The short answer
Publish one plain page with your session types, your rate by age band, what the fee includes, what is charged separately, and a short orientation on the funding schemes you take part in with a link to the official eligibility checker.
Every parent asks this. The nursery that answers it on a page gets the viewing.
Why publishing wins
Nurseries withhold fees for two reasons. Either they think the number sounds high out of context, or they want the phone call so they can sell.
Both cost places. A parent comparing four settings drops the ones with no price before the call happens, and the ones that do answer look more honest for it. The number is not the objection you think it is. Not knowing the number is.
The four things the page must contain
The rate, by age band and session type. Your rooms down one side, your session types across the top, with real hours attached to each session. Weekly figures for the common patterns so nobody has to multiply.
What is included. Meals and snacks, nappies, wipes, formula, sun cream, wet weather kit, visiting teachers. Say which of these you provide and which parents bring.
What is not. Registration fee, deposit and when it comes back, late collection charge and its unit, the holiday and sickness policy, notice to reduce days or leave, and how much warning you give before an annual increase.
A worked example. Three full days in the toddler room with funded hours applied, shown as a monthly figure. One example beats four paragraphs.
How to handle funding
Say which schemes you take part in, by their proper names. Say how funded hours actually work at your nursery, since that is the part parents cannot work out alone: how many hours you stretch over how many weeks, whether you offer funded-only places, and what any consumables or additional hours charge is and covers.
Then link the government eligibility checker for your country and say clearly that eligibility is decided there, not by you. Note the application deadline pattern ahead of a term start, because missing a code deadline is the costliest thing a new family does.
Do the same for tax-advantaged childcare accounts, employer schemes and any local subsidy you are approved for.
Keep it to orientation. Scheme names, rates and eligibility differ by country and region and they change, sometimes annually. Put a last checked date on the page and let the country pages carry detail.
Words to avoid
Do not call funded hours free unless every hour genuinely is at your setting with no consumables charge. Parents who find a charge later feel misled, and the word is the reason.
Do not write "affordable", "competitive" or "please contact us for our fees". Do not publish a from price with no ceiling. Do not put the fee table behind a form.
Keep it correct
Build the table as records with an effective-from date rather than typing it into a page. Show the date it was last updated. Put the same numbers into whatever runs your enquiries, Famly, Blossom or Kinderly, so the estimate a family gets after their viewing matches what they read on the site.
A quote that contradicts the page loses more places than a high rate does.
What about competitors reading it
They will. They already know what you charge, because the parents who ring them tell them. The only person your withheld price is hiding from is the parent trying to shortlist you.
Where this sits
A plain fees and funding page built from editable records is one of the first things we build on a day nursery website, and the same approach runs through our other childcare and family websites. Package details are on pricing. Publish the rate, explain the scheme in outline, and link the checker for the rest.