Affordable, good quality childcare creates opportunities for many parents to better reconcile work and care or reduces family care to enable other valuable contributions to society. However, scholarship on childcare tends to overlook parents of children with complex care needs. These spend a greater amount of time and cash on care. Thus, their opportunities beyond care can be limited. Resources, like public childcare services, are key in supporting other valued activities in life. In our analyses, we draw on Sen’s capability approach to conceptualise and assess childcare policy design across key service aspects in a country-comparative perspective. The conceptualisation of the multifaceted nature of childcare provides compelling insights into the complexity of comparing childcare across countries. The comprehensive overview often challenges the idea of policy clusters, that can mask key distinctions between public and market service provision. The more nuanced conceptualisation and operationalisation of childcare policy design through the capability approach reveals parents’ real opportunities for arranging childcare and the varying effects of policy design across gender and class. In addition, it goes beyond implicit commodification assumptions and opens up space for parents’ potential desire for multiple care arrangement possibilities.