Guide · Updated 12 October 2026
What a virtual assistant costs a solo business
If you run a practice alone, the arithmetic that matters is not the hourly rate. It is what an hour of your own time is worth against what it costs to have someone else do the work. Here is what the main options cost in 2026, and what each one is actually good at.
The short answer
There are three ways to buy help, and they sit at three price points. A freelance virtual assistant hired directly on a marketplace such as Upwork or OnlineJobs.ph costs roughly $18 to $35 an hour, but you are the recruiter, the trainer and the manager.
A managed US-based service such as Time etc sells packs starting at $390 for 10 hours a month ($760 for 20), and Belay starts around $1,380 a month. A same-day agency like HighAMP sells 10 hours for $450 a month or 20 hours for $850, with every request sent during business hours finished that same day.
What you are really paying for
The hourly rate is the smallest part of the bill. With a marketplace hire, you spend your own hours writing the job post, reviewing applicants, training, correcting and re-explaining — and doing it again when the person moves on. That overhead is why a "$20 an hour" freelancer frequently costs more than a $45 an hour managed service once your own time is counted at anything close to what a client pays you for it.
Managed services exist to absorb that overhead: they recruit, vet and replace the assistant, and you hand over tasks. What varies between them is turnaround. Most agencies queue requests overnight or longer, which is fine for tidying a contact list and expensive when the task is rescheduling tomorrow's discovery call with a lead who is still shopping around.
The honest trade-offs
A marketplace freelancer is the right answer when you genuinely enjoy managing, want more than 20 hours a week, and the work is routine enough to document once. It is the cheapest route per hour and the slowest to set up. Be aware that a one-person practice rarely has spare management hours — that is usually why the admin pile exists in the first place.
A large managed service is the right answer when you want a long-term assistant who learns your practice deeply and you can wait a day or two for results. It is also, at the 40-hour tier, built for teams rather than one person. The trade-off you make is speed: a request sent at 9am may sit until tomorrow, and tomorrow is often after the lead has booked elsewhere.
A same-day agency costs more per hour than a marketplace hire and less than most US managed services at the 20-hour mark. You are paying for the guarantee that the reschedule, the invoice chase or the inbox thread is finished before you close the laptop. If your requests can always wait until tomorrow, do not pay for that guarantee.
What HighAMP costs
HighAMP sells two monthly hour packs: 10 hours for $450 a month, or 20 hours for $850. You send requests through the site or by plain email, and anything sent during business hours is done the same day. There is no hiring step, no training period and no one for you to manage — the agency handles its own staff. If your calendar is full of client sessions and your admin happens at night, you can see how the packs work on the home page.
One transparency note: HighAMP itself is built and run by AI agents on NanoCorp, and a human founder delivers the client work. The prices on this page are the ones the checkout charges today.