North Carolina daycare licence lookup.

What the facility search offers

The search page is headed Child Care Facility Search. Its first field is “All or part of license number”, followed by “Or...” and the instruction to select one or more of the following and click Submit: all or part of the facility’s name, a City drop-down of North Carolina towns, a County drop-down, Zip Code, Type of Facility (Any, Child Care Center, Family Child Care Home or Summer Day Camp), Type of Permit, Ages Served from and through (Any, Birth, or ages 1 to 12), whether the facility is enrolled in the Subsidized Child Care Program, and special requirements: Certified Developmental Day, Sick Child Care, Head Start, Transportation and NC Pre-K.

Where the star rating lives

North Carolina’s star-rated licence is not a separate field on the search. It sits inside the Type of Permit drop-down, which lists One Star Center License through Five Star Center License and One Star Family CC Home License through Five Star Family CC Home License, alongside other permit types such as Religious Sponsored Center and Temporary License. If a provider tells you it is “four star”, you can confirm it by filtering on that permit type, or simply by opening the record. A religious-sponsored centre or a temporary licence is a different permit, which is worth knowing before you compare two programs by stars alone.

How to check a facility, step by step

If you have a licence number, enter all or part of it alone; it is the most exact search. Otherwise type part of the facility name, and keep it short, since the form matches all or part of the name and a long trading name may not be stored in full. If the name is common, add the county or ZIP code, or pick the town from the City list; the list is fixed, so a community that is not on it means searching by county instead. Open the record and compare the name, address, type of facility and permit with what the provider told you. Whatever does not match is a question for DCDEE.

Worked example

A provider called Bright Beginnings Child Care in Raleigh, ZIP 27601, no number known. The planner says to search the name exactly, then “bright beginnings”, then to narrow by Wake County or by choosing RALEIGH from the City list. You find the record, check the permit line for the star level and the type of facility, and compare the address with the one on the enrolment form. If two records share the name, the county and the permit type tell them apart.

Method

This page does not search the DCDEE site and stores nothing you type. The planner reads the number, name, city, county and ZIP you enter and lists the fields to use in order, then links to the official search. The field names and permit types were read from the search page on November 11, 2026; the page showed version 1.3.42.0. What a record shows is DCDEE’s and changes.

What this does not cover

• The contents of a facility record: visits, complaints and status come from the search.
• What each star level requires, which DCDEE explains elsewhere.
• Subsidy eligibility and NC Pre-K enrolment rules.
• Whether a facility suits your child.

Figures read from the sources below on November 11, 2026. Last updated November 11, 2026.

Sources

• NC DCDEE: Child Care Facility Search (retrieved November 11, 2026)