How many hours you actually have to work
The IND sets a daily cap, a weekly cap and a minimum of full free days for au pair tasks, and none of them move for evening babysitting, being on call, extra pay or a family holiday. This article states the limits, the four things that quietly break them, and what to do if they already have.
Last checked Aug 21, 2026
How many hours you actually have to work
8 hours a day (checked 2026-08-18). 30 hours a week (checked 2026-08-18). 2 full free days a week (checked 2026-08-18). These are hard IND limits, not a target. Evening babysitting, being on call for the children, and getting paid extra all count toward them, and a school holiday does not raise the ceiling.
What counts toward your hours
Evening babysitting counts, even when it feels like "just for a bit" while the parents go out. Being available for the children counts too, including time spent in your own room if you are the one who has to respond when a child needs something. Neither of these looks like work in the moment, but both sit inside your daily and weekly ceiling the same as folding laundry does.
Getting paid extra for the hours on top does not make them legal. The daily and weekly limits are fixed regardless of pay, and your agency is the one responsible for making sure it never happens. The same applies to extra babysitting offered as a one-off favour: see extra-babysitting-and-side-jobs for what that covers on its own.
During a holiday your host family takes together, you do no household tasks at all. A family trip is not a working week for you, even if everyone is together in one house and it would be easy to help out.
What actually counts as a task in the first place, light housekeeping versus something heavier, is its own question. See light-housework-not-cleaning.
Where your hours are written down
Before your permit was granted, you and your host family signed a daily schedule covering all seven days of the week. That schedule states your hours, your free days and who takes over when you are off, and it is the document your agency and the IND actually check against. Keep a copy on your phone. See your-signed-daily-schedule for what has to be in it and what to do if it changes.
School holidays do not add hours
No school and no BSO during a school holiday can look like more work, but your daily and weekly limits do not move. The same hours are simply arranged differently that week, not increased. school-holidays-do-not-add-hours covers how to plan around it, and school-holidays-per-region has the actual dates for your region.
What a breach means, and keeping your own record
Going over these limits falls under the Wet arbeid vreemdelingen, and the Arbeidsinspectie can inspect and fine a host family that does it. This article does not judge whether your family is over the line, it tells you where the line is.
The one thing that actually protects you is your own record of the hours you work, because it is the only evidence you have if your signed schedule and your real week stop matching. Opairly's hour tracking is built for exactly this: log your hours as you go, and you have a record without having to reconstruct it later from memory.