Virtual Assistant Cost in 2026: What the Three Routes Actually Charge

What does a virtual assistant cost in 2026?

Between $390 and $5,400 a month, depending on how many hours you buy and where the assistant lives. Time etc, an agency with US-based assistants, lists 10 hours for $390 a month. Wishup lists a US-based VA at $5,400 a month on its 8-hour plan. Prialto sells a unit of 55 hours for $1,600. Those are list prices from the providers' own pages, checked on September 20, 2026.

Those bars aren't buying the same thing, which is why the range looks wild. The $390 plan buys 10 hours a month, about two and a half hours a week. The $5,400 plan buys most of a working day, in your own time zone. Compare hours, not headline prices.

Per hour the picture tightens. Time etc publishes its rate on the plan: "That's $39 per hour" on 10 hours, and "$36 per hour" on 60. Prialto's $1,600 unit divided by 55 hours is about $29 an hour, which is our arithmetic rather than a published rate. So the US agency market sits between roughly $29 and $39.

The three ways to buy, and what each one charges

You can hire on a freelance marketplace, buy a plan from a VA agency, or employ someone directly. Direct hires abroad usually run through an employer of record. The work is the same on every route. What changes is who screens the candidate, who carries the employment, and which fees ride on top of the rate.

Freelance marketplace

You post the job, sift the applications and run the tests yourself. The rate you agree isn't the whole bill. Upwork's own annual report puts the client side plainly: "We charge a client marketplace fee of 5% on each transaction." Pay by ACH and it drops to 3%, if you're eligible. Business Plus clients pay 10%, or 8% by ACH.

The freelancer pays too, and that shapes the rate they quote you. From May 2025, Upwork says talent on new contracts pay "a fixed fee for each contract ranging from 0% to 15% of their earnings." The fee is set when the contract starts. Assume it's priced into the hourly number you see.

VA agency

An agency screens for you and bills a flat monthly plan. That convenience is what you're paying for, and it's why the hourly rate reads higher than a marketplace rate. Ask two questions before you sign. Do I get one named assistant, and who covers the work when that person is sick or leaves?

Direct hire, usually through an employer of record

Want one person full time in another country? An employer of record hires them for you and handles payroll, tax and local law. Deel lists "$599 per EOR employee per month" and Remote lists "$699 per employee/month." That's the platform fee, and salary sits on top. Our guide to employer of record cost breaks down the rest.

We're one of the options on that third route, so treat this next bit as what it is. We recruit, test and employ assistants for US businesses, then place one full time with you. Our hiring page puts the model in a line: "One flat monthly fee covers recruiting, vetting, and employment." We don't publish a number, because it depends on the role. Price us against the rows above.

What does a plan's "hours" actually buy?

Less than you'd assume, and the details are where the money leaks. An hour on a plan is an hour of the assistant's time, not an hour of your problem being solved. Read three things before you sign: what happens to unused hours, what happens when you go over, and what the hours mean in the first place.

Rollover is the first. Time etc puts "Unused hours rollover" on its 20, 40 and 60 hour plans, and not on the 10-hour plan. On the cheapest plan, hours you don't use are gone. If your work arrives in bursts, that makes the small plan dearer per useful hour than the sticker says.

Overflow is the second. Prialto sells support in units, and its page defines one: "One 'unit' comes with 55 hours of support per month and free episodic overflow time." It then adds a floor and a fee. The plan card shows $1,600 a unit a month; the copy below it says pricing starts at $1,500 with a 90-day minimum. We use $1,600 throughout, because that is what the card charges. Pricing "starts at $1,500 per month with a 90-day minimum per unit," plus "a $250 initial set-up fee in the first month." That fee is waived on a one-year agreement.

The third is the definition itself. Wishup's pricing cards are labeled "4 hours" and "8 hours" with no period attached, and the price changes between them. Prime VA is $1,299 or $1,999 a month. The US-based VA is $3,000 or $5,400. Hours a day and hours a week are different products, so ask in writing.

What does a US hire cost you per hour worked?

$36.73 an hour, for private-industry office and administrative support staff. That's the BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation figure for June 2026, released September 9, 2026. Wages are $25.22 of it. Benefits are the other $11.51. This is the number VA pricing pages compare themselves against without ever printing it.

Read the small bars, because that's the part owners forget. Insurance is $4.05 an hour. Paid leave is $2.77. Legally required benefits are $2.58, mostly Social Security, Medicare and unemployment tax. IRS Topic no. 751 sets the employer's share at 6.2% for Social Security, on earnings up to "$184,500" in 2026, and 1.45% for Medicare with no cap.

On a yearly view, the BLS median for admin assistants was $47,540 in May 2025. Executive assistants were higher at $76,590. A salary already pays for the days off, so we count paid leave as salary and add the rest. That puts a $47,540 admin near $62,400 a year, all in. That last figure is our arithmetic, not a BLS number.

So compare like with like. A US agency at $36 an hour is priced within about a dollar of a US employee's total cost per hour worked. The rate is not where the money is. The money is in the hours you never buy, because a salary runs at full price on a quiet week.

What's hidden in a virtual assistant cost?

Five things, and together they usually beat the difference between two quotes. Recruitment time, training, software seats, turnover and your own management time never appear on a pricing page. Price them once, on paper, and the routes stop looking so far apart.

Recruitment time

On a marketplace, the search is your job. Writing the post, sifting applications, running a test task and holding interviews is a week of evenings for most owners. Price that at what your own hour is worth. On the agency and employer of record routes, that work sits inside the fee.

Put a number on your own time before you compare the routes. Two evenings writing the advert and sifting applications, an hour for each interview, an hour to set and mark a test task. Multiply by what your hour is worth, then add it to the marketplace column. It is the line that makes a cheap hourly rate expensive.

Training and the first month

Nobody is useful on day one. Expect real hours spent recording how you do things, then correcting work while the assistant learns your rules. Budget the first month at roughly half output on any route. Writing the procedure once beats explaining it five times, and it's what makes the second hire cheaper.

Software seats

Every tool the assistant touches needs a seat, and seats are priced per user. A password manager is the one nobody can skip: 1Password lists its Business plan at "$8.99 USD Per user, per month. Paid annually." Add a seat each for email, CRM, a project tool and a phone system. You land between $50 and $150 a month, which is our own range from client setups, not a published figure. Price your actual stack before you trust it.

Turnover

People leave, and the bill arrives twice: the search again, and the training again. BLS JOLTS put the total separations rate at 3.2 percent of employment in July 2026, with a quits rate of 1.9 percent. That's one month. Agencies sell replacement cover against this risk, so read that clause closely.

Your management time

An assistant who reports to nobody drifts. Budget a 15-minute daily check-in for the first month, then a weekly review. It's the cheapest line here and the one owners skip. If you can't spare it, buy a route where a manager is included.

What changes the price: timezone, specialism, hours and seniority

Four levers, and you can watch each one move on a single provider's pricing page. Knowing which lever you're pulling stops you paying a US premium for work that never touches a US customer.

Time zone is the biggest lever. Pay for US hours when the assistant talks to your customers by phone, or when your day falls apart without live cover. If the work is inbox, data, scheduling and follow-up, three or four hours of overlap is usually enough, and you keep the difference.

Seniority is the lever people pull by accident. An assistant who owns an outcome costs more than one who works a list, and the gap above is about 50%. Decide which you're buying before you read a quote. Our executive assistant job description sets out the senior version of the seat.

A worked month: 60 hours of assistant time, four ways

Take a seat of about 15 hours a week, or 60 hours a month, and price it on every route. We've used published prices where they exist and labeled every assumption. Copy the table, then drop in your own hours and your own quotes.

Here's the arithmetic behind each row. Prialto's month one adds the $250 setup fee to the $1,600 unit. The Upwork row is 60 hours at an assumed $25, which is $1,500, plus the 5% client marketplace fee of $75. The employee row is 60 hours at the BLS total of $36.73, so wages and benefits are both in it.

Now look at what the gaps are made of. Top to bottom, the spread is about $600 a month. One bad hire costs more than that in redone work, and a month of your evenings spent screening costs more again. Price each route by how much risk it takes off you.

Which route should you pick?

Pick by hours first, then by how much screening you want to do. Under 10 hours a week, buy a plan or hire a freelancer and keep it simple. Above 20 hours a week, buy a dedicated person. At full time, employ them, because plan pricing stops making sense at that volume.

1. 01Count the hours honestly. Log a normal week of admin. If you can't find 10 hours of it, a full-time seat will sit idle and every price above is too high.
2. 02Decide if you need US hours. Live phone cover with customers means US-based pricing. Inbox, data and follow-up rarely do.
3. 03Get two quotes in the same shape. Same hours, same start date, same replacement terms. Ask each provider for the rate past the plan.
4. 04Add the invisible lines. Software seats, your onboarding hours, and a first month at half output. That's the real month-one number.
5. 05Run a paid trial on real work. One week, a short task list, a daily check-in. Judge it on what got done and what you had to redo.

Whatever you pick, put the recurring work in a system rather than in one person's head. If your follow-ups live in a CRM, GoHighLevel automations can carry the repetitive half while the assistant handles the judgment. That split is what keeps the seat affordable as you grow.

If you want one person full time without running the search, that's the seat we fill. We recruit and test assistants, employ them, and place one with a single US business. You manage the day to day. See how it works, or read how to hire remote employees to run it yourself.