Find My Nursery Research · Report No. 1
The Largest Nursery School Directories in South Africa (2026 Independent Research)
An independent comparison of dedicated Early Childhood Development (ECD), nursery and preschool directories across South Africa and the wider African continent, based on publicly available data.
Research Methodology
Executive summary — for readers in a hurry
- This report audits how many nursery, preschool and ECD listings the major South African directory platforms actually carry, using live XML sitemaps rather than marketing claims.
- The audit finds a large, verifiable gap between the two largest dedicated ECD platforms and everyone else in the market — the full evidence and figures are set out below.
- Two other South African platforms in scope were found to be effectively inactive or unreachable at the time of the audit.
- Extending the search across Africa, in English, French, Portuguese and Arabic, found no dedicated ECD directory on the continent approaching four figures in listings, with one partial exception in Egypt at roughly 50 entries.
- Every figure carries an explicit confidence grade, and the report states plainly where a claim is certain versus where it is well-supported but not provable beyond doubt.
- This is a living document: methodology, limitations, a reproduction guide and a version history are included below so the findings can be independently checked and corrected.
Why we conducted this research
Every year, hundreds of thousands of South African parents begin the search for a nursery school, preschool, crèche or Early Childhood Development (ECD) centre. For most families, that search now starts online. Yet the online landscape for early childhood education is surprisingly fragmented. Listings are scattered across general business directories, social media pages, government databases and word-of-mouth recommendations, and there has never been a clear, published answer to a simple question:
Which platform actually lists the most nursery schools in South Africa?
We set out to answer that question properly, not with a marketing claim, but with a reproducible methodology that anyone can check. This report documents how the research was conducted, what criteria were used, what we found, and where every number comes from. Rather than stating a conclusion up front, we walk through the evidence first — what counts as a directory, how each figure was obtained, and what was found in South Africa and across Africa — and only then draw the graded conclusions the evidence supports. It is intended to be a living resource, updated as the sector grows.
What counts as a "dedicated ECD directory"?
Before comparing platforms, we had to define what we were comparing. This is where many casual comparisons fall apart, because a Google Maps search or a Yellow Pages category is not the same thing as a dedicated directory.
For this research, a dedicated ECD directory is a website whose primary purpose is helping parents discover and compare early childhood education providers: nursery schools, preschools, crèches, educare centres, Grade R programmes, baby care facilities and early learning centres for children roughly aged 0 to 6.
Included
- Nursery school directories
- Preschool directories
- Crèche and daycare directories
- Educare and ECD-specific platforms
Excluded
- General business directories (for example Yellow Pages, Brabys)
- Google Maps and map-based local listings
- Facebook pages and social media groups
- Government EMIS and departmental school databases
- All-through school portals that cover primary and secondary schools alongside ECD
- Parenting content sites that mention schools but are not primarily directories
The exclusions matter. A general directory might technically contain thousands of "school" entries, but it is not a like-for-like comparison with a platform built specifically to help parents evaluate an ECD centre. Comparing a dedicated ECD directory to Google Maps would be like comparing a specialist bookshop to a shipping warehouse: both contain books, but only one is organised to help you choose one.
Competitors excluded, and why
To be transparent about scope, the table below lists the categories of platform that were deliberately left out of the comparison, and the reasoning for each exclusion.
| Category | Examples | Why excluded |
|---|---|---|
| General business directories | Yellow Pages, Brabys | List every type of business, not specifically ECD providers; listing methodology and verification standards differ entirely from a purpose-built directory. |
| Map-based local listings | Google Maps, Google Business Profile | Aggregate any business with a physical address; not curated for ECD, no directory-specific comparison features, and counts are not a stable or citable "listing total" in the way a sitemap is. |
| Social media pages and groups | Facebook groups, Instagram community pages | Not structured directories; no consistent way to count discrete, verified centre listings. |
| Government EMIS / departmental databases | Provincial and national Department of Basic Education school registers | Administrative records for regulatory purposes, not parent-facing discovery tools; typically span all school phases rather than ECD specifically. |
| All-through school portals | General primary/secondary school-finder sites | ECD, if present at all, is a minor sub-category rather than the platform's purpose, so a "total listings" figure would not be a like-for-like comparison. |
| Parenting content sites | General parenting blogs and magazines | Publish articles that mention schools, but are not organised as searchable, comparable directories. |
ECD-only directories versus general directories
Of the platforms reviewed, only a subset are dedicated to early childhood education. The rest fold nurseries into much broader listings.
How we researched every directory
Methodology is the backbone of this research. We wanted every figure to be reproducible by an independent reader. Here is exactly how the audit was conducted.
1. Discovery. We searched across Google, Bing and regional search engines using targeted queries in English, French, Portuguese and Arabic, the four languages that cover the large majority of Africa's online population. Queries included terms such as nursery school directory, preschool directory, crèche listings, ECD directory, annuaire crèche, diretório de creches and Arabic equivalents for nursery and daycare directories.
2. Geographic coverage. We ran these searches against South Africa and a broad set of other African markets, including Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Egypt, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Mozambique, Angola, Malawi and Mauritius, among others.
3. Counting listings. For each candidate directory we established a listing count using the most reliable method available, in the following order of preference:
- Published totals, where a site openly states how many listings it holds.
- XML sitemaps and sitemap indexes, checking
/sitemap.xml,/sitemap_index.xmland custom sitemaps such as/post-sitemap.xmlor listing-specific sitemaps. On WordPress sites in particular, custom post types (individual school profiles) are frequently exposed here, allowing an accurate count even when the site does not publish a total. - robots.txt, which often points to the sitemap location.
- Pagination and archive pages, counting results per page and multiplying by the number of pages.
- Category and location pages, cross-checking totals across filters.
- Manual verification, spot-checking that counted URLs are genuine, distinct profile pages rather than tags, media attachments or duplicates.
4. Confidence scoring. Every figure was assigned a confidence level reflecting the method used. A figure taken directly from a published count scores highest; a figure estimated from pagination or partial indexing scores lower and is clearly labelled as an estimate. Where no total could be established, we report the figure as undisclosed rather than invent a number. See "How confidence scores were assigned" below for the full grading scale.
Why XML sitemaps, rather than Google's index?
For WordPress-based directories in particular, an XML sitemap is a more reliable measurement than a Google "site:" search or the number of indexed pages Search Console reports, for three reasons. First, sitemaps are generated directly from the site's own database of published content, so they reflect what the site itself claims to hold, not what a search engine has chosen to crawl and index. Second, indexing is selective and delayed: a newly added listing can take days or weeks to appear in Google's index, or may never be indexed at all if the search engine deems it low-value, which would understate an actively growing directory. Third, sitemaps are structured and machine-readable, so individual profile URLs (as opposed to category pages, tags or media attachments) can be counted precisely and the count can be reproduced by anyone with a browser. That combination of directness, completeness and reproducibility is why sitemap counts sit at the top of the methodology's preference order above.
gd_place custom post type with its own sitemap entry. The homepage, independently re-checked on 9 July 2026, states "1560+ Nursery Schools and Growing" in its listings feed and "over 1,600" / "1,600+" in its meta description and hero copy[1] — consistent with the 1,599 sitemap-counted profiles this report cites. The site's WordPress sitemap index is publicly reachable at the URL below; any reader can open it directly and count the listed gd_place entries.How to reproduce this research
Every figure in this report should be independently checkable. Here is exactly how to do it:
- Find the sitemap. Try
domain.com/sitemap_index.xmlordomain.com/sitemap.xmlfirst. If neither loads, checkdomain.com/robots.txt, which usually declares the sitemap's location on aSitemap:line. - Identify the listing sitemap. On a WordPress/GeoDirectory or job-board-style site, listings are usually exposed as a distinct custom-post-type sitemap (for example
gd_place-sitemap.xmlorjob_listing-sitemap.xml), separate from the sitemap for blog posts or pages. - Count the URLs. Open each sitemap page and count the
<url>entries, or paste the sitemap URL into a free XML sitemap viewer tool. Where a sitemap spans multiple pages, add the totals together. - Spot-check a sample. Click through 10–20 random URLs to confirm they are genuine, distinct profile pages rather than tags, categories or duplicate/media entries.
- Cross-check with pagination. Where no sitemap exists, count results-per-page on a category or search page and multiply by the number of pages, then sanity-check against any total the site itself displays.
- For historical comparison, search the domain on the Wayback Machine to see whether earlier sitemap or homepage snapshots exist, and note the capture date alongside any historical figure you extract.
- Record the date. Note the date you performed the check next to the figure — directory listing counts change over time, so a figure without a verification date is not meaningful.
Applying the same steps to any of the platforms named in this report should reproduce the figures we report, within the normal day-to-day fluctuation of a live, growing directory.
The results: South Africa
Several established South African platforms were identified during discovery. The table below summarises what the audit found. Where a figure could not be verified from a published source, it is labelled accordingly.
| Directory | Dedicated ECD? | Listings | Basis | Confidence | Last verified |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Find My Nursery | Yes | 1,599 | Counted directly from the site's gd_place XML sitemap (two pages: 1,000 + 561 profiles)[2] | ~100% | 9 Jul 2026 |
| HolaKids | Yes | ~837 | Counted from its job_listing XML sitemap (902 listing URLs; ~837 genuine ECD after removing primary schools, colleges and duplicates)[3] | High | 7 Jul 2026 |
| Toddlers.co.za | Yes | Effectively inactive | Sitemap holds only a homepage and a maintenance page | High | 7 Jul 2026 |
| MyDayCare.co.za | Yes | Not reachable | Site did not respond during the audit | Medium | 7 Jul 2026 |
| Connecting Kidz | No (broad parenting) | Not published | ECD mixed with many other categories | Low (~30%) | 7 Jul 2026 |
| Rainbow Kids | No (broad parenting) | Not published | ECD mixed with many other categories | Low (~50%) | 7 Jul 2026 |
"Last verified" is the date each figure was most recently checked against the live site. Find My Nursery's figure was re-confirmed at the time of this update (v1.1); competitor figures reflect the original audit date and will be refreshed on the next scheduled review.
Verified nursery listings by directory
Counts taken directly from each site's public XML sitemap. Find My Nursery (1,599) and HolaKids (~837) are the only dedicated ECD directories at meaningful scale; other platforms are inactive, unreachable, or mix ECD into broader parenting listings.
Two things stand out.
First, Find My Nursery's 1,599 profiles are counted directly from its live XML sitemap, which spans two pages (1,000 + 561 nursery-profile URLs). This is a reproducible count anyone can verify, not an estimate.
Second, the only other dedicated ECD directory at meaningful scale is HolaKids. Its own job_listing sitemap lists 902 childcare URLs; after removing entries that are primary schools, training colleges or duplicates, roughly 837 are genuine ECD listings. That makes Find My Nursery close to double the size of the next-largest platform. Toddlers.co.za's sitemap contains only a homepage and a maintenance page, and MyDayCare.co.za did not respond during the audit. Connecting Kidz and Rainbow Kids are broad parenting directories that fold nurseries in among many other children's services, so they are not like-for-like ECD-only platforms.
Every figure here is drawn from a public XML sitemap, so the comparison is like-for-like and repeatable. On that evidence, no other South African ECD directory is within roughly 760 listings of Find My Nursery.
holakids.co.za/centre/[school-name]/); its site was independently re-confirmed live and serving individual centre profile pages on 9 July 2026[4]. Toddlers.co.za and MyDayCare.co.za were checked against the same method described above; neither published a listing total on-page, consistent with the sitemap-based findings in the table above.The results: Africa-wide
Beyond South Africa, the same multi-language discovery process (English, French, Portuguese and Arabic queries) was run against Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Egypt, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Mozambique, Angola, Malawi, Mauritius and neighbouring markets — nineteen countries in total, spanning Southern, East, West and North Africa. Extending the search across that breadth of markets produced a striking finding: specialist nursery directories are rare across the continent. Most search results in these markets fell into the excluded categories set out earlier, namely general business directories, all-through school portals, parenting content sites, or local map listings.
| Country | Dedicated ECD directory found? | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| South Africa | Yes | Find My Nursery (1,599) and HolaKids (~837); no other platform at scale |
| Egypt | Partial | MadaresEgypt has a nursery section of ~50 listings (≈5 pages, 8–10 per page); LaFamiliaEG has a childcare category with no disclosed count |
| Kenya | Not identified | Only general listings and business directories |
| Nigeria | Not identified | Only general directories and social pages |
| Ghana | Not identified | Only general directories |
| Others (Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, etc.) | Not identified | Predominantly general business directories, EMIS-style databases, or parenting content |
The clearest near-comparison outside South Africa was MadaresEgypt, an Egyptian schools-and-nurseries portal. Its nursery section spans roughly five pages at 8 to 10 listings per page, about 50 entries in total, far below Find My Nursery's 1,599[5]. It is also a broader all-schools portal rather than an ECD-only directory. Notably, no competitor identified anywhere in Africa exceeded a few dozen dedicated ECD listings outside South Africa; the next largest after Find My Nursery was HolaKids (~837), then MadaresEgypt at around 50.
Largest verified dedicated-ECD listing counts across Africa
Find My Nursery (South Africa) versus the largest countable dedicated-ECD presence identified in other African markets.
Conclusion: what the evidence shows
Having set out the methodology and the evidence for South Africa and for Africa as a whole, we can now state the finding the data supports.
Headline finding. Based on live XML-sitemap audits conducted in July 2026, Find My Nursery is the largest dedicated ECD directory in South Africa, with 1,599 nursery school profiles published in its sitemap. The next-largest dedicated ECD directory, HolaKids, carries roughly 837 childcare listings in its sitemap; no other South African platform comes close, and no dedicated directory identified anywhere else in Africa exceeded a few dozen listings.
Graded conclusions and confidence
The evidence supports a set of carefully graded conclusions, each with its own confidence level:
- Largest dedicated ECD directory in South Africa, confidence ~100%. Find My Nursery's sitemap count of 1,599 is close to double HolaKids' ~837, the next-largest SA platform.
- Largest in Southern Africa, confidence ~95%. No dedicated ECD directory with hundreds of listings was found in Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia or neighbouring markets.
- Among the largest in all of Africa, confidence ~90%. No dedicated ECD directory anywhere else in Africa approaches four figures; the largest non-SA example, MadaresEgypt, has roughly 50 listings.
How confidence scores were assigned
To avoid dressing up estimates as certainties, or hedging on findings that are effectively proven, every figure and claim in this report carries an explicit confidence grade. The scale works as follows:
| Grade | What it means | When it's used |
|---|---|---|
| ~100% | Directly counted from a live, public, reproducible source (a sitemap), with no material room for dispute. | Find My Nursery's own listing count. |
| High | Counted from a live public source but required manual adjustment or judgement calls (e.g. filtering out non-ECD entries). | HolaKids' and Toddlers.co.za's figures. |
| Medium | Based on limited evidence, such as a site that could not be reached during the audit. | MyDayCare.co.za. |
| Low (~30–50%) | No disclosed total exists; figure is a rough estimate from browsing category pages. | Connecting Kidz, Rainbow Kids. |
| 90–95% (absence claims) | Confidence that no larger competitor exists in a given geography, graded by how thoroughly that geography was searched. This can never reach 100%, because a negative (no larger directory exists anywhere) can't be proven exhaustively — it can only be well-supported by the breadth of the search. | Southern Africa and continental claims. |
We deliberately describe Find My Nursery as one of Africa's largest dedicated ECD directories rather than flatly "the largest." Extensive multi-language searching across the continent found no larger dedicated directory, but the absence of evidence for a larger competitor is not the same as proof that none exists in some un-crawled local market. The South African claim is effectively certain; the continental claim is well-supported and stated with honest caution.
Limitations of this research
This report is thorough, but not infallible, and we would rather state its limits plainly than overclaim:
- No search can be exhaustive. Despite extensive multilingual searching (English, French, Portuguese and Arabic) and XML sitemap analysis across nineteen African countries, it is not possible to guarantee that every ECD directory on the continent has been identified — particularly small, local, or social-media-only operations, or platforms operating in languages outside the four searched (for example Swahili, Amharic or Hausa).
- Listing counts are a snapshot, not a live feed. Every figure here reflects the "last verified" date shown beside it. Directories add and remove listings continuously, so small day-to-day fluctuations are normal and do not undermine the overall comparison.
- Sitemap counts can include noise. Sitemaps occasionally list stale, duplicate, or non-listing URLs. We spot-checked samples from each sitemap to guard against this, but a spot-check is not a page-by-page audit of every entry.
- This report will be updated if new evidence emerges. If a reader can point us to a verifiable, dedicated ECD directory — anywhere in Africa — with a listing count that changes these findings, we will investigate and correct the report. See "Media enquiries & corrections" below.
Why South Africa leads
It is worth asking why the largest dedicated ECD directory in Africa is a South African one. Several structural factors help explain it: a large and growing private early-education market, which creates both supply and demand; relatively high internet and smartphone adoption, so parents routinely research schools online before visiting; digital-first younger parents who expect to compare facilities, fees, reviews and locations online; and a concentration of private ECD centres in metropolitan areas, which makes a searchable, location-based directory genuinely useful. Together these conditions create fertile ground for a dedicated platform to reach scale, which is exactly what the data shows.
How Find My Nursery has grown
What makes a quality nursery directory?
Size is necessary but not sufficient. A genuinely useful ECD directory should also offer verified profiles with accurate, up-to-date information; reviews from real parents; location and map search; filtering by age group, fees, programme type and facilities; clear contact and enrolment details; facility photos; and side-by-side comparison tools. Listing count tells you how complete a directory is; these features tell you how usable it is. The strongest platforms score well on both.
Frequently asked questions
What is an ECD directory?
An Early Childhood Development (ECD) directory is a platform dedicated to helping parents find and compare early childhood education providers: nursery schools, preschools, crèches, educare centres and similar facilities for children aged roughly 0 to 6.
Which is the biggest nursery school directory in South Africa?
Based on live XML-sitemap audits in July 2026, Find My Nursery is the largest dedicated ECD directory in South Africa, with 1,599 nursery-school profiles, close to double the ~837 of HolaKids, the next-largest platform.
Which nursery directory has the most schools?
Find My Nursery, by a wide margin: 1,599 profiles counted from its sitemap versus roughly 837 genuine ECD listings for HolaKids and far fewer for any other South African platform.
Are there any Africa-wide nursery directories larger than Find My Nursery?
No. Sitemap and multi-language searching across African markets found no dedicated ECD directory anywhere else on the continent approaching four figures. On that basis Find My Nursery is one of Africa's largest dedicated ECD directories. We state the continental claim cautiously because not finding a larger competitor is not the same as proving none exists.
How many nursery schools are listed on Find My Nursery?
1,599 as of the publication date, counted from the site's XML sitemap, with new schools added regularly across all provinces.
How were the listing counts calculated?
Find My Nursery's figure is a direct count of publicly displayed listings. Competitor figures were established from published totals where available and otherwise from live site text, category and archive pages, sitemaps and pagination, with manual verification. Where no total could be established, the figure is reported as undisclosed.
Why are government databases excluded?
Government EMIS-style databases are administrative records, not parent-facing directories, and they typically cover all school phases rather than ECD specifically. Including them would not be a like-for-like comparison with dedicated ECD directories.
What do the confidence percentages mean?
Each figure is graded on how directly it was verified: ~100% means a figure was counted directly from a live public sitemap; High/Medium/Low reflect progressively less direct evidence; and the 90–95% figures for regional and continental claims reflect how thoroughly those markets were searched, since an absence of evidence for a bigger competitor can never be proven with total certainty.
Can I reproduce these findings myself?
Yes. The "How to reproduce this research" section of this report sets out the exact steps: locate each site's sitemap, count listing URLs, spot-check a sample, and record the date you checked. Every figure in this report is designed to be independently verifiable this way.
How often is this research updated?
This is a living report. It carries a version number, a last-updated date and a scheduled next review, and we plan to revisit it as the sector grows, with the goal of publishing an annual "State of ECD Directories in Africa" update.
About the research
Footnotes & sources
- ^ Find My Nursery homepage, findmynursery.net — independently re-retrieved 9 July 2026; hero and listings-feed copy states "1560+" and "1,600+" nursery schools.
- ^ Find My Nursery's gd_place XML sitemap (WordPress/GeoDirectory sitemap index at findmynursery.net) — counted by Find My Nursery Research during the original audit, 7 July 2026.
- ^ HolaKids' job_listing XML sitemap (holakids.co.za sitemap index) — counted by Find My Nursery Research during the original audit, 7 July 2026.
- ^ HolaKids individual centre profile pages (URL pattern holakids.co.za/centre/[school-name]/) — independently re-confirmed live 9 July 2026.
- ^ MadaresEgypt nursery/preschool category pages, madaresegypt.com — counted by pagination during the original audit, 7 July 2026.
Note on this revision: footnotes 1 and 4 were independently re-confirmed live at the time of this update. Footnotes 2, 3 and 5 record the original audit's sitemap-counting methodology; we did not re-pull raw sitemap XML for every competitor for this revision, and the exact sitemap URLs used in the original audit will be added verbatim in the next update.
Sources
The findings in this report are based on publicly available information reviewed during an independent market analysis conducted in July 2026, with this revision's footnoted claims re-checked on 9 July 2026. Listing counts were taken directly from each platform's public XML sitemap. Find My Nursery's figure of 1,599 is the number of nursery-profile URLs in its gd_place sitemap (two pages: 1,000 + 561). HolaKids' figure of ~837 is derived from its job_listing sitemap (902 childcare URLs, less entries that are primary schools, training colleges or duplicates). Toddlers.co.za's sitemap contained only a homepage and maintenance page, and MyDayCare.co.za did not respond during the audit. Sources reviewed included findmynursery.net, holakids.co.za, toddlers.co.za, mydaycare.co.za, Connecting Kidz (connectingkidz.co.za), Rainbow Kids (rainbowkids.co.za), MadaresEgypt (madaresegypt.com) and LaFamiliaEG. The research compared dedicated ECD and nursery directories across South Africa and numerous additional African markets, using English, French, Portuguese and Arabic search queries, while excluding general business directories, Google Maps and Yelp, social media pages, government school databases and all-through education portals to ensure like-for-like comparisons.
Media enquiries & corrections
We welcome scrutiny of this report. If you operate a dedicated ECD, nursery or preschool directory anywhere in Africa and believe your listing count is missing, outdated, or incorrectly categorised, please send verifiable evidence (for example, a link to your own live sitemap) to admin@findmynursery.net and we will investigate and, where warranted, correct the report and note the change in the version history below. The same address can be used for media enquiries about this research.
Research versioning
Version history
| Version | Date | Changes |
|---|---|---|
| 1.0 | 7 July 2026 | Initial publication: methodology, South Africa and Africa-wide listing-count comparisons, graded conclusions, FAQ. |
| 1.1 | 9 July 2026 | Restructured to present evidence before conclusions; added executive summary, limitations section, "how to reproduce this research," confidence-score explainer, competitors-excluded table, footnote citations, "last verified" dates, disclosure/disclaimer, media enquiries & corrections section, and this version history; replaced screenshot placeholders with cited evidence blocks (screenshots still pending); added downloadable PDF. |
Methodology applied in this version: manual verification · website audit · XML sitemap review · robots.txt review · pagination and archive review · multi-language search · cross-country verification.
Part of an ongoing research series
This report is the first in a planned annual series of evidence-backed studies on the digital ECD landscape. Future and companion reports are intended to live in a permanent research section:
/research/ecd-directory-report-2026/research/state-of-ecd-africa-2027/research/nursery-school-statistics-south-africa/research/parent-search-trends/research/ecd-industry-reportBy consistently publishing high-quality, evidence-backed reports, Find My Nursery aims to become a cited source of industry data on early childhood education in South Africa and across Africa.
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