Nanny Agency vs. Nanny Marketplace: What You're Actually Paying For in BC

The difference is not price. It is **who ends up being the employer** — and everything that follows from that.

On a nanny marketplace you browse listings, contact candidates, and hire someone directly. On the agency side, the caregiver is already employed, already cleared, and already covered. Both models are legitimate. They hand you very different amounts of work.

How a marketplace works

Sites like NannyLane and CanadianNanny operate as listing platforms. Per their own public descriptions, families create a profile, browse caregiver listings, and contact candidates themselves. Screening, reference checks, interviews, and the hiring decision are the family's to run.

That model suits people who want control over every step and have time to spend on it. It is genuinely cheaper on the invoice, because the invoice covers access to listings rather than the work of vetting.

What "do your own vetting" involves

The tasks do not vanish when nobody bills you for them:

Reference calls alone eat an evening. The record check takes weeks, not days. Most families I talk to have not costed the hours — they have costed the hourly rate, which is the smaller number.

Where an agency changes the arrangement

At Puffin Services, caregivers are our employees, not contractors and not people we introduce you to. Concretely:

**We are the employer of record.** You are not. You do not register as an employer, run payroll, or file remittances for a Puffin caregiver.

**We register with WorkSafeBC and pay the premiums** for our employed caregivers. If a caregiver is injured during a shift in your home, that sits with our coverage rather than yours.

**Vetting has already happened.** CRRP vulnerable-sector clearance, reference verification, and ongoing certification checks are complete before anyone is matched to a family.

**Commercial liability insurance covers every shift**, priced into the hourly rate.

That is the actual trade. You pay more per hour and hand over the administrative and employment burden entirely.

The part marketplaces are not built for

Marketplaces are designed around ongoing placements — you are hiring someone for months or years, which is why the model works.

They are a poor fit when you need care **once**. A wedding on the 14th. A parent in hospital and school pickup to cover for three days. A sick child and a meeting you cannot move.

Hiring a stranger, checking references, and arranging clearance for a single Saturday afternoon is not realistic, so families in that position often end up with whoever is available — which is the opposite of what vetting is for.

That gap is most of what we built Puffin for. Care starts at 24 hours notice, three-hour minimum, from $32 an hour. No search, no interviews, no employment paperwork, for one shift or fifty.

Which one you should use

**Use a marketplace** if you want a long-term nanny, you want to choose the person yourself, you have several weeks, and you are prepared to be an employer.

**Use an agency for hourly care** if you need someone occasionally, quickly, or once, and the administrative side is not something you want to take on.

**Use an agency for placement** if you want a long-term nanny but want the search, the clearances, and the shortlist handled — $500 under three months, $1,000 for longer, matches in 7–10 business days, with one complimentary re-match inside 30 days.

Plenty of families use both, and that is a reasonable answer too: a marketplace nanny for the weekday routine, an agency for the evenings and the emergencies that routine does not cover.