What to Pay a Nanny, Housemaid or Carer in Cyprus (2026 Salary Guide)

Ask what a nanny or housemaid costs in Cyprus and you'll get answers ranging from €460 to €2,000 a month — and confusingly, both ends are right. Cyprus runs two separate pay systems for domestic help, and which one applies to your arrangement changes everything. This guide lays out both, with real 2026 figures and where each one comes from.

Two pay systems, not one

The €460 figure only exists inside the live-in permit scheme, where the worker also receives accommodation and food as part of the package. The moment you're hiring someone who lives out — a local nanny, an EU housekeeper, an hourly cleaner — there is no €460 anything: rates are negotiated, and they're several times higher in cash terms.

The regulated live-in package

For a live-in domestic worker on the permit scheme, the Migration Department sets the minimum monthly gross salary at €460, regardless of the worker's country of origin. From that gross, the rules allow these deductions:

The full employer picture (contributions, insurance, one-off permit costs) is in our guide to hiring a live-in domestic worker.

Market rates for live-out help

No official body sets live-out rates, so the honest way to answer "what's normal?" is to look at what's actually advertised and averaged across the island. All figures below are 2026 and labelled with what they are.

Hourly childcare (babysitting)

Babysits, the hourly-childcare platform, publishes live city averages from sitter profiles:

The island-wide spread for babysitting runs roughly €7–€16 an hour, with the lower end for occasional or less-experienced sitters. Supply explains some of the city gap: Nicosia has the deepest sitter pool (94 active profiles) and the lowest average rate, while Paphos has the smallest (32) and the highest. Limassol sitters also average the most experience (4.3 years with children, against 3.2 in Nicosia) — you're paying for depth as much as postcode.

Monthly roles — advertised asks, June 2026

These are asking figures from live classifieds (Bazaraki), not settled wages — useful as a reality check on what families are offering and workers are seeing:

• live-in nanny/housekeeper roles: €600–€900 a month plus room and board;
• full-time live-out housekeeper / household roles: €1,500–€2,000 a month (a housekeeper-cook for a Limassol residence at €2,000, a Russian-speaking household professional in Paphos at €1,500);
• a teacher-qualified nanny in Larnaca at €1,600;
• part-time housekeeping (20 hours/week) at €450 a month;
• hourly cleaning from around €7 an hour;
• and plenty of ads that just say "salary negotiable" — especially live-in carer roles.

Agency-arranged childcare

Agencies price differently: one established Cyprus childcare agency charges €9–€15.50 an hour for babysitting depending on tier (dropping to €7–€11.50 with an annual membership), and another adds a 10–15% commission on top of whatever wage you negotiate with the carer. If you're weighing an agency against hiring directly, remember the fee sits on top of the wage — and that by law the worker can never be the one charged.

What helpers on Cyprus Nanny list

Helpers with profiles on Cyprus Nanny currently list monthly expectations from about €400 up to €2,000, with experienced live-out nannies clustering at €900–€2,000. These are asking expectations, not agreed wages, and the pool is still growing — browse nannies, housemaids or carers to see current profiles with expectations listed.

Does the national minimum wage apply?

No — and this catches a lot of people out. Cyprus raised its national minimum wage from 1 January 2026 to €979 gross on hire and €1,088 gross after six months' continuous service with the same employer (Council of Ministers decision, 23 December 2025). But the decree expressly excludes four categories — hotel-industry employees, domestic workers, agricultural workers and maritime employees.

So neither the €979 nor the €1,088 figure legally applies to a nanny, housemaid or carer. In practice, though, the national minimum is a useful benchmark: full-time live-out asks in the market sit at or above it, and offering less than €1,088 for full-time work will make it hard to attract experienced candidates. The carve-out explains how the €460 live-in floor and the €979+ national wage coexist without contradiction.

"Is €1,500 a good salary in Cyprus?"

A question families ask when setting a budget — and for domestic work the answer is yes. €1,500 a month sits nearly 40% above the national minimum wage after six months' service, and in the middle-to-upper band of what experienced full-time nannies and housekeepers actually ask for. At that level you can expect strong interest from experienced, multilingual candidates.

What experienced helpers ask for

Pulling the sources together, here's the honest picture by arrangement:

Nannies

Full-time live-out nannies ask €900–€2,000 a month, and qualifications push the top end: the standout classifieds ask we found was a teacher-qualified nanny at €1,600, and on our platform the €1,500–€2,000 listers are experienced, Greek-speaking or formally qualified. For occasional evenings you're in babysitting territory (€11–€14 an hour) — a different arrangement entirely.

Housemaids and cleaners

Hourly cleaning is advertised from around €7 an hour; a regular part-time arrangement of about 20 hours a week was advertised at €450 a month. Full-time housekeeper roles for private households ask €1,500–€2,000 — the top of the market is a housekeeper-cook role, where cooking skill carries a clear premium.

Carers

Carer pay is the least transparent corner of the market: most live-in carer ads simply say "salary negotiable", and families arranging elderly care often use the live-in permit route, where the €460 package applies. For hourly care, one experienced nanny-carer on our platform lists €12–€20 an hour. Browse carer profiles to see current expectations.

What moves the price

Across every role, the same handful of factors set the figure: hours and regularity (full-time costs less per hour than ad-hoc), live-in versus live-out, languages (Greek and English both carry premiums), formal qualifications (teaching, first aid), years of experience, and city. Experience and languages move the number more than anything else. If you know your budget, the simplest way to test it is to post a job free with the figure attached — helpers who are happy with it contact you directly.

Your total cost as an employer

Whichever regime you're in, the salary isn't the whole cost. As an employer in Cyprus you also pay contributions on top of gross pay: social insurance 8.8%, GESY 2.90%, Redundancy Fund 1.2%, Human Resource Development Fund 0.5% and Social Cohesion Fund 2.0% (official rates) — about 15.4% in total.

Two worked examples, rounded:

Method note: these assume contributions are calculated on the gross salary. For live-in workers the official treatment of board and lodging in the insurable basis isn't published, so confirm your exact figure with the Social Insurance Services. The live-in column also excludes health cover (premium shared 50/50 with the worker), employer's liability insurance and one-off costs — permit fee, flights, medicals, translations — which are covered in the full hiring guide.

Paying legally, in brief

Agreeing the number is half the job; paying it properly is the other half. Whoever you hire, you register as an employer with the Social Insurance Services (form YKA 01-001 at your district office) and declare the hire electronically through the ERGANI system no later than one day before employment starts, then pay contributions by the end of the month following each contribution month. For a live-in worker on the permit scheme there's one more rule: salary must be deposited monthly into a euro bank account opened solely in the worker's name. And one line worth repeating from the Private Employment Agencies Law: permit fees, travel costs and agency fees can never come out of the worker's pay.