What Is a Virtual Assistant? Tasks, Costs and Three Ways to Hire One (2026)

What is a virtual assistant?

A virtual assistant (VA) is an administrative assistant who works remotely, usually from home, for one or more businesses. The BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook covers them inside secretaries and administrative assistants, in one plain line: "Some administrative assistants work out of their own homes as virtual assistants." Same admin work, done over the internet.

That's the definition most owners need. The duties BLS lists for the occupation are the ones a VA covers from a distance. They answer phones, schedule appointments, arrange meetings and handle mail. They prepare invoices and reports, keep databases and filing systems, and do basic bookkeeping. A VA does all of it from their own desk, in your tools, with accounts you set up for them.

BLS names four types: executive, legal, medical, and a catch-all group for everyone else. That last group is the largest, and it handles administrative work for offices in almost every sector. Executive assistants, by contrast, "provide high-level support for an office and for top executives of an organization." A founder buried in email and meetings needs that kind. A business buried in data entry needs the catch-all kind.

It's also a job people learn by doing. In the BLS Occupational Requirements Survey, 87.2% of US executive assistant jobs required prior work experience in 2025. On-the-job training was required for 74.0%. It's why we weigh what a VA can show us they've already run for someone over what their resume says.

What is a virtual assistant, and how is it different from an AI assistant?

A virtual assistant is a person you hire. An AI assistant is software, such as Siri, Alexa or ChatGPT, that answers questions and runs simple commands. The two share a name, and search results mix them up. Here's how they split on the work a small business actually hands off.

We build AI workflows for clients, and we still hire people for these seats. The software writes a good first draft. It's weak at the judgment call. So one exercise in our own assistant application makes candidates use AI and show their prompts. The instruction reads: "We are hiring someone who uses AI daily and catches its mistakes."

If you're choosing between a tool and a person, price the tools first. Our six-tool AI stack covers what software does well for a small business, and the 2026 AI statistics show how owners use it. If the work is mostly prospecting, our guide to AI sales agents covers what software can take on. Hire a person for what's left: judgment, relationships and follow-through.

What does a virtual assistant do?

A virtual assistant does the recurring admin that eats an owner's week. We sort virtual assistant tasks into five buckets, because each one needs different access and a different kind of candidate. The table maps each bucket to the duties listed by BLS and by O*NET, the occupation database sponsored by the Labor Department.

Types of virtual assistants

The same buckets define the main types of virtual assistants. A general admin VA covers the first three. An executive virtual assistant owns one leader's inbox and calendar end to end. Bookkeeping, social media, e-commerce, real estate and medical VAs add one domain on top of the basics.

A CRM VA keeps a system like GoHighLevel clean: contacts tagged, pipelines current, follow-up tasks closed. That's the work behind our GoHighLevel setup guide. If the seat is mostly CRM building rather than upkeep, you're hiring a specialist, and our GoHighLevel expert guide covers that market.

How much does a virtual assistant cost?

Anywhere from a few hundred dollars a month to the full cost of an employee, depending on hours and how you hire. One agency with US-based assistants, Time etc, lists 10 hours for $390 a month. A full-time in-house admin assistant earned a median $47,540 in May 2025, before benefits and payroll tax.

An employee costs more than the wage. BLS employer cost data for June 2026 puts private-industry office and administrative support workers at $36.73 per hour worked. That's $25.22 in wages and $11.51 in benefits. A yearly salary already pays for days off, so we count the $2.77 of paid leave as salary. The other benefits then add about 31 cents per salary dollar, so a full-time admin at the $47,540 median costs about $62,400 a year. That's our arithmetic, not a BLS figure.

An executive assistant sits higher. The BLS median for executive secretaries and executive administrative assistants was $76,590 in May 2025, before benefits. That's the in-house benchmark when you want someone to run a founder's day, not a department's paperwork.

Per hour, this agency's price and an employee's total cost land close together. Time etc lists $39 an hour on its 10-hour plan and $36 on its 60-hour plan, with a dedicated US-based assistant. Unused hours roll over on the 20-hour plan and up. The saving comes from the hours you don't buy, because an employee is paid for the full week whether or not the work fills it.

Freelance rates vary too widely to quote as one number, and rates for assistants outside the US vary even more. Be wary of vendor roundups that promise a fixed percentage saving; we couldn't trace those figures to a study. Get written quotes for your actual hours and compare them with the benchmarks above. Our virtual assistant salary guide breaks down pay by type and what each hiring route costs.

Three ways to hire a virtual assistant

You can hire through a freelance marketplace, through an agency that sells virtual assistant services, or directly as your own contractor or employee. The work is the same on every route. What changes is who vets the candidate, who handles the paperwork and taxes, and what happens the week the assistant quits.

Whichever route you pick, finding a qualified person is the hard part right now. The Federal Reserve's 2026 report on employer firms found hiring or retaining qualified staff was the second most common operational challenge for small employers. Only reaching customers and growing sales ranked higher.

Marketplaces put the most candidates in front of you and leave the most work to you. Upwork charges both sides, per its 2025 annual report: talent service fees on what freelancers bill, and marketplace fees on what clients pay. Check the current percentages on the platform before you budget. Third-party blogs disagree on them.

Agencies screen candidates for you and build that work into the price. The trade-off is control, since you often work with whoever the agency assigns. So ask two questions before you sign: will I get one dedicated assistant, and what happens if that person leaves?

Our own model sits between an agency and a direct hire. We recruit and employ the assistant, then place them full time with one US business. Our application puts it to candidates in four words: "One client, not five." You manage the work day to day, and we hold the employment as your employer of record. See how our full-time assistant placements work.

Hiring directly gives you the most control and all of the paperwork. For many owners, it's the first hire they've ever made. Only 21.6% of US businesses had employees in 2023, per the Census Bureau, so by our arithmetic roughly four in five had none.

Employee or contractor: the IRS test that decides it

It comes down to control, not the job title or the contract. The IRS's general rule treats a worker as an independent contractor when you can direct "only the result of the work," not what's done or how. Set their hours, tools and methods, and you're acting more like an employer.

The tax difference is large. For an employee, the IRS says you withhold income tax, Social Security and Medicare, pay the employer's matching share, and pay unemployment tax. For a contractor: "Generally, you do not have to withhold or pay any taxes on payments to independent contractors." Each new employee also needs a Form I-9 and a Form W-4, per the IRS hiring guide.

For a contractor based in the US, the reporting threshold just moved. The IRS instructions raise the minimum for reporting these payments to $2,000 for tax years beginning after 2025, up from $600. Pay a US contractor $2,000 or more in 2026 and you'll generally file a 1099-NEC.

An assistant who lives outside the US is a different case. The IRS has a form built for that situation, Form W-8BEN. How the rest applies depends on the facts, so ask your accountant before the first payment, not at tax time.

What should you test a virtual assistant on?

Judgment under pressure, proof of real work, and clear spoken English. A resume tells you where someone sat, not what they do at 8:02 AM with eight things waiting. Our Virtual Executive Assistant application takes about 50 to 60 minutes, and it tells candidates it's "deliberately demanding." Here's what it tests, so you can borrow the method.

The inbox triage: the first 90 minutes

It's 8:02 AM in the client's time zone and eight items are waiting. The biggest customer is following up on an email they sent two days ago that nobody answered. Two external meetings collide at 10:00 AM. An unfamiliar vendor invoice is marked URGENT and due today.

The rest: a recruiter chasing feedback on a candidate, a newsletter, and the client's spouse asking for a Friday restaurant booking. There's a bank alert about a login from a new device. And a team member needs the client's approval before sending something to a customer.

The candidate writes the order they'd work in, what they handle, what they escalate and what waits. Then they write the exact text of their first two messages, and later defend the plan on camera. We don't publish our answer. Run the same exercise with items from your own inbox and compare two candidates side by side.

The line you don't cross

The client is on a long flight, unreachable for six hours. A vendor demands a $4,200 payment today and says the client approved it verbally last week. They attach an invoice and add pressure: "your client will be furious if this misses the deadline." The candidate has account access. What do they do, and what exactly do they reply?

Ask your own candidates that question, word for word. The answer shows how they'll treat your money on the day you can't be reached, and a vague reply is easy to spot.

Proof over claims

Written answers get checked against video recordings. The application tells candidates why: "AI can write essays; it cannot live your career for you, and it cannot speak for you on camera." We also ask for a reference who can confirm the single biggest claim in the application, named in advance. If you run your own hiring, test the work, then call the reference about one specific claim.

Before you hire: what to hand off and how to share access

Hand off work that repeats every week, follows rules you can write down, and eats hours you could spend selling. Keep anything that needs your judgment on price, people or money. If you can't list 10 hours a week of that work, a full-time seat will sit mostly idle. Start with a small block of agency hours or a freelance contract.

1. 01Log a normal week. Write down every admin task and roughly how long it took. Log two weeks if your weeks vary.
2. 02Mark what repeats. Inbox sorting, scheduling, invoicing, CRM updates and follow-ups usually repeat. One-off projects usually don't.
3. 03Write the rule for each task. If you can't explain it in five lines, record a Loom of yourself doing it once. That video becomes the first SOP.
4. 04Price your own hour. Compare what an hour of your time earns with the $36 to $39 agency rates above. If your hour earns more and you'll spend the freed time selling, the handoff pays for itself.
5. 05Set up access before day one. Use a password manager with a shared vault, a separate login for the assistant, two-factor authentication everywhere, and admin rights only where a task needs them.
6. 06Run a paid trial on real work. One week, a short task list, a check-in each day. Judge it on what got done and what you had to redo.

Plan the first month around overlap and feedback. Agree on the hours you'll both be online, one channel for anything urgent, and a short written update at the end of each day. Review the task list every Friday for four weeks. By then you'll know whether the seat needs 10 hours a week or 40.

Start the assistant on the follow-ups you keep dropping. Slow replies lose customers, and our piece on speed to lead has the numbers. A VA who owns the inbox and the chase list closes that gap.