How Much Does a Virtual Assistant Cost? 2026 Rates by Model
August 25, 2026
A virtual assistant costs between $7 and $75 an hour in 2026, and the spread is almost entirely about which sourcing model you pick, not about how good the assistant is. Freelance marketplaces publish a median around $13/hr. US-based managed services publish $30 to $75/hr. Managed nearshore staffing starts at $7/hr all-in. On a part-time schedule that is roughly $607 a month at the low end against $1,200 to $3,000 a month at the high end, for work of comparable scope.
Third-party rates below are the figures each provider publishes on its own site, checked August 2026. Virtustant figures are first-party placement data from H1 2026.
This guide is for the person doing the buying. It answers what a virtual assistant costs per hour and per month, what the quoted rate does and does not include, and how to work out a real number for your own role before you talk to anyone. Looking for what a virtual assistant earns rather than what one costs? See the FAQ.
Five sourcing models, five very different prices for work that often looks identical on a job description. These are the rates each provider publishes publicly, checked in August 2026.
| Sourcing model | Published hourly rate | Who runs payroll | What you still do yourself |
|---|---|---|---|
| Managed nearshore staffing (Virtustant) | From $7.00; median $8.00 | The agency | Manage the work |
| Offshore freelance | From about $6 at the low end | Nobody: you pay a contractor | Source, vet, contract, pay, replace |
| Freelance marketplace (Upwork) | Median $13; typical $10 to $20, plus a 5-20% client fee | You or the platform's payout rails | Source, vet, manage, replace |
| Subscription VA service (Wishup, Apploye range) | $10 to $30 | The service | Manage the work |
| US-based managed service (Belay, Wing) | $30 to $75; US average $35 to $50 | The service | Manage the work |
The honest read of that table: the cheapest number and the most expensive number are both real, and both come with conditions. The $6 offshore freelance rate is a rate for a person, not for a service, so everything around that person is still your job. The $75 US rate buys a US-based assistant with US employment law behind them. The interesting middle is where payroll, compliance and replacement are included in a rate that still starts with a single digit.
Upwork publishes a median hourly rate of $13 for virtual assistants, with most falling between $10 and $20. That is the rate you pay the freelancer. On top of it the platform charges a client fee of 5 to 20%, which is the part buyers routinely leave out of the comparison. At $13/hr with a 10% fee you are at $14.30 before you count your own time sourcing and screening.
Marketplaces are genuinely good for a defined project with a deliverable. They are weaker when you need someone in the same seat every morning, because continuity is not part of what you are buying.
Wing Assistant's published 2026 guide puts the bottom of the market at about $6/hr for offshore freelance work and the top at $60/hr for a US-based specialist. The $6 figure is real and it is also the least managed option on this list: no payroll, no compliance, no replacement, and typically a large time-zone gap.
Wishup publishes a range of $15 to more than $29.66 per hour depending on experience, location and specialization. Apploye's 2026 pricing roundup puts the broad market average at roughly $10 to $30 per hour. These services handle payroll and matching, and usually sell in monthly blocks of hours rather than by the hour.
Belay publishes $30 to $75 per hour for US-based virtual assistants, which it translates to roughly $1,200 to $3,000 per month for part-time support. Wing puts the US-based average at $35 to $50 per hour. This is the premium tier, and what the premium buys is specific: a US-based assistant, US employment law, and no time-zone question at all.
Virtustant places bilingual remote professionals across Latin America on one all-in hourly rate that starts at $7.00 and runs a median of $8.00 across H1 2026 placements. Executive assistants start at $8.50. The rate covers the professional, payroll, HR and compliance. There is no placement fee, no setup fee and no recruitment fee, and the engagement is month to month.
The structural difference is not the number, it is what the number contains. A $13 marketplace rate plus a platform fee plus your own sourcing hours plus the risk of a replacement is not $13. An all-in rate is the total.
Nobody budgets in hours. Here is the same set of rates converted to monthly cost, using 86.7 hours for a 20-hour week and 173.3 hours for a 40-hour week (52 weeks divided by 12 months, so the math survives a five-week month).
| Model and rate | Part-time, 20 hrs/week | Full-time, 40 hrs/week |
|---|---|---|
| Managed nearshore at $7.00/hr | ~$607 | ~$1,213 |
| Managed nearshore at the $8.00 median | ~$693 | ~$1,387 |
| Marketplace at the $13 median (before the client fee) | ~$1,127 | ~$2,253 |
| Subscription service at $20/hr | ~$1,733 | ~$3,467 |
| US-based managed service at $40/hr | ~$3,467 | ~$6,933 |
| US-based managed service at $75/hr | ~$6,500 | ~$13,000 |
The cleanest published comparison on this page is part-time against part-time. Belay states $1,200 to $3,000 a month for part-time support. Managed nearshore at the $7 to $8 band lands at roughly $607 to $693 a month for the same 20 hours. Belay's published part-time floor of $1,200 is still roughly double the nearshore figure, and its ceiling is closer to five times it, with payroll and compliance included on both sides.
Across roles and seniority, the typical monthly range Virtustant quotes for a full-time hire is $1,500 to $5,000, because a bilingual sales rep or a bookkeeper does not price like an admin assistant. The $1,213 figure above is the floor of the structure, not the average of it. For per-role numbers from verified placements, see the US vs LATAM salary guide.
Two quotes at the same hourly number can differ by thousands of dollars a year. This is the table to bring to a vendor call, because it is where the real cost hides.
| Cost component | Freelance / marketplace | US managed service | Managed nearshore (Virtustant) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Placement or recruitment fee | None, but you do the recruiting | Varies; often inside the rate | $0 |
| Setup or onboarding fee | None | Sometimes charged | $0 |
| Platform or service fee | 5-20% client fee on marketplaces | Inside the rate | None |
| Payroll, tax and compliance | Yours to handle | Included | Included |
| Your own sourcing and screening time | Yours, and it is the biggest hidden line | Included | Included |
| Replacement if it does not work out | Start over at your cost | Varies; often 30 to 90 days | Lifetime replacement, no time cap |
| Minimum commitment | None | Often a monthly block of hours | Month to month |
The line most buyers underprice is their own screening time. Sorting a marketplace shortlist, running interviews, checking English in practice rather than on a profile, and doing it again three months later when the first hire disappears is a real cost that never appears on an invoice. Whether the model absorbs that work or hands it back to you is usually a bigger swing than the hourly rate itself.
Agencies outside the virtual-assistant category price the same capacity differently: as a markup on the worker's pay, as a one-time placement fee, or as a flat all-in rate. See how much staffing agencies charge in 2026 for that comparison across 13 providers that publish figures.
Compensation in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia and Uruguay tracks local living costs. A rate that is strongly competitive in Buenos Aires or Bogotá is a fraction of a US rate while still being an attractive, career-grade wage for the professional. That gap is geographic arbitrage, not a discount on quality, and it is the reason the savings are durable rather than promotional.
Traditional recruiters charge either a percentage of first-year salary or a flat placement fee, and marketplaces charge a percentage of every invoice. Virtustant charges neither. Candidates pay nothing at any stage either: no fee to apply, to be placed, or to stay placed.
Remote removes office space, equipment and local-entity costs. Payroll, HR, tax and compliance sit with the agency rather than becoming a new line item in your finance function.
Taken together these are the reasons a managed nearshore hire lands up to 70% below a comparable US hire once the full cost of the role is counted, rather than just the headline rate. For the strategic version of this, see the blueprint for reducing hiring costs through remote outsourcing in LATAM.
A worked example, using the published rates on this page. Say you want 25 hours a week of inbox, calendar, travel and light CRM work, with overlap until 2pm Eastern.
If you want the number for your specific role rather than a range, a scoping call produces a rate, a timeline and example profiles, and it is free whether or not you hire. Check what your role costs first if you would rather start with a page than a call.
Being straight about this makes the rest of the page more useful, not less.
Between about $6 and $75 an hour in 2026, depending entirely on the sourcing model. Offshore freelance starts near $6. Freelance marketplaces publish a $13 median with a typical band of $10 to $20 plus a client fee. Subscription services run $10 to $30. US-based managed services publish $30 to $75. Managed nearshore staffing starts at $7 all-in, with a median of $8.00.
For 20 hours a week: roughly $607 at a $7 all-in nearshore rate, about $1,127 at the $13 marketplace median before fees, and $1,200 to $3,000 at a US-based managed service, which is the range Belay publishes. For 40 hours a week at the same rates, double those figures. Across roles and seniority, a full-time managed nearshore hire typically lands between $1,500 and $5,000 a month.
The question to ask is not how cheap the rate is but how much of the work the rate absorbs. A $6 offshore freelance hour is genuinely cheap and leaves sourcing, vetting, payroll, compliance and replacement with you. A $7 all-in managed hour costs a dollar more and absorbs all of it. Cheap becomes expensive when a hire fails and you restart the process yourself.
Frequently, and there are four places to look: a placement or recruitment fee, a setup or onboarding fee, a platform fee on every invoice (5 to 20% on marketplaces), and a minimum block of hours you pay for whether or not you use them. Virtustant charges none of these; the hourly rate is the total.
Bilingual virtual assistants from Latin America start at $7.00 an hour all-in through Virtustant, with a median of $8.00 across H1 2026 placements and executive assistants from $8.50. That is up to 70% below a comparable US hire once payroll, benefits and overhead are counted, and it includes US-hours time-zone overlap, which offshore options at similar rates do not.
Executive assistants price above general administrative support because the job is judgment rather than task execution: gatekeeping, prioritizing on your behalf, handling confidential material. Through Virtustant they start at $8.50 an hour all-in against $7.00 for general admin support. See executive assistant vs administrative assistant for which one your situation actually calls for.
It depends on the model. If you engage a freelancer directly, contracts, payment rails and classification compliance are yours. If you hire through a managed staffing agency, the agency is the one running payroll, taxes and local compliance, and that is inside the quoted rate. This is the single biggest reason two identical hourly numbers can produce very different annual costs.
It should not. Virtustant sends a first shortlist of 3 to 5 pre-vetted bilingual candidates within 48 hours, averages 3 days from scoping to placement, and onboards in up to 72 hours, at no additional fee. Recruiter-led providers commonly publish 14 days to 7 weeks for the same roles.
No, and confusing the two is the most common mistake in this research. What a virtual assistant earns is their take-home pay. What a virtual assistant costs you is that pay plus payroll, compliance, platform fees and the value of your own sourcing time. This page is about the second number. If you are a candidate rather than a buyer, you can apply to Virtustant's talent pool instead: fully remote, paid in USD, and candidates pay nothing at any stage.
With a month-to-month managed engagement, yes: you scale hours up or down without renegotiating a contract. With a subscription that sells fixed monthly blocks, you are usually buying the block whether or not you use it, so check that before committing.
If you have a role in mind, the fastest way to replace a range with a number is a scoping call: you leave with a rate for your specific role, a timeline, and example profiles, whether or not you hire. Virtustant sends a first shortlist of 3 to 5 vetted bilingual candidates within 48 hours, averages 3 days to placement, and charges zero recruitment fees: one all-in rate from $7/hr, month to month, with a lifetime replacement guarantee and no time cap. Book a discovery call, or start with virtual assistant services to see what the engagement looks like.
