Children's entertainer hire in Australia: the complete guide

If you have landed here because you know you need someone but not what kind of someone, this is the right page. A children's entertainer is the general-purpose booking: one performer who arrives with a structured show, runs it for an hour or so, and hands you back a room of tired children.

Most of them are really a specialist wearing a broad label. Ask what the hour is built around and you will usually find magic, music, games, balloons or a character underneath. Prices below are live by city. This is also a smaller listed category than the specialties it overlaps, so browse the neighbouring ones too.

This is the one thing not to skip. A children's entertainer is running a room of other people's children, sometimes with the parents out of sight in the kitchen. Every state and territory has a working-with-children check with its own name, its own conditions and its own card, and a performer who works across borders may hold more than one.

Ask which they hold, ask to see it, and check the name matches the person turning up. A listing on this site is not a check and we do not verify anybody, so the asking is on you. It takes one sentence in your first message and a professional will not blink at it.

Live figures are in the table below. Very few performers in this general category publish a starting price, so treat what you see as a signpost rather than a market rate, and expect to enquire with two or three to find where the real number sits for your suburb and your date.

The usual shape is a fixed price for a set show length, with add-ons for extra time, extra children or a second performer. Saturday mornings in the school term are the busiest slot in the entire children's market, so a popular performer six weeks out may already be gone.

An hour typically breaks into an opening that grabs the room, a central routine of magic or comedy, a stretch of games with music and small prizes, something every child takes home, and a finish built around the birthday child and the cake. The performer is also managing behaviour the whole way through, which is the part parents never see until they try it themselves.

The best question you can ask is what happens in the middle twenty minutes, because that is where a weak show dies. Anyone can open strongly. Holding fifteen five year olds through the middle of an hour is the skill you are paying for.

Under three is really about presence and sensory play: bubbles, music, gentle characters, very little structure. Four to seven is the classic party show age, where magic, comedy and games all land. From eight upward the crowd wants to be involved rather than performed at, which points towards games, science style shows or something competitive.

Give the performer the age spread and the headcount before you ask for a price. The ones who adjust the show to your room are the ones worth booking, and you can hear which they are in the first reply.

A public event is not a longer birthday party. The audience turns over constantly, nobody stays for the whole show, and the performer needs material that works in short bursts for a crowd that keeps changing. Ask specifically whether they do roving or repeated short sets, because a single hour long show format will not fit.

Schools, councils and workplaces will also want public liability cover and clearance details in writing, sometimes weeks ahead. Ask for the paperwork when you book rather than the week before, and build in time to find someone else if it does not arrive.