Virtual Assistant Rate Calculator
Competing on hourly rate against an unlimited global market is a race you cannot win. Price from your own costs and the hours you can actually bill, then sell the outcome rather than the hour.
Virtual assistants pricing calculator
Recommended selling price
$0.00
per unit, before sales tax
Where the price goes
- Costs $0.00 0%
- Fees $0.00 0%
- Profit $0.00 0%
| Line | Per unit | Order total |
|---|---|---|
| Materials / product | $0.00 | $0.00 |
| Labor | $0.00 | $0.00 |
| Other costs | $0.00 | $0.00 |
| Overhead | $0.00 | $0.00 |
| Total cost | $0.00 | $0.00 |
| Payment processing fee | $0.00 | $0.00 |
| Profit | $0.00 | $0.00 |
| Base selling price | $0.00 | $0.00 |
| Sales tax | $0.00 | $0.00 |
| Customer pays | $0.00 | $0.00 |
- Profit margin0%
- Markup on cost0%
- Cost per unit$0.00
- Quantity1
Show the math
Results are estimates based on the information you enter. Actual taxes, fees, and business expenses may vary.
How to price a retainer or package
Your billable hours are fewer than your working hours
Client calls that overrun, onboarding a new client, writing proposals, invoicing, chasing payment, learning a tool a client uses and the gaps between contracts are all unpaid. A full-time VA typically bills twenty-five to thirty hours in a forty-hour week. Set your rate by dividing the income you need by the smaller number. A VA charging $25 an hour and billing twenty-five hours a week is earning the equivalent of a considerably lower salary than they think, before any software, tax or time off.
Retainers are better for both sides, if they are sized honestly
A monthly retainer for an agreed block of hours gives you predictable income and gives the client priority access. The failure mode is the retainer that quietly becomes unlimited: twenty hours agreed, thirty worked, nobody mentions it. Track the hours, report them monthly whether or not the client asks, and have a written position on what happens to unused hours and to overruns. A retainer with no tracking is not a pricing model, it is an open-ended commitment at a fixed price.
Specialism is the only defence against rate pressure
General administrative support is priced globally and relentlessly. A VA who runs podcast production, manages a specific CRM, handles bookkeeping in a particular system or specialises in one industry is not in that market and can charge multiples of the general rate. The calculator will not tell you what to specialise in, but it makes the case obvious: once you know what an hour has to be worth for the business to work, you can see immediately which kind of work clears the bar and which never will.
Price the outcome where you can
Some VA work has a natural unit that is not an hour: an inbox managed per month, a podcast episode produced, a newsletter sent, a property turnover coordinated. Pricing per unit hides your speed, rewards experience, and stops the client thinking of you as a timesheet. Use the calculator to find what the unit costs you in hours, add overhead and margin, and quote that. Keep an hourly rate published for ad-hoc work, because a published hourly rate is also what makes a package look like good value.
The formula behind the calculator, including why the margin is divided rather than multiplied, is written out step by step on the pricing calculator.
What virtual assistants have to price in
VA work has almost no material cost, which means the rate is carrying everything: your time, your tools, your unbillable hours and your time off. Leave any of it out and the rate is wrong.
- Billable hours at a real rate
- Based on the hours you genuinely bill in a week, not the hours you are available.
- Client communication
- Calls, check-ins, status updates and the messages that arrive outside the block. Real time.
- Onboarding a new client
- Learning their systems, tone and preferences. Hours you spend once and rarely charge for.
- Software subscriptions
- Project management, time tracking, password manager, scheduler, cloud storage, invoicing.
- Client-specific tools
- A seat in a CRM, a design tool or a scheduling platform bought because one client uses it.
- Hardware and connection
- Laptop, monitor, headset and a business-grade internet connection, amortised or apportioned.
- Home office
- A share of household costs where the space is used regularly and exclusively for work.
- Training and certification
- Platform certifications and courses that keep your specialism current and chargeable.
- Payment processing and currency conversion
- Card fees, platform commission, and conversion costs on overseas clients — which can be significant.
- Insurance
- Professional indemnity where you handle a client’s accounts, data or money.
- Marketing and proposals
- Website, portfolio, and the unpaid hours spent writing proposals that do not convert.
- Holiday and sick cover
- No work means no income. The margin is what pays for a week off and a bad fortnight.
A cost you leave out does not disappear — it comes out of your profit instead. Put every one of these into the calculator above, even the ones that feel too small to bother with.
A worked example: a twenty-hour monthly retainer
A monthly retainer of twenty billable hours for one client, priced with the software the work requires, a share of the overhead that runs regardless, and a margin that funds unbillable time and holiday.
| Billable hours | 20 | Twenty hours of actual work for this client in the month. |
|---|---|---|
| Hourly rate | $42.00 | Built on roughly twenty-five billable hours a week rather than forty. |
| Client-specific costs | $25.00 | A seat in this client’s CRM and a scheduling tool bought for their workflow. |
| Overhead share | $140.00 | Software, home office, insurance and hardware, shared across the month’s clients. |
| Target margin | 25% | Funds onboarding, proposals, holiday and the gap when a client leaves. |
| Payment processing | 2.9% | Card or platform fee. Higher again for an overseas client paying in another currency. |
| Labor | $840.00 | Hours on the job at your own rate. Charge for it or fund it yourself. |
|---|---|---|
| Other job costs | $25.00 | Travel, consumables, subcontractors, anything bought for this job alone. |
| Overhead | $140.00 | The share of running the business that this job has to carry. |
| Total cost | $1,005.00 | What the job costs you before you have made a penny. |
| Payment processing | $40.42 | Taken off the top by the processor, so the price has to cover it. |
| Profit | $348.48 | What is actually left, at the margin you asked for. |
- Price per unit $1,393.90
- What the customer pays $1,393.90
- Profit margin 25%
- Equivalent markup 34.67%
Twenty hours of work is $840 of labour, and the retainer comes out at $1,393.90. The gap between those two figures is not markup for its own sake: it is $140 of tools and overhead, $25 of client-specific software, and a $348.48 margin covering onboarding, proposals, holiday and the month after a client leaves. A VA who quotes twenty hours at their hourly rate and stops there is absorbing every one of those costs personally.
Run your own figures through the calculator above — the numbers here are an illustration, not a benchmark, and local rates vary enormously.
Virtual assistants pricing questions
What should a virtual assistant charge per hour?
Work it out from your own numbers rather than from marketplace averages, which are driven down by an unlimited global supply of general admin support. Take the income you need, divide by the hours you genuinely bill in a week — usually twenty-five to thirty, not forty — add your software and overhead per month, and apply a margin for unbillable time and holiday. The figure will be well above the typical marketplace rate. If your work is general enough that only the marketplace rate is achievable, the answer is specialisation rather than a lower rate.
Should I charge hourly or use a retainer?
A retainer, wherever the relationship supports one. It gives you predictable income, gives the client priority, and removes the monthly negotiation about hours. Two conditions make it work: track the hours and report them every month whether or not you are asked, and write down what happens to unused hours and to overruns before the first invoice. Retainers fail when they drift into unlimited availability at a fixed price, and that drift is always gradual and always the provider’s to prevent.
How do I raise my rates with existing clients?
Give notice well ahead — a month or two — apply the change at a natural boundary such as a renewal or the new year, and state the new rate plainly without a long justification, because explaining at length invites negotiation. Raise new-client pricing first and watch the conversion rate: if nobody hesitates, you were further below market than you thought. Expect to lose the most price-sensitive client, and price the work so that losing them is survivable. Usually it improves the business, because that client was consuming the most unbilled time.
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