What does a virtual assistant cost in the UK?

What UK agencies actually publish

Most articles on this give you a range and leave it there. Here are the real published prices, from the agencies' own pricing pages, checked on 15 September 2026. All of these are before VAT, which matters if you are not VAT registered, because you cannot claim it back.

Look at the two biggest rows. Twenty hours a month is £600 at Time etc and £800 at The Online PA — the same nominal thing, in the same market, in the same year, a third apart. Nobody selling VA hours is going to put those two numbers next to each other for you.

The terms are as uneven as the prices, and they are where the money quietly goes. Unused hours roll over at one agency and expire at another. One has no commitment; two want three months. One adds £150 to start. And "£600" is £720 once VAT is on it, which for a sole trader below the VAT threshold is simply £120 gone.

Is an overseas VA really cheaper?

On the headline rate, yes, by a long way. A Philippines-based VA working full time is commonly $480 to $2,000 a month depending on experience. One UK agency that recruits and manages Filipino VAs publishes its prices in sterling: £500 a month for around four hours a day, £900 for eight — roughly £5 to £6 an hour against £30 or more here.

Three things sit underneath that number and none of the cost tables include them.

Finding the person. One VA agency puts the time to source and screen a VA yourself at 15 to 40 hours. That is a week of your own time before anyone has done any work.

Fees and payments. Hiring through Upwork adds a 5% client fee on every payment, plus a small one-off charge per contract. You will also pay something to move money abroad every month. Small, but real and recurring.

The clock. The Philippines is seven hours ahead of us in summer. Their nine-to-six is your two in the morning to eleven. If the work is "clear this list overnight", that is an advantage. If it is "can you check this before I quote", it is a day's delay every time.

Which leads to the point most comparisons bury. South Africa is one hour ahead of the UK, with first-language English and a full working-day overlap. It costs more than the Philippines and less than here. If you need someone you can actually talk to during your day, that gap is the reason to pay the difference — not the hourly rate.

One more, honestly: the claim that Eastern Europe is a cheap middle ground does not hold up well. The only published figures I could find put Poland and Romania at €19 to €35 an hour, which is not meaningfully below UK rates, and it comes from a single agency with no methodology behind it.

What a part-time employee actually costs

This is the comparison the VA market does not want you to run, and it is not close.

Take an administrator at £13.00 an hour — just above the national living wage of £12.71, and in line with the £25,420 average Indeed reports for the role from 13,800 salaries. Sixteen hours a week, all year:

• Gross pay: £10,816 a year
• Employer National Insurance: £0, because the £10,500 Employment Allowance covers it entirely for a small employer
• Pension: they are over the £10,000 auto-enrolment trigger, so it is compulsory — 3% of qualifying earnings, £137 a year
• Total: £10,953 a year, about £913 a month

Now do the bit nobody does. Statutory holiday is 5.6 weeks, so 52 weeks of pay buys 46.4 weeks of work. At 16 hours a week that is 742 hours actually worked. £10,953 divided by 742 is £14.75 an hour.

Against £28 to £40 for a UK VA. Every article that tells you an employee costs 20 to 30% more than the wage is quoting the National Insurance change of 2025 and forgetting that the Employment Allowance went up to £10,500 at the same moment. For one part-time administrator, the extra on top of wages in the example above is £137 — 1.3%, not 25%.

Two caveats, because this only works if it is true. There are exclusions to the Employment Allowance — a company whose only employee is a single director is the main one — so check before you bank it. And an employee is a commitment with notice periods, holiday cover and an obligation to find them work; a VA you can stop using next month. That flexibility is worth something. It is just worth rather less than double.

So how many hours do you actually have?

The best current UK figure comes from the American Express SME Barometer published in July 2026, which surveyed a thousand owners of small and medium businesses with Small Business Saturday: 11 hours a week on admin and finance, against 3.6 days a month on sales and growing the business. Worth naming the sponsor, because there is no independent government or FSB measure of this at all, and every article that quotes these numbers as neutral fact is quoting a credit card company's marketing survey.

Eleven hours is more than a day. But the question is not how many hours — it is which ones.

What is worth automating, and what genuinely isn't

Some of that 11 hours is identical every single time. A new enquiry arrives and you need to know; the customer needs to hear something back; the appointment needs a reminder the day before; the quote that went quiet needs a nudge; the customer who has just had a good job done needs asking for a review. None of that needs judgement. All of it needs remembering, which is the part that fails when you are up a ladder.

That work can be set up once and then it happens on its own. The tools cost very little — Make's entry plan is about $12 a month, Zapier's about $20, and both have free tiers that cover a small business. Nine pounds a month is under twenty minutes of a UK VA's time.

And then there is the rest of it, which is where the honesty has to come in. Most of what clogs a trade business's week is talking to people: working out what a customer actually wants, pricing a job that is not like the last one, chasing a supplier, smoothing over a delay. That is judgement and relationship, and no automation touches it. If your 11 hours is mostly that, a person is the right answer and no software will fix it.

So the rule is reasonably simple. Automate the work that is the same every time. Pay a human for the work that isn't. And once you need more than about ten hours a week of that human, look hard at an employee rather than a VA, because the per-hour maths flips decisively.

Where the evidence runs out

Three things worth knowing before you trust anyone's numbers on this, including mine.

There is no reliable published data on UK VA rates by specialism. The only genuine industry survey, run by the Society of Virtual Assistants, is sold as a paid report and its headline figures are not public. Everything else in circulation is an agency asserting a number.

Search "virtual assistant rates UK" and roughly half of the first page is written for people who want to become a VA, not for a business deciding whether to hire one. You are reading advice aimed at helping VAs not undercharge.

And of the pages that are aimed at businesses, every one I found is published by somebody who sells VA services. Not one considers an employee or an automation as a serious alternative, except to dismiss it.

Common questions

How much does a UK virtual assistant charge per hour?

Roughly £28 to £40 an hour, usually sold as a monthly block of hours. Time etc publishes 20 hours for £600 and 40 hours for £1,160; The Online PA publishes 20 hours for £800. All of those are before VAT, which you cannot reclaim if you are not VAT registered.

Is a virtual assistant cheaper than employing someone?

Per hour, no. A UK administrator at £13.00 an hour working 16 hours a week costs about £10,953 a year once employer National Insurance and pension are counted — and because 5.6 weeks are paid holiday, that buys 742 hours of actual work. That is £14.75 per hour worked, against £28 to £40 for a UK VA. A VA is more flexible; it is not cheaper.

Do I have to pay employer National Insurance on a part-time admin hire?

Very probably not. The Employment Allowance rose to £10,500 a year, which covers the entire employer National Insurance bill for a typical small employer. In the example above the extra on top of wages is £137 a year of pension — 1.3%, not the 20 to 30% usually quoted. There are exclusions, including a company whose only employee is a single director, so check eligibility.

Is an overseas virtual assistant worth it?

On the hourly rate, clearly. A Filipino VA through a UK agency is around £500 a month for four hours a day. What the cost tables omit is 15 to 40 hours of your own time to find and screen someone, payment and currency fees, and a seven-hour time difference that makes same-day back-and-forth hard. South Africa is one hour from UK time with first-language English, which is why it can be the cheaper decision in practice despite costing more per hour.

What should I automate rather than pay someone to do?

Work that is identical every time and needs no judgement: enquiry alerts, acknowledgements, appointment reminders, nudges on quiet quotes, review requests. Tools for this start around £9 to £20 a month. Anything needing judgement, pricing or a conversation with a customer is not automatable, and if that is most of your admin then a person is the right answer.

Prices and figures checked 15 September 2026: Time etc, The Online PA, Cheshire Virtual PA and Remote Bob pricing pages; Teambuild Consultancy; OnlineJobs.ph; Upwork client pricing; gov.uk rates and thresholds for employers 2026–27; The Pensions Regulator; Indeed UK salary data; Amex SME Barometer, July 2026; Zapier and Make pricing. Agency rate ranges are those agencies' own published claims, not survey data.