We have a 2 year old in FT daycare at a center, SF Bay area--it's currently about $1900/month, is closer to $2100/month for under 2, and drops to around $1700/month for the preschool program (~3-5 years). For the infant (<2 yrs), our place was definitely more expensive than most in-home daycares (the cheapest one I looked at was $1300/month, the cheapest one I would have been comfortable with was $1400/month, but that was 2 years ago so they are likely a bit more now), but seemed comparable or even on the cheaper side compared to other larger centers. We ultimately picked out place because we got off the wait list there first, but once we actually had our son in care we really realized what a huge difference the adult:child ratio could make and decided to keep him there vs. going to an in-home place that would have had more kids per adult.
Once you start comparing our place to options for 2+ years (i.e. a preschool with some "curriculum"), ours is generally priced as well or better, once you start to factor in that a lot of the preschools seem to have multiple weeks of closure days spread throughout the year (more than the vacation allotment of many younger workers, so parents will potentially have to pay for backup childcare).
In our area, care for <2 yrs old is also really hard to find--I know a number of parents who have wound up having to go the nannyshare route because they just can't get into any daycare by the time they have to return to work. For us, it was initially all about just finding a spot and less about sticking to a certain budget--we knew that any of the options were within our means, but there were very few options readily available.