How to Find a Nanny or Housemaid in Cyprus: Direct vs Using an Agency

There are four realistic ways to find a nanny or housemaid in Cyprus, and none of them is "the right one" — each trades money against time against certainty. What actually matters is knowing what agencies charge (mostly unpublished), what the law says about who pays (never the worker), and exactly what lands on your shoulders when you go direct. This guide maps the real market, for the Republic of Cyprus.

Where families actually find help

• Licensed employment agencies — they source candidates, shortlist, and usually help with permit paperwork for live-in hires. You pay a fee; the worker legally pays nothing.
• Classifieds — general listings sites carry both families advertising roles and workers advertising availability. Free-form and fast, but everything from screening to paperwork is on you.
• Facebook community groups — a large share of the Cyprus domestic-help market lives in local groups. Word-of-mouth speed and honest chatter, but zero structure and zero vetting.
• Online platforms — hourly-childcare platforms list per-hour babysitters with published city rates, and profile platforms like this one let helpers list themselves so you can browse nannies and housemaids and contact them directly. You deal with each other directly — the platform isn't part of the arrangement.

Word of mouth still fills plenty of roles too — a neighbour's housekeeper's sister is how half of Cyprus hires. Whichever channel you start with, be honest with yourself about one thing: apart from whatever screening an agency does, checking a candidate is your job. No channel does it for you.

What agencies do — and what they charge

A licensed agency's core service is the shortlist: they hold a pool of candidates (for live-in roles, often recruited from the Philippines, Sri Lanka or Nepal), match your requirements, and arrange interviews. Most will also assemble the permit paperwork for a third-country hire — genuinely useful, because the document list is long.

On price, the honest picture is thin: most Cyprus agencies publish no fees at all— websites say "contact us" and quote on enquiry. Across the agencies we checked in 2026, only two published anything concrete:

So before signing anything, ask for the full fee schedule in writing: the placement fee itself, whether VAT is included, whether permit paperwork is covered or extra, and — most important — the replacement policy if the worker leaves or the placement fails in the first months.

"Licensed" is a legal term here, not marketing. Under the Private Employment Agencies Law 126(I)/2012, operating a placement agency without a licence is prohibited, licences run for three years, and the state keeps a register of licensed agencies that is freely accessible to anyone. Ask for the licence number; a legitimate agency will volunteer it.

Workers never pay. Ever.

This is the single most useful thing Cyprus law says about this market, and it's worth quoting plainly. Article 21 of Law 126(I)/2012 bans any financial charge on the worker — direct or indirect — for seeking, securing or keeping a job. For third-country workers it goes further: travel costs and every fee connected with the residence and work permit fall exclusively on the employer, never the worker. An agency can't even collect the worker's wages on their behalf, with or without consent.

Going direct: what you take on

Hiring directly saves the placement fee, and for live-out roles it's how most of the market already works. The trade is that three jobs move from the agency's desk to yours:

• The search. Writing the ad, filtering replies, scheduling interviews. Budget real time — a clear ad with the hours, duties and pay attached filters better than a vague one.
• The vetting. Speak to at least two previous employers yourself — messages can be written by anyone; phone calls are harder to fake. Ask the candidate for a recent clean criminal-record certificate — in Cyprus the worker applies for it themselves online (it costs €20), and for childcare roles there's also a free certificate confirming they're not on the register of offenders against minors. A paid trial day tells you more than a second interview.
• The paperwork. For an EU or local hire this is light. For a live-in third-country hire it's the full permit process — contract, income evidence, medicals, translations — with no agency assembling it for you.

Put whatever you agree in writing, whoever you hire. For live-in permit hires this isn't optional — the official employment contract is itself part of the permit application, and our step-by-step hiring guide walks through the whole file.

You're the employer either way

The most common misunderstanding about agencies: paying one does not make it the employer. If you hire a third-country national as a live-in domestic worker, the permit is issued in your name, the income criteria are tested against your household, and the contract, the €460-plus-board pay package, the social-insurance registration and the worker's day-to-day entitlements are all your legal obligations. An agency can prepare the file; it can't hold the responsibility.

The same logic applies to EU and local hires, just with less paperwork: no permit, but you still register as an employer with the Social Insurance Services and declare the hire through the ERGANI system no later than a day before work starts, then pay contributions on top of the wage. What those wages should be — the €460 live-in floor, the €900–€2,000 live-out market, hourly rates by city — is covered in our 2026 salary guide.

Direct or agency: the decision table

If you'd rather start direct, the lowest-effort first step is to post a job free — describe the role, hours and pay, and helpers who match contact you directly.