How much does a virtual assistant cost in the UK? A straight answer.
When I was thinking about starting this business, I spent ages looking at other virtual assistants' websites trying to work out what people actually charged, and so many of them were not explicit about pricing. I understand why they do it, because every business is different and nobody wants to be judged on a number sitting on its own without any context around it, but it did make me feel like I was being kept out of a conversation I was trying very hard to join.
So I'm going to do the opposite here. Below is what virtual assistants cost in the UK in 2026, what I charge, and what actually sits behind the difference between one rate and another, because you should be able to work out whether this is affordable for you before you ever have to speak to anyone about it.
What the UK market actually looks like
The best number to start from comes from the Society of Virtual Assistants, who have run an annual survey of the UK VA industry for fifteen years now and get responses from over 10% of it, which makes it the closest thing this industry has to proper data rather than guesswork. Their figure for the average UK VA hourly rate is £32.35, with specialists commanding £50 an hour and above.
It's worth knowing that this has been climbing. The same survey put the average at £27.17 in 2021, so rates have risen by close to 20% in three years, which is roughly what you'd expect given everything else that has happened to costs in that time.
Around that average, the spread looks like this:
Freelance UK VAs: roughly £25 to £35 an hour, depending on experience
VA agencies: roughly £30 to £40 an hour
Specialist VAs (bookkeeping, technical, regulated sectors, or anything carrying real operational responsibility): £50 an hour and upwards
Offshore VAs: roughly £5 to £15 an hour depending on where and how you hire
For comparison, employing someone: a £28,000 salary actually costs you around £32,100 a year once employer National Insurance at 15% and pension contributions are added, which is roughly 15% on top before you've thought about holiday cover, equipment or recruitment time
Most of the variation in that list is about who you're buying from and how much responsibility they're carrying, rather than about how fast anybody types.
What I charge
Monthly retainer: £30 an hour
Ad-hoc work: £40 an hour
Business Suppport:
The Essential: £250 a month. Inbox and diary management, document creation, file organisation, basic customer support and a monthly check-in
The Business Partner: £450 a month. Everything in The Essential, plus client onboarding, CRM updates, process documentation, research tasks and a weekly check-in
Marketing support:
Content Essentials: £300 a month. Monthly content calendar, 8 to 10 posts, Canva graphics, captions, scheduling and basic analytics
Content Growth: £540 a month. Everything in Content Essentials, plus community engagement, a monthly newsletter and content repurposing
Add-ons like blog writing, SquareSpace updates, lead magnet design and reel creation are quoted separately or can be added to a package.
Retainer, ad-hoc or a package?
This is the bit that confuses people most, so here it is in plain English.
Ad-hoc at £40 an hour is for one-off jobs, the sort of thing where you've got a specific piece of work with an end to it and you don't need ongoing support afterwards. You pay for what you use and there's no commitment at all, which is exactly why it costs more, because I'm holding time in my diary for something that might never come back.
A retainer at £30 an hour is an agreed number of hours every month. That's a 25% saving on the ad-hoc rate, and you're paying for it with a bit of predictability rather than with money, because when I know your hours are booked I can plan around them and you never have to check whether I'm free.
A package is a fixed monthly price for a defined set of work, and it suits you if what you need is fairly consistent month to month and you'd rather not think about hours at all. Plenty of people find this the easiest one to budget for, because it's the same number every month and nobody is counting minutes.
If you're not sure which fits, ad-hoc is a perfectly sensible way to start and there is no rule that says you have to commit to anything on day one.
"But I could get someone for £8 an hour"
You could, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise or be sniffy about it, because offshore VAs are skilled people doing good work and for certain tasks the maths is genuinely hard to argue with. If you have a large volume of clearly defined, repetitive work that comes with a written process attached, that model can work very well.
Where it tends to come unstuck is anything that needs context, and by context I mean knowing that this particular client always books in a panic on a Friday, or that this email needs a gentler tone because of what happened in the last meeting, or that the thing you've asked for isn't quite the thing you need.
The other thing worth counting is rework. Cheap hours stop being cheap the moment you're checking, correcting or redoing the output, and I'd rather you went in with your eyes open about that than found out three months later.
"I don't know how many hours I'd need"
This is the question that stops most people from ever enquiring, so let me take a guess at it for you. At £30 an hour, here's roughly what each level buys.
Around 5 hours a month, £150. Enough for one contained job that keeps recurring, like a weekly inbox tidy, scheduling a month of social posts, or keeping a document library in order. Small, but it removes a task you've been carrying for a year.
Around 10 hours a month, £300. This is where it starts to feel different, because there's room for a couple of ongoing responsibilities rather than one, so inbox and diary together, or content plus the admin that surrounds it.
Around 20 hours a month, £600. Roughly a day a week. At this level I know your business properly, I can pick things up without being asked, and you stop being the only person who knows how anything works.
You don't have to get this right the first time. Most people start lower than they need and adjust after a month or two, which is much easier than committing to twenty hours before either of us knows what the work involves.
So, is it affordable?
If you're running your business late into the night, doing the admin after the actual work is finished because there was never room for it in the day, then the honest question isn't whether you can afford support. It's what the current arrangement is already costing you, in evenings, in headspace, and in the work you never get around to because the small stuff keeps winning.
You are the expert in your business. You should be spending your hours on the things only you can do.
If you'd like to talk it through, I offer a free 15-minute discovery call and there's genuinely no pressure attached to it.
PS if you read all of that and thought "I still don't know where I'd start", that's normal, and it's exactly what the 15 minutes is for.