Remote Executive Assistant Cost: What You Pay a Month

• You are billed one monthly figure for a remote executive assistant, not an hourly rate, and how experienced the person is decides the price.
• The same assistant in the US earns a median of $76,590 a year, and you add 7.65% on top in employer payroll tax.
• A monthly fee covers the contract, the pay run and a replacement. Your software seats and your training hours sit outside it.
• Pay monthly to keep the commitment short. Pay a one-off fee to put the assistant on your own payroll from day one.
• A new assistant needs ten working days before they are useful, and your company owns that training, not the agency.

What does a remote executive assistant cost?

A remote executive assistant costs about $2,200 a month, full time, through an agency that places in Latin America. That is the middle of the range, and my round number.

The experience of the person you hire sets where you sit in that range. Our Latin America salary guide starts the role at the bottom for someone with two years behind them, and tops out for someone who has run an executive office for eight.

Read every quote twice. Once for the number, and once for the level of assistant you get for it, because the figure alone does not tell you who turns up.

Step one: Which assistant are you buying at that price?

Ask which end of the range a quote sits at. Every level works the same forty hours.

At the cheap end you tell the assistant what to do each morning. At the top end they tell you what you are about to miss. You pay for those decisions, not for more time.

The range covers four levels, and the first two sit close together. Up to two years of experience costs $1,800 a month, and three to five years costs $1,900. Above that you pay for an assistant who decides more without you: $2,500 at five to eight years, $3,400 at eight or more.

The chart below puts the four monthly rates on one scale, so you can see how little separates the first two and how far the last sits.

Watch the word on the quote, too. A virtual assistant works through a list you wrote: the inbox sorting, the data entry, the research you asked for. An executive assistant writes that list, drafts the reply for you to approve, and tells the person asking for your Thursday that Thursday is gone.

Executive assistant vs virtual assistant comes down to who writes the list, and our two rate tables overlap more than people expect. A senior virtual assistant with deep software skill costs more than a mid-level executive assistant. So write down the work you want off your desk, then ask which of the two roles the agency is pricing.

Price is only half the quote. The next question is the obvious one: what does that monthly figure include?

Step two: What does the monthly fee cover, and what do you still pay?

The monthly fee covers the contract, the pay run and a replacement. Your software seats and your own training time sit outside it, and that training is the bigger of the two. You sign one agreement with us, called a master services agreement, which is the single contract that lets us engage and pay the assistant on your behalf.

Two things ride inside the fee that people miss. We handle the contract and the pay in the assistant's own country, so you never register a company there. We also replace the assistant at no extra charge when the match turns out wrong.

Three costs do stay with you. You pay for a seat in every tool you want the assistant inside. You pay a higher monthly fee when you move them up a level. And the first two weeks cost you your own hours.

You pay no placement fee on a monthly engagement, and a placement fee is not the same as a monthly one. A placement fee is the one-off charge an agency bills for finding the person, and it belongs to the direct hire route.

Step three: What would the same assistant cost you in the US?

The same assistant on your own US payroll costs about $109,440 a year, against $26,400 through us. A US executive assistant earns a median of $76,590 a year, or $36.82 an hour, in the federal wage data for 2025.

That median is pay on its own. An employer also owes 7.65% of wages in payroll tax, split 6.2% toward Social Security and 1.45% toward Medicare. That is $5,859 a year, so you reach $82,449 before a single benefit.

Our own 2027 Latin America salary guide prices benefits and payroll tax at 30% of total pay, which puts the whole seat at $109,440 a year. Here is the same hire on both routes:

Read the bottom row before the top one. The salary is only half of what the seat costs you, because the benefits and the tax add $32,850 a year to it.

Step four: Do you pay monthly or buy the hire outright?

Pay monthly to keep the commitment short, and pay the one-off fee to put the assistant on your own payroll from day one. The monthly route runs month to month at the rates in Step one. The direct hire route costs a flat 25% of the assistant's first-year salary, charged once, and carries a 30-day replacement guarantee.

So run the numbers on a US salary. At the median from Step three, 25% is a single charge of $19,148, and you carry the whole yearly cost on top of it. The monthly route is $26,400 a year and nothing else.

Choose the one-off fee when you want the person inside your own company, on your badge and your handbook. Choose monthly to test the role for a quarter first. Most companies start monthly and move the contract across later.

So what do you do next? Read the cheapest quote you have for what it leaves out.

Step five: What does a cheaper quote leave out?

A cheaper quote leaves out two things: the hours you can use, and the pay the assistant receives. A fee far under $1,500 usually means a bigger time difference, and that sends the work back to you.

On a twelve-hour gap the day works out like this: you send a question at 4pm and the assistant reads it at 4am. The answer waits for you the next morning, so a two-message exchange takes two days. On a calendar, two days means the meeting already moved.

If you put one 4pm question on a single working day, you can watch both answers arrive. The chart below marks the moment you ask and the moment each assistant replies.

Founders who have outsourced before name the same two problems. The time difference, and work they had to send again. Most tried an offshore executive assistant first, and offshore means hiring someone eight to twelve hours ahead of you.

I offer that as the pattern I hear rather than as a number I can show you.

Then ask the question almost nobody asks: what does the assistant get paid? Some firms bill a healthy fee and pass a small share to the worker. An underpaid assistant leaves within months, and the wrong match costs you four weeks.

So ask for the pay as well as the price, and ask a recruiter you trust to read a quote that looks too cheap. We pay contractors what they are worth, on a thinner margin.

Step six: What do you owe in the first two weeks?

In the first two weeks you owe about 30 minutes a day of your own time, and your company owns that training rather than the agency. A new assistant needs ten working days before the work comes back the way you want it. Underestimating that is the biggest mistake I see on a first hire.

Five jobs belong to you from the first morning:

• Training: show them how you want the work done, in your own tools, on real examples.
• Context: tell them who matters, what the business sells, and which meeting never moves.
• Expectations: say what finished work looks like and when you want to see it.
• Systems access: hand over the logins on day one instead of a few at a time.
• Communication: set a time the two of you speak each day, and keep it.

That half hour covers all five. If you skip it, you spend those hours later anyway.

By the end of week two a good assistant should move your calendar without asking first. Tell the agency that is the marker you are holding the hire to.

What you have once the assistant is settled

Once the assistant is settled you have your mornings back. An assistant who knows which meetings you want moved runs your calendar, reads your inbox before you open it, and leaves the replies drafted for you to approve.

The money side gets simpler as well. You pay one figure a month and you know it a quarter ahead. You file no payroll and you renew no benefits.

Those 250 hours a year go back into the work only you can do. Check that after three months rather than after one.

How we handle it at Remote Hero

Tell us the work you want off your desk and we send pre-vetted candidates in two to four weeks. A monthly engagement carries no search charge.

You sign one agreement with us, we engage and pay the assistant, and it runs month to month. You pay 50% to 70% less than the same US hire, once the benefits and the payroll tax are counted.

Most first-month problems are onboarding problems, not the wrong assistant, and we usually fix those without replacing anybody. If you book a call, we will tell you whether this role is worth hiring for yet.

The payroll tax rates here are published figures, not tax advice. Run your own numbers past your accountant before you budget from them.