ChildCare Education Institute (CCEI) is a commercial online training provider for early childhood staff: it lists an individual annual subscription at $99 a year, center subscriptions at $499 and $999 a year, and 45 certificate programs including CDA training.
Whether its hours count toward your state's training requirements is decided by your state's child care licensing agency or registry — not by CCEI — so run that check before you pay.
What CCEI is
ChildCare Education Institute (CCEI) sells online training and certificate programs to people who work in early childhood education — individual educators keeping up training hours, and centers buying seats for a staff.
It is a training vendor, not a credential and not an agency: the CDA is awarded by the Council for Professional Recognition, and state training acceptance is decided by state child care licensing agencies and registries.
Three parts of the offering are things our research confirmed: the subscription pricing for individuals and centers and the catalog of 45 certificate programs that includes CDA training, confirmed on CCEI's own product pages, and a college credit recommendation for one of its CDA certificates, confirmed in NCCRS's entry for that certificate.
CCEI's site also displays an IACET logo; our research did not verify its Authorized Provider status with IACET itself, so treat that as a claim to confirm rather than assume.
Courses and programs offered
The catalog, as CCEI's product pages listed it when our research pulled them, has these confirmed parts:
- 45 certificate programs, with CDA training among them.
- An annual professional development subscription for individual educators, plus center subscriptions sized for 20 users and 50 users.
- An Online College Credit Eligible CDA Certificate — a 155-hour online program you have up to one year to complete.
On that 155-hour certificate, NCCRS (the National College Credit Recommendation Service) recommends 10 lower-division semester hours in Human/Child Development or Early Childhood Education.
NCCRS publishes credit recommendations; the college decides whether to accept them, so ask the college's admissions or registrar's office before you count on receiving that credit.
Our research verified the subscription tiers and the credit-eligible CDA certificate specifically — not each of the 45 certificate programs item by item, and not whether the catalog includes director-credential coursework.
CCEI's own catalog is the source for the current course list.
And since the CDA needs 120 hours of training toward the credential the Council for Professional Recognition awards, check that the program you buy matches the CDA requirements in effect when you apply.
Which states accept CCEI hours
There is no national answer, and this page will not invent one.
Each state's child care licensing agency decides which providers' courses count toward the training hours it requires, and states that run a professional development registry keep their own approved lists.
Our research did not confirm a state-by-state list of agencies that accept CCEI hours — that question was left open, state by state, when the research was done.
The check costs one call or email; a wrong subscription costs more.
Ask your licensing agency — or your registry, where your state runs one — whether CCEI courses count for the requirement in front of you: pre-service training for a new hire, or the annual in-service hours your role keeps up.
Directors buying seats for a staff should run the same check before spending the center's training budget.
Confirm acceptance with your state before you pay
Cost
CCEI's pricing is subscription-based, at the list prices its product pages showed as of 2026-10-05:
- Individual annual professional development subscription: $99/year.
- Center subscription, 20 users: $499/year.
- Center subscription, 50 users: $999/year.
Those are the vendor's list prices, and promotions change them — the price on CCEI's checkout page is the one that matters.
Our research did not confirm separate per-course pricing, or a separate price for the 155-hour Online College Credit Eligible CDA Certificate — check CCEI's catalog for those figures before you buy.
If a paid subscription is more than you need, the free options are covered in the Alternatives section below.
Alternatives
The free federal option is new: Early Education Pathways (EEP), a learning platform jointly funded by the Office of Head Start and the Office of Child Care, launched in July 2026.
Its iCDA Course Preparation Series is free and covers 80 of the 120 training hours the CDA needs — eight courses with 10 hours in each of the eight CDA subject areas — and candidates can add other EEP courses to reach 120.
Whether a state counts EEP hours toward its licensing training is that state's decision.
The Circle CDA Training Program, from the Children's Learning Institute at UTHealth Houston on the CLI Engage platform, provides all 120 training hours plus support with competency statements and the portfolio for the center-based Preschool CDA.
Its Infant-Toddler version does not yet provide all 120 hours.
University-run providers are another route: Penn State Extension's Better Kid Care lists more than 300 online on-demand courses for child care professionals, including a Spanish-language section and a set of required health and safety courses, and Texas A&M AgriLife Extension offers online courses with certificates for state-mandated training, professional development and CDA renewal.
AgriLife's course prices and its acceptance in Texas were not verified in our research.
For the field as a whole, our online childcare training providers compared guide lines up the major vendors side by side, and the no-cost route gets its own page at free online childcare training with certificates.
Career information, not licensing or legal advice: which training counts is decided by your state's child care licensing agency, so confirm with that agency — and for the CDA, the Council for Professional Recognition — before you enroll or pay.