When looking to hire a virtual assistant, different businesses target different countries. Some go for VAs in the United States, while others stick to countries like India and the Philippines. There are several reasons for this, like cultural alignment or specific technical skills.
The decision is also a financial one, as the cost of hiring across borders can vary drastically. As for the question, How much does a virtual assistant cost? We’ll answer it by showing you how the cost differs by country and what you stand to gain or lose by hiring from certain countries. Knowing all these differences helps you make informed decisions when hiring a VA internationally.
Why VA Costs Vary Around The World
If you have ever wondered why the cost of hiring a VA in a certain country is different from that in a different place, you’re about to find out the reason.
Labor Market Differences
RentCafe reports that the cost of living in Los Angeles is 49% above the national average, with rent averaging $2,770 and monthly energy bills reaching $229. Compare this with the Indian city, New Delhi, where rent ranges from $116 to $616 and where $52-$64 can cover basic utilities, according to International Citizens Group.
The difference becomes clear. It’s apparent how a decent amount for an Indian VA doesn’t do much for the one living in the US, and you can easily understand why a VA from the US will cost you more.
These areas already have average wage expectations, too, so you should consider that as well. Since it’s typical for US VA rates to span $20-$60 per hour, and for those in India to charge $3-$10 per hour, you can expect to spend within the expected range when hiring from such places.
Type Of VA
The type of VA you hire also determines your rates.
Freelancers are typically the most cost-effective option because you pay them directly, which makes them attractive to small start-ups and budget-conscious businesses. They set their own prices and are flexible, but they may not always have the same level of structure as agencies or managed services. Choosing freelancers means you should also make plans to train them yourself.
Agencies help businesses find trained VAs and hand them over, and this provides convenience for clients. When a VA leaves, agencies also help with finding replacements. All these advantages come at a higher price, as the agency takes a percentage of earnings.
Expect to spend even more with a managed service. These providers pull out all the stops by building a system that accommodates every aspect of your business in need of VAs. Consider them a premium option. Your contract is with them, not the individual VA, and you can remove your involvement from recruitment, training, active monitoring of tasks, and replacement when an individual VA quits, because they’ll do it all.
Skill Specialization
Another layer in VA pricing comparison is their skills and the kind of tasks they carry out.
General admin VAs typically sit at the lower end of the price range because they primarily handle tasks that require minimal specialized expertise. Some tasks that such VAs handle are managing email inboxes, scheduling appointments, data entry, and file management. In places like India, these VAs may cost $3-$6 per hour, while in the US, they may take between $20-$25.
The cost increases when you require a VA with specialized expertise in a specific skill. When you need assistance for tasks like email marketing, graphic design, IT support, and social media management, be ready to push into the mid-range of the regular prices in the region you’re hiring from. This may mean paying $20–$35 in the US or $6–$9 in the Philippines.
As for executive VAs, they do everything a regular executive assistant will do, just from borders away. Beyond their skills, they may also have managerial experience that helps them not only anticipate needs but also make judgment calls. They thrive with minimal supervision and may even coordinate teams, and their work directly affects the efficiency of operations. These ones command the highest prices.
Cost Of Hiring A Virtual Assistant In The US
Businesses hiring a US VA typically spend $20–$60+ per hour on an individual. However, the high virtual assistant cost in the US doesn’t mean it’s all bliss with no downsides. Let’s consider the pros and cons.
Pros
Proximity
The closer you are geographically to a VA, the more likely it is that your time zones aren’t far apart. So, when it’s morning for you, it’s the same for your VA, and the same goes for when it’s evening. Proximity eliminates the stress of guessing and matching time zones to accommodate both client and VA preferences, allowing regular live interactions and meetings to occur seamlessly.
Cultural Alignment
Business etiquette and communication styles vary from country to country. What’s acceptable in the US may be strange in the Philippines. When you and your VA share a similar culture, you enjoy a smoother work relationship as contexts are easily understood. You also share the same public holidays, so you can easily share off days without a drop in productivity.
Native English
For tasks where English fluency is non-negotiable, e.g, content creation or customer support, a native speaker becomes a strength you can’t ignore. They can easily draft reports and respond to customer inquiries in a language that isn’t confusing, and you won’t need to spend extra time training them to write better or correcting text documents they provide to make them easier to read.
Cons
Higher Cost
The most obvious con is the amount of money you have to pay per hour or monthly for their services. Compared to places like India and the Philippines, you’re spending three to five times what you would have spent. For a business that’s still struggling to break even, this cost can become more of a liability than an investment.
Limited Scalability
As small businesses keep growing and their customer base expands, they may need to hire more VAs to help with more tasks. For instance, one VA may easily attend to 20 customer complaints in a timely manner, but may struggle to do the same for 80 customers. Paying US rates makes it more challenging to hire additional VAs as the business grows larger.
Cost Of Hiring A Virtual Assistant In The Philippines
Unlike the US, rates in the Philippines commonly fall between $4 and $12, but like any other place, it comes with its fair share of pros and cons.
Pros
Strong English Proficiency
The Philippines has English as one of its official languages. Being taught in schools alongside Filipino, VAs here commonly have a strong command of the English language. This advantage is particularly beneficial for tasks where language plays a key role, such as creating reports and newsletters. Also, note that Philippine English is not only similar to but even related to American English.
Outsourcing Culture
One country that easily comes to mind when people think of outsourcing is the Philippines. A strong reputation for serving international businesses is a green flag for them. Combine a large VA pool already familiar with international client expectations with their English proficiency, and you’ll see the potential for easy integration into your operations.
Cons
Time Zone Overlap
The Philippines and Washington, DC, are exactly 12 hours apart. What this means is that your 9-to-5 schedule clashes with their most unusual hours, and vice versa. While many Filipinos are known for working overnight with foreign clients, those who work with the local daytime schedule cause some communication delays that can affect your efficiency and make it harder to have real-time meetings.
Poor Internet Reliability
Some parts of the Philippines still struggle with slow and unreliable internet, and that’s a major frustration for businesses whose tasks typically demand urgent attention or who do a lot of real-time communication. Problematic internet connections can cause calls to buffer and delay task completion, even as a deadline approaches. Some VAs may have backup internet options, but internet conditions are generally better in the US.
Cost Of Hiring A Virtual Assistant In India
In India, the cost of hiring a VA is a little lower, usually ranging from $3 to $10. As for the pros and cons of hiring from India, let’s get to them.
Pros
Wide Talent Pool
India easily stands out in volume among other countries. With millions of English-speaking professionals, businesses can find countless options when looking for VAs. Plus, the number helps create a healthy competition and keeps rates affordable. India’s wide pool covers almost every aspect of virtual assistance, if not all, from data entry and IT support to bookkeeping.
Strong Technical Skills
You’re likely to find Indians among the top VAs for technical skills on many hiring platforms. It’s not a coincidence, as many Indian VAs are exceptionally skilled in areas such as web development and data analysis. Extra points for the many VAs here who are familiar with global work tools, like Trello for project management and Slack for communication.
Cons
Communication Style Differences
Yes, many Indians speak English fluently; however, there are notable differences in communication style between India and the US. Gretchen Kwatra, an expat living in India, makes a comparison between Americans’ directness and Indians being more indirect and nuanced.
Training Needs
Considering you’re hiring from a country on the other side of the world, you want to ensure that your business practices and workflow expectations align. Note that what you’re used to in your country may not be the standard in India, so you will need to spend some extra time and effort familiarizing the VA with your tools and methods. This may initially slow productivity.
Hidden Costs You Should Consider
Besides how much you will pay per hour or per month, there are some hidden costs of hiring a VA you should also consider. Here are a few of them.
Onboarding And Training Time
The time it will take for a VA to adapt to your communication style, work preferences, and preferred tools is as important as the cost of hiring them. When hiring locally, the VA is either already familiar with your systems or can easily learn them, but they may be unfamiliar to someone from a different location.
Let’s assume that the project management tool Monday is popular in the US but unfamiliar to VAs in the Philippines, and that your business uses it. You may find yourself teaching a new VA how to use it in line with your business needs. The same applies to communication tools like Microsoft Teams and Discord, as well as other tools.
You’ll find effective tips for onboarding a VA here.
Turnover Risk
No business wants to continually replace VAs every few months, as it slows down operations. Finding a new one can distract you from other important things, and during their onboarding phase, productivity tends to suffer. Playing your part to keep a VA is not always enough to keep them, so you should factor in the turnover risk of different regions when hiring internationally.
In the Philippines, Inquiro reports an 18% total turnover rate, which is on the high side. While these statistics are not strictly for VAs, they give you an insight into what to expect. As for India, The Economic Times shows attrition rates dropping to 17.4% in 2024, a good sign, but still on the high side. Note that these figures cover both voluntary and involuntary turnover.
With the US experiencing voluntary turnover rates of around 13.5%-17.3% in 2023 and 2024 (Mercer), it’s safe to assume that the voluntary turnover rates in other places are lower. And while these stats are not a guarantee of retaining your VAs, they show a trend that can help you reduce the risk simply by choosing which country you hire from.
Quality Control
Thanks to advantages like proximity and cultural alignment, working with a VA in the US often means fewer revisions, as their language, standards, methods, and style are mostly familiar, aligning with what you are already accustomed to, and your expectations and interpretation of tasks are similar.
Let’s say you assign a VA to create a presentation. At $30 per hour, a US VA can come up with something you may spend only 30 minutes revising. You may spend longer reviewing the presentation from an Indian or Filipino VA, not because they aren’t great at their job, but because they understand things in a different context and aren’t native speakers of English.
So, the choice comes down to whether your operations can tolerate some quality slips and accommodate the delay they may bring, or if you are strict with time and don’t have much to spare for longer revisions.
Payment Transfer Fees And Tools
Sending money within the same country is simple. If you are in the US and paying a VA who also lives in the US, it’s straightforward. Many options, including PayPal, CashApp, and even bank transfers, keep payments smooth and quick, with fees typically being minimal. However, working with a VA in a different country is a whole different experience.
First, you are limited by which methods or tools you can use. CashApp, a popular service in the US, does not operate in India or the Philippines. Bank-to-bank transfers across countries can take days and incur costs, which cut into salaries. You become limited to options like PayPal, which charge more for transfers across borders.
If you are covering the transaction charges for a VA, it makes it easier on them, but results in extra costs for you over time.
Which Option Is Right For You?
There is no universally agreed-upon best choice for VA. It’s as personal as it gets and will depend on your business needs and scope. Here is a simple framework for judging which works well enough for you.
Budget
If saving money matters most to you, then you should be looking at hiring a VA from India or the Philippines instead of the US.
Task Type
Routine tasks like data entry, inbox sorting, calendar scheduling, and basic research are process-driven, so they can benefit from VAs outside the US, but for those where the VAs interact directly with clients, like handling customer calls, especially if your customers are mostly US-based, you may want to stick with US VAs.
Required Skills
You can find VAs for all roles in every market, but a little research when looking for a VA to hire may reveal a spot where certain skills are trendy at that moment. For example, the Philippines may stand out in customer support during periods when outsourcing for call centers is booming. During that period, hiring from there may be the best for you.
Risk Tolerance
US businesses will find US VAs to be generally more predictable, so you may want to stick with them if you don’t want to spend more time and effort managing a VA. But if you don’t mind it, you can go for VAs from India or the Philippines.
Need For Reliability
Everything from the time alignment to the local setbacks, like unreliable internet, matters. A VA in the US already fits your schedule, but you will have to plan around time differences to work well with one from India or the Philippines.
Conclusion
Every country you can hire from has its pros and cons, as well as prices that are influenced by the cost of living or local standards. How much does a virtual assistant cost? Well, here’s a straight answer: India and the Philippines allow you to hire VAs for around $3-$10 and $4-$12 per hour, respectively, while the US typically commands from $20-$60, and it can even go higher. This range shows how widely outsourcing costs by country can vary.
Your choice will depend on the kind of operations you run, your budget, what you can tolerate, and how available you want your VA to be. However, what matters at the end of the day is the value you get.
