Tool 1 of the Get Paid Kit · For virtual assistants

Virtual assistant hourly rate calculator

This free calculator works out the hourly rate a virtual assistant should charge, starting from the income you need — not from the going rate on a job board. It adds the software and admin costs VA work quietly carries, and divides by the hours clients actually pay for, with onboarding, overlap and your own paperwork counted in the thinking.

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The pricing reality for freelance virtual assistants

VA work is sold two ways: tracked hourly time, and monthly retainers that reserve a block of hours. Both look simple and both have the same fault line — the client compares your rate to an employee's hourly wage, and an employee's wage is not the cost of an employee. It leaves out payroll taxes, benefits, equipment, software, paid leave and the manager who absorbs the admin. Your rate has to carry all of that inside the hours you sell, which is why a freelance rate that looks "expensive" next to a wage is usually just honest.

The invisible work in this trade is the space between clients. Every client brings their own tools, logins, filing habits and preferences, and switching between them costs real attention that lands on nobody's timesheet. Then there is your own business to run: discovery calls with prospects who may never sign, contracts, your invoicing, your bookkeeping. Tracked retainer work keeps the billable share higher than most trades, though — which is why the preset below starts billable time at 65%, across a 35-hour week that reflects how many VAs actually structure their client load.

The numbers below are starting presets, not a survey: a $42,000 target income, $1,800 a year of expenses — a realistic shape for your own software stack, home-office costs and an accountant — three weeks off, 35 hours a week and 65% billable time. With those starting numbers the calculator lands near $58 an hour. Change any figure to match your own books; the point is not the preset, it is that every cost gets counted before the retainer is quoted, not discovered at the end of a month of other people's inboxes.

Your numbers — virtual assistant presets

Your recommended rate

$0 / hour
$0Day rate (8 hours)
0Billable hours per year
Income + expenses needed$0
Grossed up for tax$0
With profit margin$0
Working weeks0
Total working hours0
Billable hours0

Your rate is saved on this device only, so the Proposal Generator can show it when you price a project.

Easy to miss

Costs virtual assistants forget to put in the rate

  • Your software stack. Your scheduler, password manager, storage, design basics and the tools clients simply expect you to arrive with. Clients provide licences for their systems; the kit that makes you employable is yours.
  • Overlap hours across clients. Two clients cannot own the same hour, and the day is full of seams — logging out of one world and into another. That switching capacity is real, limited and billed to no one directly.
  • Unpaid admin. Your own invoicing, bookkeeping, contracts, tax records and email. An employee never sees this work because a whole department does it; you are the department.
  • Onboarding and learning curves. Every new client means new systems, new logins and new preferences to absorb before the first billable task. Charge for onboarding or accept it consciously — do not let it happen by default.
  • Discovery calls and proposals. The calls that win clients are work, and only some of them convert. A steady practice prices them in across the clients who do sign.
The maths

How this calculator works

Start with the hours you can genuinely sell. Take 52 weeks, subtract your vacation weeks, multiply by your hours per week, then multiply by your billable percentage. With the virtual assistant presets — three weeks off, 35 hours a week, 65% billable — that is 1,115 billable hours a year, against the 2,080 hours a full-time salary is counted on. That gap is why matching an employee's hourly wage always underprices freelance support work.

Next, work out what those hours must bring in. Add your desired income and your annual business expenses together, gross the total up for tax by dividing by one minus your tax rate — at a 25% estimate, divide by 0.75 — then add your profit margin and divide by your billable hours. That final number is the rate below which the year stops adding up.

Use it as the engine inside your retainers, too. A monthly retainer is really a reserved block of hours multiplied by this rate — ten reserved hours a month at the preset rate is a $580 retainer, not a round $400 because it sounds friendlier. A day rate is this figure times eight. When a prospect compares the number to a wage, compare like with like: your rate already contains the tax, tools, leave and admin that a wage leaves out.

Disclaimer: This is a planning estimate, not tax advice. Tax rates, deductions and allowances vary by country, state and business structure. Enter the rate you expect to pay, and check significant decisions with a qualified accountant.
Next: build a proposal with this rate Use the general rate calculator
Questions

Virtual assistant rate questions

Retainers for ongoing clients, hourly for everything else — but price the retainer from this rate, not from a round number. A retainer is a block of reserved hours: multiply the hours the client is reserving by your hourly floor, then decide your unused-hours policy in writing, because that policy is where retainers quietly lose money. Hours that roll over forever turn one month's retainer into a permanent discount. Overflow beyond the block bills at your hourly rate, and one-off project work for new clients starts hourly until you know how they work.
Never for the same work in the same hour — that is the one line that protects your whole business model. Being available to two clients is fine; charging both for an hour you spent on one of them is not, and clients who compare notes will end the relationship and the referrals with it. The real issue overlap creates is capacity, not billing: switching between clients' systems and inboxes costs attention that no one pays for directly, which is exactly what your billable percentage is for. Track time per client honestly, and let the rate carry the switching.
Because the comparison leaves out everything an employer pays on top of a wage: payroll taxes, benefits, equipment, software, paid holidays and sick days — plus the admin time an employee never thinks about because someone else does it. Your rate has to carry all of that inside the hours clients buy, and clients are also buying flexibility an employee does not offer: senior help for ten hours a week, with no recruitment, no desk and no commitment. When a prospect makes the comparison, walk through what the hours include rather than discounting toward a wage that was never the real cost.

Rates differ by trade — the same maths runs with different presets for graphic designer rates, freelance writer rates, web developer rates, marketing consultant rates, photographer rates, video editor rates and social media manager rates, or start from the general freelance hourly rate calculator.