How Much Does a Personal Assistant Cost? (2026 Rates)
A dedicated Filipino virtual personal assistant costs about $6.50 to $10 per hour. A US-based personal assistant costs $25 to $45. An executive assistant agency will quote you $2,000 to $5,000 a month, and for that you will typically get shared capacity rather than a person who knows how you like your travel booked.
This guide gives you the real numbers, explains what moves the rate, covers the costs nobody quotes, and is honest about the thing that actually determines whether this hire works, which has nothing to do with the assistant. VA Masters has placed 1,000+ virtual assistants, including many in personal and executive support roles.
The Short Answer
A dedicated virtual personal assistant through VA Masters costs $6.50 to $10 per hour, which is up to 80 percent less than an equivalent US hire. For a full-time role that is roughly $1,100 to $1,700 a month, with no recruitment fee and no setup fee.
The range exists because personal assistance spans a wide gap in trust. Booking travel from an itinerary you specified is a different job from owning your inbox, protecting your calendar from people who want a piece of it, and knowing without being told which meetings you would want moved.
The number that matters is not the hourly rate. It is what an hour of your time is worth, and this is the one role where that comparison is not merely favorable, it is faintly absurd.
What You Pay by Region
Here is the same role, priced across the markets businesses actually hire from. These are typical market ranges rather than firm quotes, and they do move over time, but the overall shape of the picture is stable across years and it is the shape that matters far more than any individual figure in it.
| Where you hire | Typical hourly rate | What you are really paying for |
|---|---|---|
| United States | $25 – $45/hr | US wage base |
| United Kingdom | £16 – £30/hr | Same role, UK wage base |
| Australia | AU$35 – AU$55/hr | Highest local rates of the three |
| EA agencies | $2,000 – $5,000/mo | Frequently shared capacity, not a dedicated person |
| Latin America | $8 – $16/hr | US timezone overlap |
| Philippines (VA Masters) | $6.50 – $10/hr | Discreet, warm, excellent English, dedicated |
The agency row is worth examining closely, because it is where the disappointment usually lives. A monthly retainer for executive support frequently buys you a pool rather than a person, which means nobody ever learns that you hate early flights, that one particular client always gets a meeting, and that you go quiet on Thursdays because that is when you actually think. Those details are the entire value of a personal assistant and a shared pool cannot hold them.
What Actually Drives the Price
Six things move the number, and trust is the biggest of them.
**Inbox ownership.** Booking a flight is straightforward. Reading your inbox, deciding what matters, drafting replies in your voice, and protecting you from the rest is the highest-trust work in the category and it is priced at the top of the range for good reason.
**Judgment.** A PA who does exactly what they are told is useful. One who knows what you would have wanted without being asked is transformative, and that difference is worth several dollars an hour without any argument.
**Discretion.** This person will see your calendar, your correspondence, and frequently parts of your personal life. Discretion is not a nice-to-have in this role, it is the entire foundation of it.
**Complexity of life.** One calendar and occasional travel is one job. Multiple businesses, complex travel, family logistics, and a demanding board is another, and it deserves a different rate.
**Timezone overlap.** Personal assistance is largely a real-time function, so meaningful overlap matters more here than in almost any other role and it is worth agreeing precisely.
**How you hire.** An agency sells you a retainer and often a pool. A marketplace sells the lowest rate and you do the screening for the most trusted person in your working life, which is an odd thing to economize on. Recruitment gives you a dedicated, screened person.
Meet the People Behind Executive Support
Pricing Models, and Which One Suits You
There are four ways this role is normally bought, and they are priced on completely different logic. Comparing their headline numbers directly is a category error, and it is the reason so many businesses feel they were quoted wildly inconsistent prices for what they assumed was the same thing.
**Hourly, dedicated.** You pay for a set number of hours from one person who works only for you. Transparent, flexible, and the model we use, because it is the only one where you can see exactly what you are paying for.
**Monthly retainer.** A fixed fee for a defined package of hours or deliverables. Simple to budget, and it usually costs more per hour than it appears once you divide it out, which is rather the point of the packaging.
**Per task or per project.** Suits genuinely one-off work. Poorly suited to anything ongoing, because you will spend more time scoping and pricing each task than the task was worth.
**Marketplace or freelance.** The cheapest headline rate available and the one with by far the highest variance. You are doing the screening yourself, and the cost of getting that wrong is not on the invoice but it is very real.
The distinction people miss is between buying hours and buying a person. A marketplace sells you hours, and hours are interchangeable. A dedicated hire gives you someone who accumulates knowledge of your business month after month, and that accumulation is the entire reason the arrangement gets better over time rather than staying flat. It does not show up in a rate comparison, and it is the largest single difference between the models.
Retainers deserve one further word of caution, because the packaging is genuinely persuasive. A monthly fee feels simpler than an hourly rate, and it removes the mild anxiety of watching a timer. What it also removes is your ability to see what you are buying. Divide any retainer by the hours actually delivered and the effective rate is usually a good deal higher than you assumed, which is not dishonest but is precisely why the packaging exists.
Agency, Freelancer, or Recruitment?
These three routes are frequently discussed as though they were price points on the same product. They are not. They are different products, and the price difference reflects what is included rather than what is delivered.
An agency sells you a managed outcome. They screen, they supervise, they replace people, and they carry the risk of things going wrong. That is real value and it is priced accordingly, generally at a substantial multiple of the underlying labor cost. If you want to be entirely hands-off and you are willing to pay for it, an agency is a defensible purchase.
A freelance marketplace sells you access and nothing else. The rate is the lowest available, the screening is entirely yours, and the variance in quality is enormous. Plenty of people have found excellent long-term help this way. Plenty of others have burned three months and two hires discovering that they are not good at screening, which is not a character flaw, it is simply a skill they had no reason to have.
Recruitment, which is what we do, sits between them and is frequently misunderstood. You pay a normal hourly rate for the person, and somebody else has already narrowed a thousand applicants down to the two or three worth your time. You get a dedicated person rather than shared capacity, you manage them directly rather than through an account manager, and you are not paying an ongoing margin for supervision you did not ask for.
The Hidden Costs Nobody Quotes
The hourly rate is the number everyone compares. It is rarely the number that decides whether the hire was a good one, and treating it as though it were is how businesses end up with a cheap arrangement that costs them a fortune.
**Your own time.** The entire point of the hire and the number almost nobody actually calculates. If an hour of your time is worth $150, and you are spending five hours a week on scheduling, expenses, and travel, you are burning $3,000 a month to avoid spending $1,400.
**Cognitive load.** The larger and less visible cost. The mental weight of holding two hundred small unfinished things is not measured anywhere, and it is a very substantial tax on the quality of your thinking. A good PA does not just do the tasks, they remove the tasks from your head, which is a different and larger benefit.
**Your failure to delegate.** The real reason this hire fails, when it fails. Nothing to do with the assistant. Everything to do with the person who keeps doing things themselves because explaining it would take longer, which is true once and false the hundredth time.
**Turnover.** A PA who leaves in month four takes with them everything they learned about your preferences, your people, and your rhythms, and there is no document that captures any of it.
Where a virtual personal assistant lands in that range depends on trust and complexity: scheduling, travel, and expenses at the lower end, inbox ownership, calendar protection, and anticipatory judgment at the upper end. During your discovery call we recommend the right level, so you are not overpaying for skills you do not need. Because the role scales with your business, you never pay for capacity you are not yet using.
I resisted this for two years because I told myself that explaining things would take longer than doing them, which is a very persuasive lie you can tell yourself indefinitely. It took about six weeks of proper handover and now she runs my calendar better than I did, and she knows which meetings I would want moved before I do. The savings are substantial, but that is not why anyone should do this. The reason is that I stopped carrying two hundred small things in my head.
Without a VA
- Evenings lost to scheduling and expenses
- An inbox you never get to the bottom of
- Travel booked badly and expensively
- Two hundred small things in your head
- Meetings you should never have accepted
With VA Masters
- Evenings back
- An inbox that is managed
- Travel booked the way you like it
- A head that is clear enough to think
- A calendar that protects your time
What You Actually Get at Each Price Point
Rates within the Philippines vary for real and legible reasons, and understanding what sits behind each band stops you from either overpaying for capability you will not use or buying a disappointment you will have to replace.
$6.50 – $7.50: Scheduling, travel booking from your instructions, expense processing, research, and general administrative tasks. Reliable execution of defined work.
$7.50 – $8.50: The above plus calendar ownership, meeting coordination, inbox triage, vendor and subscription management, and personal errands and coordination.
$8.50 – $10: Full inbox ownership with drafting in your voice, calendar protection with real authority to decline, anticipatory judgment, and the confidence to tell you that you should not take that meeting.
Above that range: You are describing a chief of staff, which is a genuinely different role with genuinely different responsibilities. We would rather say so than sell you an assistant for a strategic job.
Pro Tip
Spend the first two weeks over-explaining, and record yourself doing it. Not just what to do but why: why you always fly out the night before, why that client always gets a slot, why you protect Thursday mornings. Most PA hires fail because the person was given tasks and never given context, and so they execute correctly and anticipate nothing, which is about a third of the available value. The context is the job. Two weeks of genuinely explaining yourself buys you years of someone who knows what you would have wanted, and almost nobody is willing to spend it.
| Feature | VA Masters | Freelance Marketplaces |
|---|---|---|
| Dedicated VA who works only for you | ✓ | ✗ |
| Custom skills test per role | ✓ | ✗ |
| Top 2 to 3 of 1,000+ applicants | ✓ | ✗ |
| Transparent hourly rate, no hidden fees | ✓ | ✗ |
| Replacement guarantee | ✓ | ✗ |
| No upfront fee to start | ✓ | ✗ |
What to Ask Before You Pay Anyone
Whichever route you choose, these questions separate a real quote from a number designed to get you onto a call.
What is the fully loaded cost? Not the headline rate. Recruitment fees, setup fees, platform charges, minimum terms, and what happens if it does not work out.
Is this person dedicated to me? Shared capacity and a dedicated hire are different products at similar prices, and only one of them ever learns your business.
Who screened them, and how? If the answer is a resume review and a friendly chat, you are doing the screening yourself and you have not been told.
What happens in month four? Ask directly about replacement. Everyone sounds confident on day one, and month four is when you find out what the arrangement is actually worth.
When It Actually Pays Back
The arithmetic here is so lopsided that it is faintly embarrassing to write out, and yet people resist this hire for years.
If an hour of your time is worth $100, and a personal assistant costs $8 an hour, then every hour they take off you produces roughly twelve times its cost. There is no other decision available to you with that return profile, and there is not a close second.
The larger benefit is one that resists measurement entirely. The cognitive load of holding a great many small unfinished obligations is a real and substantial tax on the quality of your thinking, and it is not something you notice until it lifts. People who hire a good personal assistant consistently describe the same experience, which is not that they got hours back but that their head got quieter, and they almost invariably say they should have done it years earlier.
The honest caveat, and it is the only one that matters: this hire fails when you will not delegate. Not when the assistant is weak. If you are constitutionally unable to let go of your inbox, you will pay for a personal assistant and continue doing your own scheduling, and you will conclude that it did not work. That is worth being honest with yourself about before you spend anything, because no assistant of any quality can solve it for you.
Want a real number for your specific role?
Tell us what the role actually involves and we will give you an honest rate, not a range designed to get you on a call.
How VA Masters Recruits for This Role
VA Masters is a boutique recruitment agency, not a marketplace. Every role runs through our 6-stage process, which narrows 1,000+ applicants down to the 2 to 3 best candidates you actually meet and choose between.
Detailed Job Posting
We build a custom job description around your calendar, your inbox, your travel, and the hours you actually need covered.
Candidate Collection
Each role attracts 1,000+ applicants through our sourcing and referral network.
Initial Screening
We filter for executive support experience, discretion, excellent written English, and a stable home-office setup.
Custom Skills Test
Candidates triage a messy inbox, resolve a scheduling conflict with competing priorities, and draft a difficult reply in someone else’s voice.
In-Depth Interview
We assess discretion, judgment, anticipation, and personal fit, which matters more in this role than in any other.
Client Interview
You meet the top 2 to 3 finalists and choose the person who fits best.
The stage that matters most here is the custom skills test, and the part that matters is the scheduling conflict. We give candidates two genuinely competing priorities and no correct answer, and we watch what they do. Some ask for a rule. Some pick one and defend it. The best ones work out from context which one you would have chosen, and then check. That instinct is the whole difference between an assistant who reduces your workload and one who merely relocates it, and there is nothing on a resume that predicts it.
What Our Clients Say
Real Messages from Real Clients
Common Costing Mistakes
These are the mistakes we see most often, and every one of them is avoidable.
Hiring on price: This is the most trusted person in your working life. Economizing here is an odd choice. Buying agency capacity: A pool cannot learn your preferences, which are the entire value.
Giving tasks without context: You will get execution and no anticipation, which is a third of the value. Refusing to hand over the inbox: Then you have not really hired anyone.
Common Mistake
Do not hire a personal assistant if you are not going to actually delegate. This is the single reason this hire fails, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with the person you hire. The pattern is entirely predictable: you keep doing your own scheduling because explaining it would take longer, you keep your inbox because nobody else could possibly manage it, and six months later you are paying someone to do the small residue of tasks you were willing to release, and you have concluded that virtual assistants are overrated. Be honest with yourself before you spend anything. If you cannot let go, no assistant on earth at any price can help you, and the problem is not one that hiring solves.
How to Budget for This Properly
Work out the hours the role genuinely needs before you look at any rate. Most businesses either overestimate, and buy full-time capacity for part-time work, or underestimate wildly and then wonder why the person is permanently behind.
Then budget for the first month separately. Onboarding takes your time, and the person will not be at full productivity immediately, exactly as a local hire would not be. Nobody quotes this and everybody experiences it, and the businesses that plan for it consistently report a far better first quarter than the ones who were quietly hoping it would not apply to them.
And decide in advance what a good outcome looks like in numbers. If you cannot say what the role should produce, you will not be able to tell whether it did, and you will end up judging the hire on how busy they seemed, which is the worst available proxy for whether they were useful.
One more piece of budgeting discipline, and it is the one almost nobody applies. Run the three-year number, not the monthly one. A hire who stays three years costs you one onboarding. A hire who leaves twice in that period costs you three, plus two gaps in coverage, plus everything the departing people knew about your business and took with them. Over any realistic horizon, retention swamps the hourly rate as a determinant of what this actually cost you, and it is the variable nobody puts on the comparison sheet because it is the one they cannot promise.
Why VA Masters Prices This Way
VA Masters has placed 1,000+ Filipino virtual assistants with businesses across the US, UK, Australia, Canada, and Europe. Our rate is a single transparent hourly figure, with no recruitment fee, no setup fee, no platform charge, and no minimum term.
We are deliberate about that structure, because most of the pricing complexity in this market exists to obscure something. Recruitment fees front-load your risk before you have met anyone. Setup fees charge you for work that has not happened yet. Minimum terms exist so that the provider is protected if the match is poor, which is a strange thing to protect the provider from. We took all of it out, which means we only make money if the person we found is someone you actually want to keep.
The reason we can price this way is not a trick. A capable, discreet professional in the Philippines earns a fraction of a US equivalent, and we pay above the local market rather than below it, which matters enormously in a role built entirely on trust and continuity.
And we are direct about fit. Personal assistance is the one role where chemistry genuinely matters, which is why we present two or three finalists and let you choose rather than assigning you someone. If none of them feel right, we recruit again, because a technically excellent assistant you do not click with is not going to work and we would rather find that out before you hire than after.
Happy VAs Cost You Less Over Time
The most expensive VA is the one who leaves in month four, because you pay the onboarding cost twice and lose everything they learned about your business in between. That is why VA Masters invests in fair pay, training, and real support.
This is not a values statement dressed up as an argument, it is the argument. Providers who pay at the very bottom of the market have high turnover, and their clients absorb that turnover as repeated onboarding, repeated ramp-up, and repeated loss of accumulated knowledge. The headline rate looked cheaper and the three-year cost was not. Happy, stable VAs stay longer, which is not a soft benefit, it is the single largest determinant of what this actually costs you. Here is how our VAs rate the experience.
Employee-rated 5.0 on Glassdoor
As Featured In
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does a virtual personal assistant cost?
A dedicated Filipino virtual personal assistant through VA Masters costs about $6.50 to $10 per hour. A US-based personal assistant typically costs $25 to $45 per hour or $50,000 to $80,000 a year fully loaded, and executive assistant agencies commonly charge $2,000 to $5,000 a month.
What does a virtual personal assistant do?
Calendar and inbox management, travel booking and itineraries, meeting coordination, expense processing, personal errands and research, appointment scheduling, gift and event coordination, subscription and account management, and generally absorbing the administrative friction of a busy life.
Is a virtual PA the same as an executive assistant?
They overlap and the titles are used loosely. A virtual personal assistant typically covers a broader mix of professional and personal admin. An executive assistant usually implies more business-critical calendar and communication ownership. Define the actual work rather than trusting either title.
How many hours do I need?
Most people start at 10 to 20 hours a week and are surprised by how quickly it grows once they realize what can be delegated. Full-time makes sense once the person is managing your inbox and your calendar as their primary function.
Can a virtual PA manage my inbox?
Yes, and it is frequently the highest-value thing they do. It requires trust, a clear set of rules, and a willingness on your part to let go, which is the actual obstacle for most people rather than any capability of the assistant.
What about personal tasks and privacy?
A virtual PA will see a great deal of your life. Use an NDA, grant least-privilege access, keep financial credentials properly scoped, and be deliberate about what is shared. Discretion is the single most important quality in this role and it is what we screen for hardest.
Can a virtual PA work my hours?
Yes. Filipino VAs commonly work US, UK, or Australian hours. For a personal assistant, overlap matters more than for most roles, because the value is largely in real-time responsiveness. Agree it explicitly before hiring.
Do I pay a recruitment fee?
No. VA Masters charges no recruitment fee and no setup fee. You sign the agreement, we recruit, you meet the finalists, and you only pay once you are happy with the person we found.
What tools do virtual PAs use?
Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, calendar and scheduling tools, travel platforms, expense tools like Expensify or Ramp, task managers, and whatever else you already run. The tools matter far less here than judgment and discretion do.
Is a cheap virtual PA a false economy?
Usually. This person sees your calendar, your inbox, and frequently your personal life, and the qualities you need most are discretion and judgment, neither of which correlates with being cheap. This is a role where paying a little more is unambiguously worth it.
How do I know it is working?
Count the hours you get back and, more importantly, notice whether you have stopped thinking about the things they now handle. The real measure of a good PA is not what they do, it is what you have stopped needing to hold in your head.
How fast can I hire one?
After a short discovery call to define the role, VA Masters usually presents vetted candidates within a few business days. You interview the top 2 to 3 finalists, choose your favorite, and we support onboarding.
Ready to Get Your Time and Your Head Back?
Hire a dedicated virtual personal assistant who is discreet, anticipates what you need, and costs a fraction of a US hire.
- No upfront payment required
- No setup fees
- Top 2 to 3 candidates from 1,000+ applicants
- Only pay when you are 100% satisfied
Anne is the Operations Manager at VA MASTERS, a boutique recruitment agency specializing in Filipino virtual assistants for global businesses. She leads the end-to-end recruitment process — from custom job briefs and skills testing to candidate delivery and ongoing VA management — and has personally overseen the placement of 1,000+ virtual assistants across industries including e-commerce, real estate, healthcare, fintech, digital marketing, and legal services.
With deep expertise in Philippine work culture, remote team integration, and business process optimization, Anne helps clients achieve up to 80% cost savings compared to local hiring while maintaining top-tier quality and performance.
Email: [email protected]
Telephone: +13127660301
