Data sources & methodology
CribScore combines Homeland Infrastructure Foundation-Level Data (HIFLD) childcare center locations (national baseline, center-based facilities) with state licensing portals where available — including Socrata, CKAN, CSV/Excel exports, and custom scrapers for inspection and violation history.
National baseline (HIFLD)
The HIFLD Child Care Centers dataset provides facility names, addresses, capacity, and coordinates across all 50 states and D.C. It does not include family child care homes or full inspection histories. We tag these rows as data_source=hifld in the API.
State agency data
Where states publish open data (e.g. California CKAN, Texas/Washington Socrata, Indiana CKAN), we ingest richer records and mark them as state_agency. When a state-specific scraper fails, the pipeline can fall back to HIFLD for that jurisdiction (see CRIBSCORE_HIFLD_FALLBACK in deployment docs).
County childcare prices (DOL)
Median weekly price estimates by county come from the U.S. Department of Labor National Database of Childcare Prices. Use GET /v1/prices in the API (authenticated).
Disclaimer
CribScore is not affiliated with any government agency. Data is sourced from public records and may not reflect current licensing status. Always verify with your state licensing agency and the facility directly.