One table, 2026 prices
Published US prices and salary surveys, with the source named in each row, and the UK figures in the last row for readers there. Prices exclude sales tax. Monthly salary figures are the annual figure divided by 12, before benefits and payroll taxes.
| What you are buying | Cost | What you get | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full-time executive assistant, employed | Median salary $76,590 a year (US Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2025), about $6,400 a month; $60,000 to $64,000 on job-site surveys; well above $100,000 for senior roles in finance and law. Add the employer's share of payroll taxes, health insurance, paid time off, a desk and recruiting. | About 160 hours a month. Judgment, presence in the office, relationships with your clients, the phone answered in your name. | BLS, ZipRecruiter, Comparably |
| Virtual assistant on a monthly plan | Time etc: $390 for 10 hours, $760 for 20, $1,480 for 40, $2,160 for 60 a month, which works out at $36 to $39 an hour. Double: $549 for 10 hours, $999 for 20, $1,899 for 40, $2,799 for 60 ($47 to $55 an hour). Unused hours roll over at Time etc; cancel any time. | A named, dedicated person who learns your business, working in business hours. Email, calendar, travel, research, phone calls on your behalf. | Time etc, Double |
| Executive assistant service, US-based | Belay: about $42 to $50 an hour, typically $1,200 to $5,500 a month, quoted rather than published. Boldly: $2,520 to $2,600 a month for 40 hours, up to $5,040 for 80, with a 40-hour minimum ($63 to $65 an hour). | An experienced US-based assistant, often a W-2 employee of the service, matched to you and backed by a manager. Inbox, calendar, travel, projects. | Belay, Boldly |
| Offshore dedicated assistant, managed | Athena: $3,000 a month for a full-time, managed executive assistant on a 12-month commitment, $3,600 on a 90-day one. Magic: $270 a week for 20 hours or $540 for 40, about $1,170 to $2,340 a month. | Full days of cover, often in a different time zone, with an agency managing quality and replacement. | Athena, Magic |
| Task-based assistant service | Fancy Hands: $35 a month for three requests, $55 for five, $125 for 15 (roughly $8 to $12 a request). | Small, one-off jobs by whoever is free. No continuity, nobody who knows you. | Fancy Hands |
| AI assistant in an app or by text | $20 to $30 for a general chat assistant with voice; $21 to $50 for inbox tools that draft and file; $29 to $99 for text-message assistants that book and follow up. | Drafts, triage, summaries, scheduling, done on a screen or by text. Most will not send an email on your say-so by voice. | Published pricing pages, October 2026 |
| An assistant you can phone (CallMyDesk) | $119 to $199 a month for one person, or $179 a seat for a team of three or more, billed yearly. One flat monthly price, after a two-week free trial. | A number you call from any phone. It reads your inbox, calendar and CRM aloud, and sends, books and logs what you ask for. Available 24 hours a day, as often as you call. | CallMyDesk pricing |
| UK: the same, in pounds | Time etc UK: £310 for 10 hours, £600 for 20, £1,160 for 40, £1,680 for 60 a month (£28 to £31 an hour). Freelance: £30 to £40 an hour through an agency. Offshore through a UK agency: about £500 a month part time to about £900 full time. A full-time executive assistant: £37,500 to £39,400 a year on average, £46,000 to £48,000 in London, before employer's National Insurance and pension. | The same shapes of help as the US rows above, bought in pounds. | Time etc UK, Teambuild Consultancy, PayScale, Glassdoor, Indeed |
Sources
Full CallMyDesk plans and what each includes are on the pricing page.
Three things the numbers do not say
Salary is not cost. The $76,590 figure is salary only. The employer's share of Social Security and Medicare, health insurance, paid time off, sick cover, equipment and the cost of recruiting all sit on top, and none of them appears in a salary survey. If you have never employed anyone, budget for the salary and then some, and ask your accountant for the real number for your firm.
An hour is not an hour. A virtual assistant's 10 hours a month are 10 hours of a person's attention, usually in business hours, often with a day's notice. That is a different thing from a question answered at 7 am on the way to a job site. Neither is better; they are different shapes of help, and the shape matters more than the rate.
A low monthly price buys a narrow job. The $20 to $99 assistants are good at the job they are built for and silent outside it. An inbox tool drafts replies but, in most cases, leaves you to press send. A text-message assistant books meetings but cannot be phoned. The cheapest row that does everything a person does is the person.
What each one is actually for
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A full-time executive assistant
Best at: judgment calls you have not thought to brief; relationships with the people around you (your clients' assistants, your accountant, the landlord); being in the room when you are not.
Weakest at: cost, and availability outside the hours you pay for. Also the hardest to hire: more than two million administrative assistants have left the field in the US since 2000, and every posting competes for the people who are left.
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A virtual assistant by the hour
Best at: batches of work that take an afternoon (a mailing, a travel itinerary with three changes, a proposal formatted properly); jobs that need a phone call to a person; growing with you from 10 hours to 40.
Weakest at: the small urgent thing right now. By the time it is scheduled, you have done it yourself.
-
An AI assistant in an app or by text
Best at: drafting; summarizing a long thread; triage you can read on a screen; price.
Weakest at: anything that has to happen while you are driving or on site, and sending. Most are built to stop at a draft and wait for you to tap.
-
An assistant you can phone
Best at: the two-minute jobs that come up 20 times a day away from a desk: what came in, reply to that, log that meeting, move the three o'clock, chase that invoice. Available at any hour, picks up on the first ring, remembers yesterday.
Weakest at: anything that needs hands, presence or a judgment you have not delegated. It is not in your meetings, it does not call your prospects, and on a poor line it will ask you to repeat a name, because a phone line is not a studio microphone.
When you still need a person
You need a person when the job needs one of three things: a body, a relationship, or a judgment you have not written down.
A body: someone to sign for the delivery, set up the room, sit with the auditor, host the client who turns up early. A relationship: someone who knows that your biggest customer's finance director prefers a call to an email, and that the building inspector is helpful if you are polite and early. A judgment: whether to tell the customer the bad news today or on Monday, whether the new supplier is bluffing, what to do about the colleague who keeps missing deadlines.
None of those is a weakness of software to be fixed in the next release. They are what people are for. An assistant you phone does not do them, and this guide will not pretend it does.
What it changes is the arithmetic around the person. The owner who was about to hire a part-time assistant to read the inbox aloud at 7 am and chase invoices on a Friday can get those jobs done for $119 a month and hire the assistant, if they still need one, for the things only a person can do. The three-person sales team that was about to share a virtual assistant to type up their voice memos can have the notes in the CRM the same afternoon and give the assistant's hours to the quotes and the samples instead. In both cases the person is still there. The job description is better.
Two worked examples
Both are illustrations using the prices in the table, not customer stories. The people are made up; the sums are not.
Example 1: an owner-manager with no assistant
Rachel runs a flooring business with eight staff. She spends about an hour a day in the truck, loses something between seven and 15 hours a week to admin, and has no assistant. The jobs she wants off her plate: read the inbox and tell her what matters, reply to the accountant, chase the three invoices over 30 days, put the Thursday site visit on the calendar, send Dave the quote.
| Option | Monthly cost | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| US virtual assistant, 10 hours a month (Time etc) | $390 | About two and a half hours a week, in business hours, by arrangement |
| Offshore dedicated assistant, part time (Magic, 20 hours a week) | about $1,170 | Four hours a day, managed by an agency |
| An assistant she can phone, Solo plan | $119 | Her inbox and calendar, any hour, as often as she calls |
The honest answer: the $390 and the $119 do not buy the same thing. The virtual assistant can spend an afternoon on a supplier dispute; the assistant she phones cannot. But none of the five jobs on Rachel's list takes an afternoon. Each takes a minute to say, and she wants it done in the truck at 7:40 am, not on Tuesday when the VA is next on. Many owners in Rachel's position end up with the phone assistant for the daily minute-long jobs and, when the business grows into it, a VA for the afternoon-sized ones.
Example 2: a three-rep field sales team
A sales manager has three territory reps on HubSpot. Each drives about 21 hours a week and spends about 5.5 hours a week typing into the CRM, mostly on Friday from memory. The manager wants same-day notes, a next step with a date on every open deal, and the follow-up email sent before the next visit.
| Option | Monthly cost | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Shared US virtual assistant, 20 hours a month (Time etc) | $760 | Reps record voice memos; the VA types them into HubSpot the next business day |
| Voice-to-CRM app, three users | about €150 to €255 (most of these apps are European and publish prices in euros) | Reps dictate into an app in their hand; fields are filled from the transcript; CRM only |
| An assistant the team can phone, Team plan | $537 for three seats ($179 a seat, billed yearly) | Notes, tasks and deal updates logged from the car; the follow-up email sent the same way; the manager sees it all in HubSpot |
The honest answer: the shared VA is the only option that gives the manager a person, and a person can also chase the quotes and manage the samples. But the notes arrive a day late, second-hand, from a memo the rep recorded while holding a phone they should not have been holding. The app fixes the delay and keeps the phone in their hand. The phone assistant fixes both, for about what the app costs and well under the shared assistant, and still leaves the manager free to hire a sales administrator for the parts of the job that need one.
If you only read one paragraph
In the US, a virtual assistant on a plan costs about $390 to $549 a month for 10 hours and a full-time executive assistant earns a median $76,590 a year before benefits and payroll taxes. In the UK the equivalents are about £310 for 10 hours and £46,000 to £48,000 a year in London. AI assistants in an app cost $20 to $99 a month and mostly stop at a draft. An assistant you can phone costs $119 to $199 a month and sends, books and logs while you talk. If the job needs a body, a relationship or a judgment you have not delegated, hire the person. If the job takes a minute to say and you are not at a desk, phone the office.