Most household staffing comes down to six either-or decisions, and the advice you get depends on who is giving it: the agency recommends the agency, the neighbour recommends her own maid. Here are the six, with the trade-offs laid out plainly and the cost of each option beside it.
Agency or direct
Agency. You pay a placement fee, usually half to one month's salary, and get a candidate within days, some form of verification, and a replacement if it fails inside the guarantee period. Best for live-in staff, trained attendants and anything where the pool is thin. Worst when the agency's "verification" is a photocopy and the replacement clause is verbal. For offices, the deployment model, where the agency employs and invoices with PF and ESI, is the norm: office housekeeping at ₹11,500, pantry at ₹12,000, a supervisor at ₹17,000.
Direct. You find the worker through the society, your existing staff, or a verified profile on TheHire with reviews from previous households. No fee; the whole salary reaches the worker; you do the police verification yourself, which is a form and a week. Best for part-time and full-time live-out roles, where the pool is the street you live on.
Choose the agency for a live-in nanny or a patient attendant on a deadline, and read the replacement clause. Choose direct for everything else, and use the trial days.
Part-time, full-time or live-in
Part-time, per task. The worker comes for her units and goes. Cleaning is ₹4,500, cleaning with dishes and clothes ₹8,000, a cook for one meal ₹6,000, two meals ₹9,500. Cheapest, most flexible, and the house is empty of staff most of the day. The cost is coordination: slots, keys, and the morning the maid is at the other house when you need her.
Full-time, live-out. One person, eight to ten hours, goes home at night. A nanny at ₹13,000 or an attendant at ₹15,000. Right when someone in the house needs a person present all day: a baby, a parent, a patient.
Live-in. A housekeeper at ₹16,000, a cook at ₹17,000, a nanny at ₹18,000, 24-hour care at ₹24,000, plus food, a room with a door, a weekly off and an annual trip home. It replaces three or four part-time arrangements and buys the early mornings, the late evenings and the nights. The cost is not only money: a live-in arrangement needs a real room, real privacy and real rest hours, or it does not last.
The pattern: flats with two working adults and no dependants run on part-timers. Add a baby or a parent and one role becomes full-time. Add travel for work, a large house, or round-the-clock care, and that role becomes live-in.
Cook, or cook-cum-maid
Two people on two sheets. A cook at ₹9,500 and a maid at ₹8,000. Each does one job well, each has her own slot, and if one is absent the other still comes.
One person on one sheet. A cook-cum-maid who does two meals and the three cleaning units is doing a full day's work, and the household usually pays her less than the two salaries above while expecting both jobs at full quality. The cooking suffers by evening, the bathrooms are the first thing dropped, and the arrangement ends when she finds a cook-only job.
Choose two people for a family. Choose one for a single person or a couple with light needs, pay her close to the two-sheet total, and write both halves on the sheet.
Attendant or nurse
Elderly care attendant, ₹15,000. Bathing, feeding, medicines on time, walks, company, for a parent who is mostly mobile. Eight hours.
Trained patient attendant, ₹18,000. Bed-ridden care: turning, hygiene, catheter bags and diapers, basic vitals, the physiotherapist's exercises. Trained by a hospital agency, usually, and worth the difference the day the parent stops walking.
Live-in 24-hour care, ₹24,000. When the nights are the problem: wandering, falls, waking. Night duty is part of the role and is why the rate is higher.
Home nurse. Injections, IV lines, oxygen, wound dressing, anything with a doctor's order. A separate category with its own rates, and no attendant should be asked to do it. Many households run both: a nurse for the clinical visits and an attendant for the day.
The test: can the care be described without a needle, a tube or a dressing? Then an attendant, at the level the mobility demands. If not, a nurse for that part.
Couple, or two individuals
A domestic couple, ₹28,000. One cooks and cleans, the other drives, gardens or minds the gate, both live in. The standard arrangement for an independent house or a farmhouse: one salary, one room, one trip home, and the house is never empty. The risk is concentrated: if the arrangement ends, both roles end the same day.
Two individuals. A live-in housekeeper at ₹16,000 and a driver or gardener hired separately. Costs more, needs two rooms or one live-out, and each can be replaced alone.
Choose the couple for a large house outside the city where staff must live in and the gate must be watched. Choose two individuals for a city bungalow where the driver can live out.
By the day, or on the payroll
By the day. A helper at ₹700, a caretaker at ₹900, a cook at ₹1,200, babysitting at ₹150 an hour with a four-hour minimum. For the deep clean before a function, the week the cook is at Pongal, the evening out.
On the payroll. Monthly, with leave, bonus and the raise. For anything that happens more than two days a week.
The arithmetic: a helper three days a week on day rates costs about what a part-time maid costs monthly, with none of the reliability. Two days a week or fewer, book by the day; three or more, hire monthly.
The pattern behind all six
Each choice trades money against presence and reliability. Part-time, direct, by the day and one person doing two jobs are cheap and flexible and leave the house empty, the coordination on you, and the quality variable. Live-in, agency, two people on two sheets and a couple cost more and buy presence, predictability and a replacement when something fails.
Households get it wrong in one direction: they buy the cheap option for a need that requires presence, a cook-cum-maid for a family of six, an eight-hour attendant for a parent who wanders at night, a day helper three times a week for a house that needs a maid. The expensive option, chosen when the need is real, is nearly always cheaper over a year than the cheap one replaced three times.
The cost estimator prices any combination of these for your city, by the month, the quarter or the day, and the verified profiles that reply carry the reviews that tell you which of the options above the worker herself has actually done.