How Much Does a Virtual Assistant Cost in 2026? Rates by Model, at 20 and 40 Hours

0:00 How much does a virtual assistant cost in 2026?

How much does a virtual assistant cost? Seven to seventy-five dollars an hour in 2026, on published rates. That spread is not about how good the assistant is. It is about which sourcing model you buy through. Upwork publishes a $13 median for virtual assistants, before its client fee. Assistants based outside the US on the same marketplace sit at an $11 median. US subscription packages publish $36 to $65 an hour. US-based managed services publish $30 to $75. And managed nearshore staffing through Virtustant starts at $7 an hour all-in, with a median of $12.75 across the last 462 placements.

Same job description, five prices. This video puts the five models side by side, converts every rate to a monthly number, and runs one test most rate cards fail: what each model charges at 20 hours a week and at 40. Third-party figures are what each source publishes, checked in September 2026. Virtustant figures are our own placement data.

1:13 Same job description, five prices

Model one, a freelance marketplace. Upwork publishes a $13 median for virtual assistants, most between $10 and $20. On top, the platform charges the client 5% on its Basic plan or 10% on Business Plus, plus a contract initiation fee. At $13 with the 5% fee you are at $13.65, before your own hours sourcing and screening. Model two, an overseas freelancer hired directly. Upfirst's May 2026 analysis of 201 Upwork profiles found an $11 median outside the US, against $38 for US-based assistants. The low end is real. It is also the least managed option here: no payroll, no compliance, no replacement.

Model three, a subscription service, selling prepaid monthly blocks. Published US plans run $36 to $39 an hour on one service, 10 hours for $390 up to 60 hours for $2,160, and $65 an hour with a 40-hour monthly minimum on another. Model four, a US-based managed service. Belay publishes $30 to $75 an hour, and says most part-time support runs $1,200 to $3,000 a month. The premium buys a US-based assistant and no time-zone question at all. Model five, managed nearshore staffing. Virtustant places bilingual remote professionals across Latin America on one all-in rate from $7.

Median $12.75 across 462 placements, half between $10.67 and $14.50, and $10.73 for the virtual assistant role alone. The rate covers the professional, payroll, HR and compliance. No placement fee, no setup fee, month to month.

3:18 The number you actually budget

Nobody budgets in hours, so here are the same rates per month, at 86.7 hours for a 20-hour week and 173.3 for a 40-hour week. Virtustant at the $12.75 median: about $1,105 part-time, $2,210 full-time. At the $10.73 virtual assistant median: about $930 and $1,860. Upwork at the $13 median with the 5% fee: about $1,183 and $2,366. A subscription package at $36 to $65: $3,120 to $5,633 part-time, $6,240 to $11,267 full-time.

A US-based managed service at $30: $2,600 and $5,200. At $75: $6,500 and $13,000. One caution. That $1,200 to $3,000 a month for part-time support is a monthly figure, not a 20-hour week. At the $30 floor, $1,200 buys 40 hours a month, not 86. Always convert a monthly quote back to hours before you compare it.

4:51 What each model charges at 20 hours and at 40

Here is the test, and the data is ours. We classified 332 positions clients opened with us between late June and mid October 2026. 45.2% asked for exactly 40 hours a week. 28.9% asked for exactly 20. Add them up and 74.1% want exactly 20 or exactly 40 hours. Only 7.2% wanted anything strictly in between. So the question a rate card has to answer is not "what is your hourly rate." It is "what do you charge at 20 hours a week, and what at 40." When we priced every model at those two points, a pattern showed up. At 20 hours, every model publishes a price.

At 40, two of the four third-party models stop. The largest prepaid block on the package plan is 60 hours a month, so a full-time seat has no plan to buy, and the premium package quotes it on request. The buyer who wants the most common thing, a full-time assistant, is the one most likely to be sent to a sales call for the number. Two more things the hours reveal. On package plans, smaller blocks cost more per hour: $39 at 10 hours against $36 at 60. And across our 462 placements, part-time did not cost more per hour: a $12.41 median against $12.93 full-time. Two quotes at the same hourly number can differ by thousands of dollars a year, because the rate is not the cost. Four places the difference hides.

6:23 The rate is not the cost

A placement or recruitment fee. A setup or onboarding fee. A platform fee on every invoice, 5% to 10% on a marketplace. And a minimum block of hours you pay for whether or not you use them, 40 hours a month on one published US service. Then two lines that never appear on an invoice. Your own screening time: sorting a shortlist, running interviews, testing English live rather than on a profile, and doing it again when the first hire disappears. And replacement. On a marketplace you start over at your own cost. On managed services it varies, so read the terms. At Virtustant it is a lifetime replacement with no time cap.

Whether the model absorbs that work or hands it back to you is usually a bigger swing than the rate itself. A $13 rate plus a platform fee plus your own hours plus the risk of a restart is not $13.

7:32 Six drivers, and the task list is not one of them

Six things move the price, and the task list is not one of them. Seniority. An assistant who clears your inbox and one you trust to reschedule a board meeting are different hires at different rates, with the same job title. Specialization. Bookkeeping, paid media, CRM administration and outbound sales price above general admin, because the pool is smaller. Language, tested rather than claimed. Fluent, client-facing English is the single largest driver in nearshore pricing. A profile is not evidence. A live screen is. Hours and plan size, which we just covered. Time-zone overlap. Full US-hours overlap prices above asynchronous coverage, and it is the main thing you pay for when you choose nearshore over a far time zone. And who carries payroll and compliance.

That is not a modifier on the rate. It decides whether the rate is the whole cost.

8:32 What clients actually paid, by role

So what should you pay? Here is what our clients actually paid, by role, across those 462 placements. Virtual assistant, $10.73 an hour across 42 placements. Executive assistant, $11.94 across 16. Appointment setter, $12.00 across 68, our single largest role. Social media manager, $12.00 across 46. Sales development rep, $13.00 across 41. Customer service representative, $14.00 across 33. Graphic designer, $14.50. Bookkeeper, $15.00 across 12. Developers have too few placements for a median, so the rate is scoped on the call.

Full-time, that runs from about $1,860 a month at the virtual assistant median to about $2,600 at the bookkeeper median. The $7 starting rate is the floor of the structure, not the average of it. Pay for scope, not for the lowest rate. Underpaying for scope does not save money; it produces turnover, and turnover is the most expensive line in remote hiring.

9:50 25 hours a week, priced two ways

A worked example. Say you want 25 hours a week of inbox, calendar, travel and light CRM work, with overlap until 2pm Eastern. Convert to monthly hours: 25 a week is about 108 a month. Price the two realistic models. Managed nearshore at the middle half of our virtual assistant placements, $9.23 to $12.00 an hour, is roughly $1,000 to $1,300 a month. A US-based managed service at the published $30 to $75 is roughly $3,250 to $8,125. Add what the model does not cover: on a marketplace, the fee and four to six hours of your own screening; on an all-in rate, nothing. Then price the downside: a 30-day guarantee and a lifetime replacement are very different insurance policies.

Compare annual cost, not hourly rate. That nearshore option is roughly $12,000 to $15,600 a year. The US managed option, $39,000 to $97,500. And where nearshore is the wrong answer: you need someone physically present, the role requires US licensure, the work is a one-off project where a marketplace is the better tool, you have no process to hand over, or you need under five hours a month. Since this video has been asking everyone for numbers, here are ours.

11:21 How Virtustant charges

One all-in hourly rate from $7.00, which already contains the professional's pay, payroll and compliance. The median across our last 462 placements was $12.75; $10.73 for the virtual assistant role. Fee to hire: zero. No placement, setup or recruitment fee. Term: month to month, and you can change the hours without renegotiating a contract. Guarantee: lifetime replacement, no time cap. A first shortlist of 3 to 5 vetted bilingual candidates within 48 hours, and an average of 3 days from scoping to placement. Against a comparable US hire, once payroll, benefits and overhead are counted, clients save up to 70%. How we make money, in one sentence: if you pay your agent $10 an hour, we give them $9 and keep the dollar in the middle.

None of those terms is unique on its own. What is worth comparing is the combination, and you now have the arithmetic to do it. The full tables, every published rate and the source behind each one are in the article linked in the description, along with the pricing guide that runs all five models at 20 and 40 hours.

12:30 The tables, the sources, and the number for your role

If you want the number for your specific role instead of a range, the discovery call link is there too. And if your next question is what staffing agencies charge across markups, placement fees and all-in rates, that video is right here.