Guides · July 20, 2026•Updated July 29, 2026•7 min read

How Much Does Homeschooling Cost? Honest Numbers

Somewhere between roughly nothing and about three thousand dollars per child per year. That range is uselessly wide until you know what sits inside it, so here is the breakdown: what the money actually buys, which parts are optional, what the free version really looks like, and where state funds fit. The honest headline is that almost the entire spread is choices rather than necessities.

The honest range

Most families settle between about $300 and $1,500 per child per year once the first-year shopping enthusiasm wears off. That is the number to plan around if you want a single answer to how much does homeschooling cost.

A careful family using the library, free curricula and second-hand materials can run a year under $100. A family buying a full boxed curriculum, several online classes and paid activities can pass $2,500 without trying. Neither number predicts how well a child learns. Some of the best homeschool years on record ran on a library card.

Be careful with any average cost to homeschool figure you find quoted as a single number. Surveys mix families spending nothing with families buying accredited online programs, and the mean lands somewhere no actual household sits.

Where the money actually goes

Curriculum, the big variable

This is the line that decides your total. A complete boxed curriculum runs $400 to $1,000 or more per child per year. Buying strong individual subjects instead usually lands between $150 and $400. Free and open curricula cost nothing but your printer.

The expensive mistake is not buying something costly. It is buying something that goes unused, which is why borrowing before committing saves more than any discount code.

Classes, co-ops and tutors

• Co-op fees. Commonly $100 to $500 a year per family, sometimes plus materials and a volunteer commitment.
• Online courses. Roughly $100 to $400 per subject per year, more for live small-group teaching.
• Tutors. The priciest hour you will buy, and occasionally the best money you spend, usually for one stuck subject rather than a whole schedule.

Our guide to homeschool co-ops covers what you get for a co-op fee and how to judge whether it is worth it.

Supplies, testing and the small stuff

• Supplies. Paper, art materials, science consumables, and a printer that genuinely earns its keep. Budget $50 to $200 a year.
• Testing or evaluation. $25 to $150 in states that require it, usually annually.
• Activities and trips. The line that grows the most quietly, because each individual yes is small.

The cost that never appears on a receipt

One adult usually works less than they otherwise would. For most households that forgone income dwarfs every other line on this page combined, and no curriculum decision comes close to it.

It is worth saying out loud early, because families who budget only for materials get an unpleasant surprise in month three. It is also why homeschooling can be simultaneously cheap to run and expensive to choose.

Can you homeschool for free?

What free curriculum actually covers

Closer to free than most people expect. Complete free homeschool curriculum options exist, are genuinely good, and cover the core subjects through elementary and often well beyond. Add a library card and you have most of a year.

Where free gets harder is high school lab sciences, foreign languages past the basics, and anything needing an outside assessor. Plan to spend there and save everywhere else.

Free online public school is not homeschooling

Many states offer a free public online school, and it is a reasonable option. It is not homeschooling: your child stays enrolled in a public school, a teacher of record is responsible, and attendance and state testing are mandatory.

That distinction matters for your budget and your paperwork. How homeschooling works covers which set of rules you end up under.

What moves your number up or down

The single biggest lever is reuse. Curriculum holds its value, changes hands constantly, and younger siblings inherit nearly everything.

What a second child actually adds

Far less than the first, which is the part that surprises people pricing a family rather than a child. Most published figures are per child and quietly assume you buy everything twice.

In practice the second child adds consumables and not much else. Workbooks, lab materials and anything written in gets bought again. Teacher guides, readers, science equipment and most of the spine do not.

The bigger saving is teaching several children together. History, science, art, music and read-alouds work perfectly well across a spread of ages, with each child writing at their own level. Only math and reading genuinely need to be individual, which is why those two are worth buying properly.

A realistic rule of thumb: budget the full amount for your eldest, then about a third of it for each child after, more in high school when courses stop being shareable.

ESA funds, vouchers and state programs

What they typically cover

A growing number of states run Education Savings Accounts or similar programs that reimburse approved education expenses, in some cases several thousand dollars a year per child. Typical approved categories include curriculum, tutoring, testing and certain therapies.

Rules differ sharply between states, and so do the strings. In some places accepting ESA funds changes your legal status or adds testing requirements, so read what you are agreeing to before the money is useful to you.

The receipts problem

The constant across every program is documentation: approved categories, itemized receipts, and records that survive an audit at renewal. Track from day one. Reconstructing a year of spending the week before a deadline is how families lose funds they were entitled to.

Also worth knowing: federal rules on what a 529 plan can pay for at K-12 level have widened, and homeschool materials sit in scope in a way they did not a few years ago. The detail moves and it is a tax question, so check current IRS guidance or ask an accountant rather than a blog.

What it looks like outside the US

In the UK, elective home education carries no funding entitlement. Local authorities have no duty to pay for materials, and support where it exists is discretionary and usually small.

The line that catches British families out is exams. Home-educated students sit GCSEs and A levels as private candidates, paying a centre fee per subject that commonly runs well over £100 and sometimes far more. Budget for that from about age fourteen rather than discovering it in the exam year.

What Bowerstead costs, and what it does not do

Since this is a page about money, plain numbers: Bowerstead is $9 a month or $79 a year for the whole family, not per child, with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Being straight about the limits, because this is the page where it matters most: it does not track your spending. There is no expense log and no receipt storage, so if you are running an ESA you still need a folder or a spreadsheet for the receipts themselves.

What a digital homeschool planner does cover is the other half of what a renewal or an evaluator asks for: proof the money bought actual schooling. Attendance days, subjects covered, work samples and grades, entered as the year happens rather than reconstructed. From ninth grade those same records become the high school transcript without being typed twice.

If a homeschool planner app is not in your budget this year, our guide to homeschool record keeping lays out the manual version, which costs nothing and works. Get started if you would rather it assembled itself.

A first-year budget that works

• Buy math and language arts properly. Those two carry the year.
• Take everything else from the library and free curricula until the year proves you need more.
• Set an activities cap in September, before the individual yeses start.
• Put aside $50 for testing if your state requires it, and check the fee rather than guessing.
• Keep the receipts even if you have no ESA. Some states offer credits, and next year you will want to know what you actually spent.
• Expect to underspend year one and overspend year two, when you know what is worth buying.

Choose the materials before you spend anything, using our guide to choosing a homeschool curriculum.

Frequently asked questions

How much does homeschooling cost per month? For a typical family, roughly $25 to $125 a month per child once you spread the year out, though the spending is lumpy rather than monthly. Most of it lands in one or two purchases before the year starts.

Is homeschooling cheaper than private school? Almost always, by a wide margin. Even a generously funded homeschool year costs a fraction of typical private tuition. Compared with public school it usually costs more out of pocket, since public school is already paid for through taxes.

Are homeschool expenses tax deductible? Not federally. A handful of states offer their own credits or deductions, and state ESA or voucher programs are the main form of public support. Rules change, so confirm your own state.

Does it cost more as children get older? Usually. High school adds lab sciences, outside courses, and exam fees, and it is the stage where paying someone else to teach a subject starts to make sense. Budget for a step up from about ninth grade.

Do I have to buy a curriculum at all? No. Nothing in any state law requires a purchased program, only that certain subjects are covered. Plenty of families teach from library books, free curricula and their own plan for years. Buy a program because it saves you planning time, which is a real and worthwhile reason, not because you think the law expects one.