What a VA
actually
costs.

Every comparison you'll read online quotes an hourly rate and stops there. The hourly rate is the least interesting number. What matters is the loaded cost: rate, plus the overhead you absorb, plus the churn you'll pay for again in six months.

Option 1 — Marketplace freelancer

Sticker: $6–$18/hour. Loaded: $9–$26/hour.

The cheapest entry point and the highest variance. You're the recruiter, the trainer, the payroll department and the QA. Budget for:

• 10–20 hours of your own time screening and trialling candidates
• Platform fees of 5–20% depending on the marketplace
• A 40–60% first-year churn rate — most freelance VAs are juggling three clients and will drop the least profitable one
• Re-training every time that happens

It works well if you already know exactly what you want, the task is narrow, and you enjoy managing. It fails badly when the role is broad or the work is confidential.

Option 2 — Offshore agency

Sticker: $900–$2,400/month full-time. Loaded: roughly the same, if the agency is honest.

You're buying the recruitment, the vetting, the payroll, the equipment and — the underrated part — the replacement guarantee. The right question isn't "what do you charge?" It's:

• What share of this goes to the assistant? If the agency won't say, that's the answer. A $1,600/month seat where the assistant sees $400 will churn.
• Is there a recruitment or setup fee? Many charge one to two months up front.
• What's the notice period? Twelve-month lock-ins are still common and are a red flag when the product is a person you haven't met yet.
• What happens on day one if it isn't working? Replacement window, refund policy, who owns the SOPs.

For reference: we don't publish a rate card, because the honest number moves with scope, shift and seniority. What we will tell you before you ask is the assistant's pay band, that there's no setup fee, and that the notice period is short. Our three engagement models are here.

Option 3 — Local full-time hire

Sticker: $42,000–$58,000/year US admin salary. Loaded: $55,000–$75,000.

Add 15–25% for payroll tax and benefits, $1,500–$3,000 for equipment and software seats, and a recruiter fee of 15–20% of first-year salary if you don't hire direct. Then add six to ten weeks of hiring time during which the work still isn't getting done.

Worth it when the role needs to be in the room, handle regulated work, or manage people. Not worth it for inbox, scheduling, CRM hygiene and invoicing.

The number nobody counts

Take your realistic hourly value — for most founders running something with revenue, $100–$250. Multiply by the hours you're currently spending on delegable work. The founders we talk to average 19 hours a week.

At $150/hour, that's about $123,000 a year of attention spent on work that costs $12–$20/hour to buy. That's the comparison — not one agency's monthly fee against another's.

The expensive option is almost never the invoice. It's the version of you doing admin at 11pm instead of selling.

A fair way to compare quotes

1. Convert everything to monthly loaded cost — rate, fees, your management time at your hourly value.
2. Add an expected churn cost: probability of losing them in year one × (4 weeks of retraining + lost output).
3. Subtract nothing for "flexibility" you won't use. Most people who buy hourly end up using the full block anyway.

Run that on three quotes and the ranking usually flips from what the sticker prices suggested.

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