How much does a virtual assistant cost, and when is AI the cheaper choice?

How much does a virtual assistant cost per hour?

Upwork, the freelance marketplace, lists a median rate of $10 to $20 an hour for virtual assistants. It says the average VA on its platform charges $18 to $35 an hour, based on skills and experience.

Upwork also gives rates by type of work for North American freelancers with strong track records:

Type of VA work	Upwork hourly rate
Admin or data entry	$12 to $20+
Marketing, customer service or bookkeeping support	$20 to $35+
Advanced VA, consultant or executive assistant	$38 to $50+

Upwork names the factors that push the rate up. These include more experience, more complex skills, knowledge of tools such as CRMs or ecommerce systems, and the VA's local cost of living.

What does a virtual assistant cost per month?

Most owners buy a block of hours each week. Here is what 10 hours a week looks like, which is about 43 hours a month. I worked out these totals from the hourly rates above.

Option	Hourly rate	About 43 hours a month
Freelance admin VA (Upwork)	$12 to $20	$516 to $860
Freelance marketing or support VA (Upwork)	$20 to $35	$860 to $1,505
Freelance executive assistant (Upwork)	$38 to $50	$1,634 to $2,150
Time Etc, 40-hour plan	$37	$1,480 for 40 hours

Time Etc is a VA agency that says its assistants are 100% US based. As of October 2026, its plans run from $390 a month for 10 hours to $2,160 a month for 60 hours. That works out to $36 to $39 an hour. The plans renew monthly, with no setup fee and no notice period to cancel.

An agency costs more per hour than a freelancer. In return, it finds and checks the assistant for you and can replace them if they leave.

How does a VA compare with hiring an in-house assistant?

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports a median pay of $48,310 a year for secretaries and administrative assistants, as of May 2025. That is $23.23 an hour. For executive assistants, the median is $76,590 a year.

Wages are only part of what an employee costs. BLS data for June 2026 shows wages make up 70% of total pay costs for private employers. Benefits make up the other 30%. Using that average share, a $23.23 hourly wage becomes about $33 an hour in total cost. A full-time assistant at the median wage costs about $69,000 a year with benefits.

A full-time hire makes sense when you have 40 hours of work a week and want someone who learns the business deeply. A VA makes sense when you need 5 to 20 hours a week, or when the work comes and goes.

What hidden costs should you plan for?

• Training time: Expect to spend your own hours teaching the VA your tools and rules in the first few weeks.
• Platform fees: Freelance marketplaces add their own fees, so check the total at checkout.
• Tool seats: A VA may need their own login for your email, CRM or project tools, which can add a monthly seat fee.
• Worker classification: The IRS looks at how much control you have over what the worker does and how they do it. If you direct the work like an employer, the person may count as an employee. That changes your tax duties.
• Turnover: If a freelancer leaves, you pay for training again.

Can AI do the work of a virtual assistant?

AI can do part of the job, and it costs much less. As of October 2026, the main AI assistants for business cost this much per user:

AI assistant	Billed yearly	Billed monthly
ChatGPT Business	$20 a month	$25 a month
Claude Team	$20 a month	$25 a month
Microsoft 365 Copilot Business	$21 a month	$25.20 a month

ChatGPT Business needs at least 2 seats. Microsoft also lists a current offer price of $18 a user a month for Copilot Business on a yearly plan.

What AI handles well

• Drafting: Emails, replies, social posts, job ads and proposals.
• Summaries: Long email threads, meeting notes and documents.
• Sorting: Tagging emails, listing to-dos and pulling key facts from files.
• Research: A quick brief on a supplier, a prospect or a topic.

What a person still does better

• Phone calls: Calling suppliers, chasing payments and handling upset customers. For answering inbound calls, compare a virtual receptionist vs an AI receptionist.
• Judgment: Deciding what matters most this week or when to bend a rule.
• Follow-through: Owning a task until it is done, across many apps and people.
• Logins and errands: Booking travel with your card, sorting a delivery problem or dealing with a bank.

AI also makes confident mistakes, so a person should check anything it sends to a customer. My guide to AI employees covers what today's AI agents can and can't do, with research behind it.

Which option should you choose?

Your situation	Best fit
You need help writing, sorting and summarizing	An AI assistant at $20 to $25 a month
You need 5 to 15 hours a week of admin work	A freelance VA, plus AI to save them time
You want a vetted assistant with backup cover	A VA agency
You have 40 hours of work and want deep business knowledge	An in-house hire
The same task repeats hundreds of times a month	Automation or a custom AI tool

Many owners do best with a mix. The AI does the first draft and the sorting. The VA checks it, makes the calls and closes the loop. That way you pay for fewer human hours, and each hour goes to work that needs a person.

When does a custom AI assistant make sense?

A general AI assistant does not know your process, your prices or your rules. A custom tool can follow them and work inside your own systems. It is worth looking at when:

• One task eats most of the VA's hours: For example, copying order details into your accounting app. My guide to data entry outsourcing covers this case.
• The work follows the same steps each time: Booking, quoting and invoice follow-ups often do.
• Mistakes are costly: A custom tool can check its own work against your rules and flag problems.
• You pay for many seats: A tool you own can cost less over time than paying per user.

When does a human VA still beat AI?

Be honest with yourself here, since a site that builds the AI alternative has a reason to oversell it. A human VA is still the better choice for anything that needs real judgement with an unhappy customer, a phone call where tone matters, or a task that changes every week in ways you have not written down yet. AI is the better choice for the parts of the job that are the same every time: sorting an inbox, drafting a first-pass reply, pulling data from one place into another. Most businesses end up wanting both, a smaller human VA role focused on judgement, and AI handling the repetitive load underneath it.

On current US market data, a freelance VA runs roughly $20 to $50 an hour for US-based talent and $10 to $20 for offshore talent, with North American specialty work running $38 to $50 or more. A managed VA agency typically bills $1,000 to $3,000 a month for full-time coverage, a 20 to 40% premium over a direct freelancer, in exchange for the agency handling sourcing, vetting and replacement if someone leaves.

How would Blur Studio help you decide?

I would list the tasks your VA does, or the ones you wish someone would do. I would sort them by work AI can draft, work that can run on its own, and work that needs a person. Then I would build the AI tools and connections that fit your systems, so your assistant spends their hours on calls, judgment and customers. Everything I build stays in your name, and I keep it updated.