How Much Does a Virtual Assistant Cost in 2026?

Key takeaways

• What we place at: $1,500 to $2,000 a month for a general assistant, $1,800 to $2,500 for an executive assistant, month to month rather than a year committed up front.
• Our United States benchmark for the same two roles is $48,000 and $72,000, so the gap is 55 to 63 percent.
• A US hire costs more than the salary. Employer Social Security and Medicare alone add 7.65 percent, which is $3,672 on a $48,000 assistant, according to the Internal Revenue Service.
• The engagement model moves the price as much as the country does. A marketplace, a direct contractor, an agency and an employer of record all price the same person differently.
• The cheapest quotes in this market are priced on turnover. You pay for it in onboarding, not in the invoice.

Every figure in this post is either from our own placements or from the Internal Revenue Service, and each one is linked so you can check it.

What a virtual assistant costs, by role

Our placement ranges run $1,500 to $2,000 a month for general administrative roles and $1,800 to $2,500 for an executive assistant. The table below is the salary benchmark we publish across the site for the same roles, which sits inside those ranges, next to what the United States equivalent costs. The hourly figures divide by a 2,080 hour working year, which is how you compare a salary to a freelance rate honestly.

You will see much lower numbers advertised, usually $4 to $8 an hour. Those are real prices for something, but it is rarely a dedicated, vetted, full-time person who is still there next year. More on that further down.

Rates in Asia and Eastern Europe sit in different bands again. I am not going to publish numbers for regions we do not place in, because I would be copying them from somebody else's page. What I can tell you is the part that never shows up in a rate. An assistant 10 to 13 hours ahead of you is asleep for your whole workday. That is a different job from the one described here.

The four ways to hire one, and what each charges

The same person costs different amounts depending on how you engage them. This is the part most cost guides skip, and it moves the number more than seniority does.

• A freelance marketplace: Cheapest headline rate and the most work for you. You do the sourcing, the screening and the chasing, the platform takes a cut of every payment, and the person is working for several clients at once. Fine for a defined task, hard for a role.
• A contractor you find yourself: No platform fee and no agency fee, so the whole rate reaches the person. You carry the search, the vetting, the payment setup and the classification risk in their country. Cheapest on paper if your time is free, which it is not.
• A staffing agency: You pay a margin or a placement fee on top of the salary. What you buy is the screening, a replacement when it does not work, and someone else handling payment and compliance. Ask any agency what share of your rate reaches the worker; the ones who will not answer are telling you the answer.
• An employer of record: The person becomes a real employee in their own country, with the statutory benefits that come with it, and the employer of record charges a monthly fee to carry that. The most expensive of the four and the right answer when the role is a job rather than a project.

Part time, full time, or by the hour

The same person costs a different amount depending on how you buy their time. Hourly is the most expensive way to buy an hour and the cheapest way to buy a small number of them.

A freelancer charging by the hour has to price in the weeks they are not booked. So an assistant at $10.38 an hour on a full-time salary will quote you $15 or more for occasional work, and they are right to. You are paying for availability, not just for the hour.

The break-even sits around 20 hours a week in our experience. Below it, pay hourly. You are not funding time you cannot fill. Above it, a full-time salary costs less per hour, and you get the part that actually compounds: somebody who knows your customers, your files and your quirks without being told again.

One warning on part-time hires. A person at 20 hours a week for you usually has another client for the other 20. That is fair, and it means your urgent Tuesday is sometimes their other client's urgent Tuesday. If your work arrives in unpredictable bursts, full time is worth the difference.

What specialization does to the price

Virtual assistant is a job title covering a very wide range. Inbox triage and reconciling a ledger are not the same skill, and the market prices them differently.

• General administrative support: Calendar, inbox, travel, data entry, follow-up. The $21,600 end of our range. The pipeline here is deep, so these roles also fill fastest.
• Executive support: The same tasks plus judgment about what deserves your time. About $27,000 with us. You are paying for the decisions you never hear about.
• Specialist support: Bookkeeping, customer support, real estate transaction coordination, technical work. Priced against that profession rather than against assistants. A remote bookkeeper runs about $24,000, and a customer support representative about $21,600.

The common mistake is hiring at the general rate and then handing over specialist work. It rarely ends well. Either the work is done badly, or the person teaches themselves on your time and leaves for a job that pays what the skill is worth.

The costs that are not in the hourly rate

A US salary is not what a US hire costs. On top of the wage, an employer pays 6.2 percent for Social Security and 1.45 percent for Medicare, according to the Internal Revenue Service. That is 7.65 percent, or $3,672 a year on a $48,000 assistant. The Social Security portion applies up to a wage base of $184,500 for 2026.

Then federal unemployment tax. The Internal Revenue Service puts the rate at 6.0 percent on the first $7,000 of wages. Employers who pay their state unemployment tax on time get a credit of up to 5.4 percent, so most pay 0.6 percent. That is $42 a year. Small on its own, and it is on top of the state rate.

After that come the numbers nobody can publish for you, because they depend on your company: health coverage, paid time off, equipment, software seats, and the payroll provider. The two federal items alone put a $48,000 assistant over $51,700 before any of that.

Hiring abroad does not make those costs disappear, it swaps them. You are not paying United States payroll taxes on someone who is not a US taxpayer and works entirely outside the country. What you may owe instead are the required payments in their own country. Which ones apply depends on whether the person is engaged as a contractor or as an employee. That decision is not yours to make freely, and I wrote up what each country actually looks at separately.

What the $4 an hour option actually costs

This is the part I care most about, because it is the mistake that costs the most money. A rate that low is not a bargain someone found; it is a wage that will not hold a professional for long.

What happens next is predictable. The person takes a better offer within a few months. You lose the two or three weeks it took to teach them your business. Then you spend another two or three weeks on the replacement. Your work sits still through both. Do that twice in a year and the cheap hire cost more than the fair one, and you got less done.

Some staffing firms pay the worker a small fraction of what they charge the client and keep a very large margin. We pay our contractors what their talent and experience are worth and keep our own margin much smaller. We make money through long-term successful placements, not by maximizing what we can make off someone every month.

The question worth asking any agency is not what the rate is. It is what share of that rate reaches the person doing the work, and how long their placements usually stay. We do not treat turnover as an acceptable cost of doing business, because the client pays for it twice.

The cost that is not money

Budget about two weeks of ramp before a new assistant is at full speed, and budget your own time inside it. Training, context, clear expectations, access to your systems and consistent communication are the company's job, not the agency's and not the assistant's.

This is the mistake I see most on a first hire. Someone hires a good person, expects them to be running in three days, and reads the gap as a bad hire. Two weeks of proper onboarding is the difference between a placement that lasts years and one that quietly fails in month two.

How to decide what to pay

• Count the hours you can genuinely fill: Under 20 hours a week, hourly is usually cheaper. Over that, a full-time salary costs less per hour. You also get someone who learns your business instead of renting you attention.
• Decide whether you need them awake: If the role involves your calendar, your customers or a same-day answer, you are paying for time zone overlap. If it is a queue of defined tasks, you are not, and you can look further afield.
• Price the seniority, not the title: Virtual assistant covers everything from data entry to running an executive's week. Our own range across administrative roles is $21,600 to $28,800, and the difference is judgment.
• Add the employer costs before you compare: Compare a US salary plus the 7.65 percent and the benefits against the full cost of the remote option. Comparing a salary to a rate flatters whichever one you were already leaning toward.

If you want this priced for your actual role rather than in general, our savings calculator runs one role against a US hire, and the virtual assistant page covers what the role absorbs and how to screen for it. For a role with more judgment in it, the executive assistant page is the closer match.

Get a real number for your role

Every figure above is an average, and averages are not quotes. Tell us what you need done on a free 15-minute call. We will tell you what that role costs, what it should pay to hold on to someone, and whether it is worth hiring for yet. Book the call here.