Ventilation devices and room air cleaners can be used to remove indoor contaminants from indoor air. Generally, room air cleaners are rated according to clean air delivery rate (CADR). However, a similar metric for ventilation has not been used to be compared with CADR of room air cleaner. The CADRs and cost-effectiveness metrics (CADR/kw) of ventilation devices and room air cleaners were newly defined and theoretically compared for a child care center. The results indicate that the CADRs of room air cleaner were greater than that of ventilation. A higher collection efficiency for the particles guaranteed a higher CADR for ventilation. Ventilation filter had a performance that exceeds MERV11 should be used to effectively control the indoor particle concentration. The stand alone type air cleaner was found to have the best performance in the cost-effectiveness. The reason for this is that the effective air cleaning ratio of the stand alone type air cleaner is higher than that of the others and the power consumption of the stand alone type air cleaner is lowest. Keywords : Air cleaner, Ventilation, Clean air delivery rate, Cost-effectiveness, Indoor environment