Metro

The ‘Uber of babysitting’ is creeping some parents out

A new app makes booking a babysitter Uber-easy — but it’s leaving plenty of parents queasy.

The Hello Sitter app launched in the Big Apple on Wednesday, and its claim to fame in the crowded field of child-care apps is speed.

Desperate — or merely disorganized — parents can tap their way through the available sitter choices and have someone at their door in as little as one hour.

“I love it,” said Sai De Silva of Dumbo, the mother of a 4-year-old daughter, London Scout.

“One of the sitters was an opera singer!” enthused De Silva, one of 25 moms and dads who tested out Hello Sitter before it launched.

Of the three other Hello Sitters her family tried, one worked in a boutique; the other two were college students.

“They were in their 20s and 30s,” said a grateful De Silva. “They can run around with children.”

The app is so far available only in Manhattan and the pricier Brooklyn nabes of Dumbo, Williamsburg, Brooklyn Heights and Park Slope.

Unlike with many child-care apps, there’s no signup or membership charge.

And unlike Uber, there’s no surge pricing.

Whether it’s a high-traffic Saturday night or a weekday afternoon, the cost starts at $21 an hour for one child, rising to $26 an hour for four children, which is the maximum — though there is a $20 cab charge for the sitter’s evening transportation.

Hello Sitter insists it carefully vets its caregivers, running criminal background checks and what they call a full social media account review.

Parents, too, are vetted, for the safety of the sitters, although the agency is vague on how.

“Trust is definitely a big thing,” said the app’s founder, Lauren Mansell, mom to Ady, 3.

Hello Sitter is fully insured, she adds.

“We do have people who want to meet the sitter first for an hour before leaving,” she added.

Parents who prefer algorithms to in-person interviews can also simply click on a short video, in which the prospective sitter will say hello and tell a little about herself (the vast majority of the 200 sitters on call are women).

But many parents remain suspicious, even creeped out, by the idea of typing their child’s food preferences, allergies, bath routine and interests into an app, and then having that same app send a complete stranger to their door.

A complete stranger who will be alone with their kids.

“How do you vet them?” asks Emily Kaplan, 42, a stay-at-home mom of four from the Upper West Side.

“When I get a babysitter, I want to know who their parents are, who they’ve babysat for and who they know.”

Adds another doubter, Jessica van Itallie, 41, the Chelsea mom of a 9-year-old boy, “I’m old-school. I haven’t even gotten into the Uber world.”

Having someone sit your children isn’t the same as getting in a cab, notes Kerry Mcnally, 37, of Brooklyn Heights, mom to Isabelle, 3, and Jamie, 2, who flatly says, “I wouldn’t use it.”

Jessica van Itallie is skeptical about using babysitting app Hello Sitter.James Messerschmidt

As Camila Santiago, a 24-year-old mom of three from Williamsburg, put it, “You can have no criminal record and still be a psycho.”

But many others are willing to give it a test drive, particularly in an emergency.

“If I need a sitter last-minute, I’d be okay with it,” say, if her older daughter had to go to the doctor, said Nicole Roberts, 34, a consultant and mom to a 2-year-old girl and 6-month-old twin girls.

“Not as much as Uber, but I’d use it in a pinch.”

Additional reporting by Laura Italiano, Jennifer Bain, Samantha Tomaszewski and Reuven Fenton