individually here, unlike the state averages above.

Show the figures

Average parent review star rating for Iowa daycares, by year, by year, with sample sizes
Year	Average rating	Sample
2017	4.38	63
2018	4.44	94
2019	4.28	108
2020	4.17	75
2021	4.44	88
2022	4.20	88
2023	4.31	182
2024	4.44	236
2025	4.58	345
2026	4.47	288

Where they are in Iowa

Every Iowa provider we hold a location for. Click a pin for the license record, and pan or zoom to load more.

Where this record comes from

Licensing in Iowa is administered by the Department of Health and Human Services under 441 Iowa Admin. Code Ch. 109. This directory republishes the public record and labels every absent field "Not listed" rather than filling it in. Verify current status with the agency before enrolling.

Primary source: https://ccmis.dhs.state.ia.us/clientportal

Iowa averages