CDA matching is free government money, but only the part you go and claim. For every dollar you deposit into your child's Child Development Account, the government adds a dollar back, up to a cap that depends on birth order. For a first child the cap is $4,000; for a second child it is $7,000; for a third or fourth child it is $9,000. Deposit nothing and you get the First Step grant but none of the match. This guide gives you the exact 2026 caps, when the money lands, what spending counts toward the cap, and the timing mistakes that quietly leave thousands unclaimed.
The Child Development Account holds three separate streams of money, and only one of them is matched. The First Step grant is credited automatically when you open the account. The dollar-for-dollar co-matching is the part you have to trigger yourself by depositing your own savings. The third stream, the Baby Bonus Cash Gift, lands in a linked savings account and is not the CDA at all.
Matching works on a simple rule. Put in a dollar, the government puts in a dollar, until you hit your child's co-matching cap. Save $10 and you get $10 back. Save up to the full cap and you double that portion. There is no minimum deposit and no requirement to ever top up, so the entire match is opt-in. The First Step grant arrives whether you save or not, but the match only exists if you fund it.
If you want the full payout picture across all three pots, our Baby Bonus payout schedule and CDA guide maps every date and figure side by side.
The cap is the single number that decides how much free matching you can claim. It rises with birth order, and the Large Families Scheme lifted the totals for third and later children born from 18 February 2025. Figures below are from LifeSG and Made For Families and are current as of June 2026.
Read the table as: deposit the co-matching cap amount of your own money, and the CDA total ends up at the figure in the last column once the First Step grant and the match are both in.
| Birth order | First Step grant | Dollar-for-dollar cap | Maximum CDA total |
|---|---|---|---|
| First child | $5,000 | $4,000 | $9,000 |
| Second child | $5,000 | $7,000 | $12,000 |
| Third and fourth child | $10,000 | $9,000 | $19,000 |
| Fifth child onward | $10,000 | $15,000 | $25,000 |
Co-matching is credited within two weeks of your deposit, excluding public holidays. That sounds harmless until you look at the deadline. You can save into and use the CDA only until 31 December of the year your child turns 12, after which the account closes. Deposit on the very last day and there may be no working window left for the match to process before the cut-off.
The bigger cost of waiting is years of forgone interest. The CDA pays bank interest on whatever sits inside it, so an unmatched, unfunded account earns nothing on money you never put in. Funding the cap early lets both your deposit and the matched dollars compound for over a decade. Run the numbers yourself with our compound interest calculator to see what a decade of growth on a doubled balance looks like.
There is also no rule that you must hit the cap in one go. Spreading deposits across the years is fine, and each deposit is matched as it comes in, up to the running cap. What matters is that the total you deposit reaches the cap before the account closes.
Only your own cash deposits count toward the co-matching cap. The First Step grant does not eat into it, and neither does the Baby Bonus Cash Gift, which sits in a different account entirely. People often assume the auto-credited grant has already 'used up' part of the match. It has not.
Spending CDA money does not reduce the cap either. Once a dollar is matched it is yours to use at approved institutions, and using it does not claw back any matching entitlement. So you can fund the account, claim the match, spend on approved expenses, and the cap stays where it is.
Matching is identical at all three participating banks, so the bank you pick changes only the interest your balance earns and the sign-up perk. The three options are DBS/POSB, OCBC and UOB. You can switch banks later through the Baby Bonus website without losing any matching. For a deeper look at the savings side, see our POSB, OCBC and UOB CDA comparison.
Rates and promotions move often, so treat the figures below as a snapshot and confirm on the bank's own page before you open. All rates are the banks' published CDA rates as of June 2026.
| Bank | Interest by balance tier | Current sign-up perk |
|---|---|---|
| OCBC | 1.20% on first $10,000; 2.40% above $10,000 | 1-year Disney+ subscription, first 500 sign-ups/month, 1 Apr to 30 Jun 2026 |
| DBS/POSB | 1.00% on first $10,000; 2.00% on next $40,000; 0.05% above $50,000 | Check posb.com.sg for current offer |
| UOB | 1.00% on first $25,000; 2.00% on next $25,000; 0.05% above $50,000 | Baa Baa Sheepz head pillow (worth $59), 1 Jun to 31 Aug 2026 |
Matched money is only useful if you can deploy it before the account closes. CDA funds can be paid directly to Approved Institutions, which covers most of the early-years costs parents face anyway, so funding the cap is rarely money locked away for nothing.
If you are weighing childcare options, our government versus private childcare guide shows where CDA dollars stretch furthest.
Unspent CDA money is not lost. When the account closes at the end of the year your child turns 12, the balance, including every matched dollar, transfers automatically to the child's Post-Secondary Education Account. From there it can fund approved tertiary and post-secondary costs.
So even if you over-fund relative to your early-years spending, the match still flows to a useful destination. Our CDA-to-PSEA transfer guide explains how that handover works and what the PSEA covers.
The dollar-for-dollar co-matching cap for a first child is $4,000 as of June 2026. Deposit $4,000 of your own savings and the government matches it, taking the CDA total to $9,000 once the $5,000 First Step grant is included.
No. The First Step grant is credited automatically when you open the account and is completely separate from the co-matching cap. Only your own cash deposits trigger matching, so the full cap remains available no matter how large the grant is.
Government co-matching is credited into the CDA within two weeks of your deposit, excluding public holidays. Because the account closes on 31 December of the year your child turns 12, avoid leaving deposits to the final days when the processing window may run out.
Any unused balance, including matched dollars, transfers automatically to your child's Post-Secondary Education Account when the CDA closes at the end of the year the child turns 12. The money is never forfeited and can later fund approved post-secondary education costs.
This is general financial information for Singapore, not personal financial advice. Figures change — verify current rates against the official sources above before acting. See our full disclaimer.