Au Pair Abroad
Room, board, and pocket money in exchange for childcare and a set number of hours a week. It is the cheapest way to live in an expensive country for a year, and the most misunderstood job on this list.
See the country rulesAt a glance
- Au pair work is a live-in arrangement: private room, meals, and pocket money in exchange for childcare and light household help, not free housing with no obligations.
- Most programs cap paid hours somewhere under 30 a week and set the pocket money in the low hundreds of euros a month, though the exact figures vary by country and get revised, so the host country’s official terms are the ones that count.
- Almost every program has an age window, roughly late teens through mid-to-late twenties depending on your nationality, and several require enrolling in a language course while you’re there.
A host family’s kitchen at seven in the morning looks the same in Copenhagen, Seville, and Boston: a lunchbox half-packed, a child arguing about socks, and an au pair who has done this exact routine enough times to no longer need instructions. By nine the kids are at school and the day is the au pair’s own until pickup. That gap, paid and unpaid hours split cleanly by a written schedule, is the entire structure of the arrangement, and it is also where most of the confusion starts. An au pair is not a nanny with better branding and not a guest with chores. It is a defined job, inside someone else’s home, with a visa category built specifically around it.
The appeal is straightforward: a private room and meals in a country where renting alone would burn through savings in a season, plus enough pocket money to cover a social life, in exchange for something close to a school-hours schedule. The catch is just as straightforward. Living inside a family’s routine means their bad days become part of the job, and the boundary between “help around the house” and “unpaid extra hours” is exactly where things go wrong when nobody wrote it down first.
What the rules actually look like, country by country
Every country with an au pair scheme sets its own weekly hours cap, pocket money floor, maximum stay, and age window, and every one of those numbers gets revised over time. Treat the table below as an order-of-magnitude starting point, not a figure to quote back to an embassy. Confirm the current terms with the host country’s official au pair or immigration authority before applying.
| Country | Typical weekly hours | Pocket money | Max stay | Age window | Language course |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| France | Around 25 to 30, plus light household help | Low hundreds of euros a month | Around a year, sometimes renewable | Roughly 18 to 30, depending on your nationality | Required: attendance is part of the visa terms |
| Germany | Around 30, six days a week is common | Low hundreds of euros a month | Around a year | Roughly 18 to 26, depending on your nationality | Usually required alongside the placement |
| Denmark | Around 30, with set housework hours included | Low-to-mid hundreds of euros a month, on the higher end for the region | Can run longer than a year for some nationalities | Roughly 18 to 29, depending on your nationality | Encouraged, sometimes tied to the residence permit |
| Austria | Around 20 to 25 of formal work, plus family time | Low hundreds of euros a month | Around a year | Roughly 18 to 28, depending on your nationality | Often required as part of the placement terms |
| Netherlands | Around 30, often eight hours across four days | Low hundreds of euros a month | Around a year, not usually extendable | Roughly 18 to 26, depending on your nationality | Not typically required |
| Spain | Around 25 to 30 | Low hundreds of euros a month, plus a language-school allowance on some placements | Around a year | Roughly 18 to 30, depending on your nationality | Often built into the program |
| United States | Around 45 as a hard federal cap, most placements run lower | A weekly stipend rather than a monthly figure, in the low hundreds of dollars | One year, with a possible extension | Roughly 18 to 26, depending on your nationality | An education component is usually required, not a full language course |
Where family and job stop lining up
The classic collisions, and how to head them off
Almost every complaint from an au pair placement traces back to one of four gaps between what got promised and what got lived. None of them are unusual, and all of them are avoidable with a written agreement made before the first week starts.
Hours that quietly stretch past the schedule
A “quick favor” covering a late meeting becomes a weekly habit. The fix is a written weekly schedule with a stated cutoff, and a clear rate or time-off-in-lieu for anything past it, agreed before arrival, not renegotiated in the moment.
Housework that creeps beyond the kids
Childcare-adjacent tasks (the kids’ laundry, tidying their rooms) are standard. Full household cleaning, cooking for the whole family, or yard work usually is not, and several countries’ visa terms explicitly exclude it. Ask what “light housework” covers in writing before agreeing to it verbally.
A room with no real privacy
A private room is close to universal in program terms, a private bathroom is not. What matters more than the floor plan is whether the family treats off-hours as actually off: no expectation of being on call because you’re technically home. That is worth asking about directly in the interview, not assuming.
Host family, not employer, and the confusion that causes
Living inside the home blurs a line that a normal job never has to think about. The family sets house rules; they do not get to override the hours, pay, and days-off terms set by the visa. If a request conflicts with the written agreement, the agreement wins, and saying so early is easier than saying it after months of resentment.
What the placement actually looks like in four cities
Country rules set the ceiling. What a placement feels like day to day depends more on the city, the family, and how much free time actually converts into a life outside the house. Four examples, four different shapes of the same job.
Denmark
Copenhagen
Danish families tend to run structured, punctual households: school pickup at a fixed time, a set housework list, and an expectation that the au pair treats the role as an actual job rather than a working holiday with a couch to sleep on.
Free afternoons go a long way here. Copenhagen is compact and bike-friendly, and a lot of the city’s actual social life, cafes, parks, the harbor baths, costs little beyond a bike and a bit of daylight, which stretches long into the evening for half the year.
Spain
Seville
Placements here often run later in the day, following the local rhythm: a longer midday break, evening activities, and a household schedule built around dinner times that start well past what a lot of applicants expect coming in.
A language-school allowance is common on Spanish placements, which means the free hours often double as the reason for coming in the first place. Seville itself runs cheap by Western European standards, so the pocket money stretches further than the country table alone suggests.
Austria
Vienna
Austrian placements skew toward fewer formal work hours than the France or Germany end of the table, with more of the arrangement built around being present rather than performing set tasks, which suits an au pair who wants time for a language course during the week.
Vienna’s public transport and museum access are genuinely cheap for residents, which matters more here than in most cities on this list: a lot of what makes the placement worthwhile happens on the free afternoons, not the paid hours.
United States
Boston
The US program runs differently from the European model at almost every level: a federally set weekly stipend instead of a monthly figure, a required education component instead of a language course, and placement almost always through a licensed sponsor agency rather than informal matching.
Boston placements often sit in family-heavy suburbs rather than the city center, which means the free hours require more planning to actually use. The tradeoff is a structured program with built-in support if a placement goes wrong, which the self-arranged European option usually does not offer.
Finding a family, and checking them out before you say yes
Agency-matched versus self-matched
An agency vets both sides, handles the paperwork, and steps in if a placement breaks down, for a fee. Self-matching through an au pair platform costs less and gives more control over which family gets chosen, but the vetting, contract, and dispute resolution become entirely your own responsibility. Neither option is automatically safer; the difference is who is doing the checking.
Questions worth asking before agreeing
How many kids, what ages, and who else lives in the house. The exact weekly schedule, in writing, not “flexible.” Whether housework beyond the kids is expected. What a typical evening and weekend actually look like. Whether a previous au pair is reachable for a reference: a family that hesitates on that question is worth a second look.
Get the terms on paper
A written agreement covering hours, pocket money, days off, notice period, and what counts as housework protects both sides, and it is what a visa office or mediator will ask for if a dispute ever needs settling. A family that resists putting verbal promises in writing is telling you something about how disputes will go later.
A trial period, where the program allows it
Some countries and platforms allow a short trial before the visa or contract locks in for the full term. Where that option exists, use it. A mismatch that surfaces in week two is far easier to walk away from than one discovered three months into a signed placement.
What you need to arrange before you go
The au pair visa itself
Most host countries run a dedicated au pair visa or residence permit category, separate from a tourist or standard work visa, and it is usually tied to the specific family and address named on the application. The visa and entry requirements guide covers how these systems work in general, and the visa checker tool narrows requirements down by passport and destination.
Insurance built for a live-in placement
Standard travel insurance is built for short leisure trips and frequently excludes long stays or anything resembling employment. Most au pair visas require a specific health insurance policy that covers the length of the placement, sometimes provided by the family, sometimes arranged independently. The travel insurance guide breaks down which policy types actually cover a working stay.
A certificate of good conduct
A criminal background check from your home country, sometimes called a certificate of good conduct or police clearance, is a standard requirement given the placement involves childcare. It usually needs to be recent, translated where the host country requires it, and requested well ahead of the application since the processing time varies by country.
Language course enrollment, where it applies
Several European programs require enrolling in a language course as a condition of the visa, not an optional extra, and proof of attendance can matter for renewals. Confirm whether the host country requires it before arrival: showing up without an enrollment can delay the residence permit in countries where it is mandatory.
Partner program
Global Work & Travel
Self-matching costs nothing beyond your own time, and it is the cheaper way into an au pair placement. A guided program buys back that time: Global Work & Travel handles the family match, the paperwork, and the landing logistics for travelers who would rather pay for certainty than piece it together themselves. It is the guided option, not the only one, and it is worth comparing against the cost of arranging things independently before deciding.
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Common questions
01How do you become an au pair?
Register with an au pair agency or a self-matching platform, complete a profile covering childcare experience and availability, and interview with prospective families, usually by video call, before agreeing on terms. Once a family match is confirmed in writing, the visa application follows: most countries require the placement to be locked in first, since the visa is tied to that specific family and address.
02What’s the difference between an au pair and a nanny?
A nanny is a paid childcare employee, typically living out, hired at a market wage. An au pair lives with the family as part of a cultural exchange arrangement, works fewer hours under a capped weekly limit, and receives pocket money rather than a wage, alongside a private room and meals. The legal category is different too: an au pair enters on a dedicated visa built around the exchange, not a standard work permit.
03How much do au pairs get paid?
Pocket money, not a wage, and the figure sits in the low hundreds of euros a month across most European programs, with the United States running on a weekly stipend instead. The exact number is set by each country’s program terms and gets revised periodically, so check the host country’s current figure rather than relying on a fixed amount. Room and meals are covered separately and are not counted as part of the pocket money.
04Is there an age limit for au pair programs?
Yes, almost every country sets one, typically starting around 18 and capping somewhere in the mid-to-late twenties, occasionally reaching 30, depending on your nationality. A handful of programs set the floor slightly higher for applicants without prior childcare experience. Check the specific country’s current terms before assuming an age that worked for one program applies to another.
05Can men work as au pairs?
Legally, yes, in every country that runs an au pair scheme. In practice, families and agencies skew heavily toward hiring women, and male applicants often report a longer, slower matching process as a result. Some agencies specifically welcome male au pairs, particularly for families with older boys, so it is worth asking directly during registration rather than assuming the door is closed.
Photo: Photo: Yann Caradec from Paris, France via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0) | Photo: Photo: Moahim via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0) | Photo: Photo: Ingo Mehling via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0) | Photo: Photo: MrPanyGoff via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0) | Photo: Photo: AbhiSuryawanshi via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)