The sticker rate, and the number you'll actually pay.
You've got three VA pricing pages open in three tabs, and they don't agree on anything: one says $8 an hour, one says $2,600 a month, one wants a call before it'll tell you a number. So here's the straight answer first. Most virtual assistants run $10 to $40 an hour. Offshore talent in the Philippines or India sits at the low end, roughly $5 to $15; a US-based VA sits at the top, $30 to $75 and up. Booked monthly, part-time help lands around $500 to $2,000 and full-time roughly $1,000 to $5,000 or more, driven mostly by where the person sits and how specialized the work is. That range is real. What the rest of this covers is where in it you'll actually land, and why the hourly rate on the page is rarely the number that leaves your account.
Five pricing models, and they don't compare cleanly.
Before you can judge a rate you have to know which of these you're being quoted, because a $17 hour and a $17 hour can mean very different things.
Hourly, pay as you go
You're billed for time actually worked, often rounded to the nearest 15 or 30 minutes. Best when your volume is low or unpredictable. You pay a premium for that flexibility, and you carry the management yourself.
Monthly retainer
A flat fee for a set commitment, part-time (around 20 hours a week) or full-time (40). This is the most common shape for dedicated VAs. The effective hourly rate drops versus pure hourly, in exchange for a standing commitment.
Per task or per request
You pay for discrete jobs rather than time, sometimes on a low monthly base ($35 and up) with a queue you drop tasks into. Predictable for small, defined work; it falls apart the moment a task needs real back-and-forth.
Tiered hour blocks
You prepay a bucket, commonly 10, 20, or 40 hours a week, at a set rate per tier. Bigger blocks buy a lower effective rate. Watch two things: whether unused hours roll over, and the overage rate once you blow past the tier (often $35 to $80 an hour).
Managed team or pool
You buy hours against a coordinated team rather than one person, usually with a project manager who assigns and checks the work. The rate looks similar to a good retainer, but you're paying for breadth and continuity, not a single skill set.
The single biggest lever is where they sit.
Geography moves the number more than experience or role does. A US-based VA can cost three to five times what an equally capable person in the Philippines charges for the same task. Here's the rough shape of it in 2026.
| Where they're based | Typical hourly (USD) | Full-time monthly (USD) |
|---|---|---|
| Philippines / India (offshore) | $5 to $15 | $1,000 to $3,000 |
| Latin America | $9 to $25 | $2,000 to $4,000 |
| Eastern Europe | $18 to $35 | $3,000 to $5,000 |
| United States / Canada | $25 to $75+ | $4,000 to $8,000+ |
| Specialized (bookkeeping, marketing, exec) | $20 to $100 | Add 20% to 60% |
Two more levers sit on top of location. Skill and specialization: general admin (inbox, calendar, data entry) is the cheapest work there is, while a bookkeeper, a paid-ads specialist, or a true executive assistant commands a premium because fewer people do it well. And experience: an entry-level VA with under two years might run $9 to $14 an hour, a senior one with five-plus years two to three times that. When a quote looks suspiciously cheap, it's usually cheap on exactly one of these axes, and you find out which one in month two.
The hourly rate tells you what you're billed. It doesn't tell you what the help actually costs you.
Why the cheapest rate often costs the most.
Every rate above is the direct cost, the money that shows up on the invoice. The real cost of getting work off your plate includes a second set of numbers nobody puts on the pricing page, and for a lot of founders that second set is bigger than the first. Chasing the lowest hourly rate is the most common way people overpay.
Start with the obvious add-ons. Setup or onboarding fees are common (a one-time $250 per worker is typical). Overage charges kick in past your tier. Many plans don't refund unused hours, so a slow month is money burned. Some agencies want a security deposit or a 30-day notice period to cancel. Read for those before you sign, not after.
Then the quieter costs, the ones that decide whether the whole thing was worth it. Onboarding time: any VA takes real hours of yours to bring up to speed, and you don't break even on day one, you break even over weeks. Management overhead: with a solo freelancer, the delegating, checking, and re-explaining is your job now, and if it eats an hour of your day to save two, the math is thinner than it looked. And continuity risk, which is the expensive one. A single freelancer can get sick, get busy, or vanish, and replacing them means recruiting, onboarding, and rebuilding context from scratch. Industry estimates put the cost of replacing a departed worker at 30% to 50% of what they were paid. A rate that's a dollar an hour cheaper doesn't come close to covering one bad churn.
What an in-house assistant really runs.
The honest comparison isn't a VA's rate against an employee's salary. It's a VA's rate against an employee's fully loaded cost, which is a much bigger number.
- Base salary is the start, not the total. A US admin assistant around $45,000 to $48,000 a year is the headline. It climbs from there.
- Payroll taxes and benefits add roughly 25% to 30%. FICA, health insurance, paid time off, and the rest turn a $47,000 salary into something closer to $61,000 before anyone's done any work.
- Equipment, software, and space. A workstation, licenses, and (if you have an office) a desk add a few thousand more a year.
- Recruiting, onboarding, and management. The time to hire, train, and supervise is real cost even when it doesn't hit a line item.
- All in, a $47,000 role often costs $65,000 to $73,000 a year. Somewhere around $5,500 to $6,000 a month for one full-time person, before turnover risk.
Against that, a managed full-time VA in the $2,000 to $3,000 a month range lands the widely cited 50% to 70% savings. The number is real. What the savings don't buy you is a person embedded full-time in your culture, physically present, holding years of institutional memory. If that's genuinely what the role needs, hire in-house and pay for it. For execution work that can be scoped, documented, and handed off, you're paying a large premium for presence you may not need.
One rate, a whole bench behind it.
Most of the hidden costs above trace back to the same root: you hired one person for a job that's really five jobs. This is where the team model, and Lil Assistance specifically, prices differently on purpose.
A solo VA gives you one skill set. The week your priority shifts from inbox triage to a landing page to a month of social graphics, that one person either can't do it or does it slowly, and you're back to hiring a second freelancer and managing two. Lil Assistance sells access to a coordinated team of specialists (admin, web, software, design, content and SEO, video) instead, and your hours reallocate across them as your priorities move rather than being locked to one role. A project manager handles the delegation and quality checks, so the management overhead that makes a solo freelancer feel like more work, not less, sits with them rather than you.
On cost, since that's the whole question here: the 20 hours a week plan is $340 (about $17 an hour, roughly $1,360 a month), and the 40 hours a week plan is $600 (about $15 an hour, roughly $2,400 a month), plus a one-time $250 setup fee per remote worker, with no long-term contract. Every plan includes a project manager who coordinates your team and handles delegation, and they're your single point of contact rather than someone assigned exclusively to you; a project manager may cover up to around seven clients, depending on project size and staffing. That lands in the same monthly territory as a single dedicated offshore VA, except the hours can flow across specialties in a given week.
Solo freelance VA
Lowest rate for one narrow, steady task.
- ✓ Cheapest option for a single tiny job, especially offshore
- ✓ Direct one-to-one relationship, no middle layer
- × One skill set; a second need means a second hire
- × You do the managing, and coverage stops if they do
Lil Assistance
A flexible team behind one point of contact.
- ✓ Multiple specialties under one engagement, hours flex by priority
- ✓ A project manager absorbs the delegation and QA overhead
- ✓ Clear effective rate ($15 to $17 an hour), no long-term contract
- × A recurring commitment plus a $250 setup fee; overkill for one small one-off
The honest limit: if you have exactly one narrow recurring task and want the rock-bottom price, a single gig freelancer will beat a team on cost, and you should take it. The team model earns its keep once your work spans functions, or once the managing and re-hiring have quietly become their own part-time job. You can see how the hours and plans work on the Lil Assistance pricing page.
How much does a virtual assistant cost per hour?
Most land between $10 and $40 an hour in 2026. Offshore VAs (Philippines, India) run about $5 to $15, US-based VAs $30 to $75 or more, with Latin America and Eastern Europe in between. Specialized work like bookkeeping, paid ads, or executive support pushes toward the top of the range or past it.
How much does a virtual assistant cost per month?
Part-time (around 20 hours a week) typically runs $500 to $2,000, and full-time (40 hours) roughly $1,000 to $5,000 or more, depending mostly on location and specialization. A managed full-time offshore VA working US hours commonly sits around $2,000 to $3,000 a month. Remember to add any one-time setup fee and check the overage rate.
Is a virtual assistant cheaper than hiring an employee?
Usually yes, and by more than the salary gap suggests. An employee's true cost is their base salary plus payroll taxes, benefits, equipment, software, space, and management, often 30% to 50% above base. A managed VA typically comes in 50% to 70% cheaper. The tradeoff is that an employee is embedded, present, and holds long-term institutional knowledge a VA doesn't.
Why are US-based virtual assistants so much more expensive than offshore ones?
Local cost of living and wage expectations. A US VA charging $40 an hour and a Philippines-based VA charging $10 can be equally skilled at the same task; you're paying for the labor market they live in, plus, sometimes, same-time-zone overlap and native-English nuance. Whether that premium is worth it depends on whether the work genuinely needs it.
Are cheap virtual assistants worth it?
Sometimes, for narrow, well-defined tasks you can document clearly. But the lowest rate often carries the highest hidden cost: more of your time spent managing, weaker work that needs redoing, and higher turnover. Replacing a VA who leaves can cost 30% to 50% of what you paid them. Price the total, not just the hour.
How many hours of VA support do I actually need?
Start by listing what you'd hand off for a week and roughly timing it. Most founders overestimate at first, then find recurring admin alone fills 10 to 20 hours. Twenty hours a week is a common starting point; you can scale up once the handoff is working. Beginning smaller and adding hours beats overbuying a tier you burn half of.
Price the whole thing, not just the hour.
If the number you keep circling is the rate, widen the frame: management time, coverage, and how many different jobs you're really trying to hand off. That's what decides the real cost. When the work spans more than one skill, a flexible team can be the cleaner answer.