How Much Does a Virtual Assistant Cost? 2026 Rates by Model
August 25, 2026
Virtual assistant prices vary by sourcing model, scope and experience. The provider examples below span $7–$75/hr. Virtustant virtual assistants start at $7/hr all-in, the total hourly price you pay. At that starting price, 20 billed hours a week averages about $607 a month (20 × 52 ÷ 12 × $7). Confirm the role and schedule in your quote.
Third-party examples retain their cited provider and source dates. Virtustant prices below are current starting offers, separate from the H1 2026 research cohort. Compare the same role, scope and billed hours.
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 source publishes publicly, checked in September 2026.
| Sourcing model | Published hourly rate | Who runs payroll | What you still do yourself |
|---|---|---|---|
| Managed nearshore staffing (Virtustant) | From $7.00/hr all-in; role-specific quote | The agency | Manage the work |
| Overseas freelancer (direct) | Median $11 across Upwork profiles outside the US | Nobody: you pay a contractor | Source, vet, contract, pay, replace |
| Freelance marketplace (Upwork) | Median $13; typical $10 to $20, plus a plan-specific client fee | You or the platform's payout rails | Source, vet, manage, replace |
| Subscription VA service (US package plans) | $36 to $65 on published monthly plans | The service | Manage the work |
| US-based managed service (Belay) | $30 to $75 | 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. A direct overseas 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 the rate. How each model actually bills, from tracked hours to prepaid packages and monthly units, is covered in our guide to virtual assistant pricing in 2026, which prices every model at 20 and 40 hours a week.
Prefer to watch? The video below runs the five models side by side, converts every rate to a monthly number, and adds the test this page only links to: what each model charges at 20 hours a week and at 40, against the hours our clients actually ask for.
Video: How Much Does a Virtual Assistant Cost in 2026? Rates by Model, at 20 and 40 Hours (13:04). Chaptered: the five models, cost per month, the 20-and-40-hour test, what the rate includes, rates by role, and a worked budget.
Upwork publishes a $13/hr virtual assistant benchmark with a typical $10–$20 range. Its Basic client marketplace fee is up to 7.99%; eligible US bank-account payments may qualify for a lower fee. Other plans and contract-initiation charges differ. At an illustrative $13/hr plus a 7.99% fee, the hourly equivalent is about $14.04 before any initiation charge. Source: Upwork client pricing and “What is the Client Marketplace Fee?”, checked September 30, 2026.
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.
Upfirst's May 2026 analysis of 201 Upwork virtual assistant profiles found a median of $11 an hour for assistants based outside the US, against $38 for US-based ones, with individual rates from $5 to $89. The low end is real, and it is also the least managed option on this list: no payroll, no compliance, no replacement, and often a large time-zone gap.
Subscription services sell prepaid monthly blocks of hours rather than an hourly rate. Published US plans run from $36 to $39 an hour on one service (10 hours for $390 up to 60 hours for $2,160) to $65 an hour with a 40-hour monthly minimum on another. The service handles matching and payroll; smaller plans cost more per hour, which our virtual assistant pricing guide breaks down.
Belay publishes $30 to $75 per hour for US-based virtual assistants, and says most US-based assistants cost around $1,200 to $3,000 a month for part-time support. 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. Virtual assistants start at $7.00/hr all-in, the total hourly price you pay, with no separate recruitment or placement fee. Confirm the scope, experience, hours and engagement terms in your quote.
Before requesting a quote, use the virtual assistant role and responsibilities to define the work you need covered, the tools involved and the weekly schedule.
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.
Virtustant virtual assistants start at $7/hr all-in. SDRs and appointment setters start at $8/hr; executive assistants and bookkeepers start at $8.50/hr. These are the total hourly prices paid by the client. Your quote depends on the role, experience and agreed schedule, with no separate recruitment or placement fee.
Compare the total price you will pay. On a marketplace, check platform and contract charges; for a managed service, confirm which support and replacement terms are included in your quote.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Virtustant VA at the $7/hr starting price | ~$607 | ~$1,213 |
| Illustrative $13/hr marketplace rate plus a 7.99% fee | ~$1,217 | ~$2,433 |
| Subscription package at $36 to $65/hr | ~$3,120 to $5,633 | ~$6,240 to $11,267 |
| US-based managed service at $30/hr | ~$2,600 | ~$5,200 |
| US-based managed service at $75/hr | ~$6,500 | ~$13,000 |
Package and part-time figures need one caution. Belay's published $1,200 to $3,000 a month for part-time support is a monthly figure, not a 20-hour week: at the $30 floor of that range, $1,200 buys 40 hours a month. Always convert a monthly quote back to hours before comparing it with anything else on this table.
Virtustant virtual assistants start at $7/hr all-in. SDRs and appointment setters start at $8/hr; executive assistants and bookkeepers start at $8.50/hr. These are the total hourly prices paid by the client. Your quote depends on the role, experience and agreed schedule, with no separate recruitment or placement fee. See published rates by role and the research in the US vs LATAM salary guide.
Original data — the H1 2026 hiring cohort. Sieve records 441 placement starts from January 1 through June 30, 2026, involving 397 unique people. The normalized virtual assistant role accounts for 25 placements (5.67%); appointment setter accounts for 22 (4.99%). Of all placements, 420 have valid expected revenue and hours for rate research. This is a global cohort, including 30 people with no country recorded.
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 | plan-specific client fee on Upwork, plus a contract initiation fee | 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 by provider; check the terms | Lifetime replacement, no time cap |
| Minimum commitment | None | Often a monthly block of hours (40 hours at one published US service) | Terms agreed during the discovery call |
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 on published fees and effective cost per hour.
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 can save up to 70% against 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 with remote LATAM hires.
Virtustant virtual assistants start at $7/hr all-in. SDRs and appointment setters start at $8/hr; executive assistants and bookkeepers start at $8.50/hr. These are the total hourly prices paid by the client. Your quote depends on the role, experience and agreed schedule, with no separate recruitment or placement fee.
Three questions settle the number faster than any benchmark. Does the work need judgment or just execution? Judgment prices up, and it is the difference between an assistant who clears your inbox and one who answers from it. Does it need live overlap with your hours? Full US-hours overlap is the main thing a nearshore rate buys over a far-time-zone one. Who absorbs a failed hire? If the answer is you, the rate you are comparing is not the cost you will pay. Underpaying for scope does not save money; it produces turnover, and turnover is the most expensive line in remote hiring.
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.
The provider examples in this article span $7–$75/hr and use different sourcing models. Virtustant virtual assistants start at $7/hr all-in; confirm a quote for your role, experience and schedule. Marketplaces can add plan-specific client and contract fees.
At Virtustant’s $7/hr virtual assistant starting price, 20 billed hours a week averages about $607 a month and 40 hours about $1,213 (weekly hours × 52 ÷ 12 × $7). These are starting-price illustrations; use your confirmed quote and billable hours.
The question to ask is not how cheap the rate is but how much of the work the rate absorbs. An overseas freelancer at the $11 Upwork median is cheap and leaves sourcing, vetting, payroll, compliance and replacement with you. An all-in managed hour costs a little more and absorbs all of it. Cheap becomes expensive when a hire fails and you restart the process yourself.
Ask about recruitment, setup, platform or contract charges and agreed billable hours. Virtustant quotes one all-in hourly rate, with no separate recruitment or placement fee. Confirm the scope and engagement terms before hiring.
Bilingual virtual assistants from Latin America start at $7/hr all-in through Virtustant; executive assistants start at $8.50/hr. The quoted hourly rate is the total price you pay, with no separate recruitment or placement fee. Confirm your scope, experience and agreed schedule.
Executive assistants handle leader-level prioritization, gatekeeping and confidential work. Virtustant executive assistants start at $8.50/hr all-in, compared with $7/hr for general virtual assistants. See executive assistant vs administrative assistant to choose your scope.
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, and your hire can start in 72 hours, at no additional fee. Recruiter-led providers commonly publish materially longer timelines 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, your hire can start in 72 hours, and Virtustant 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.
