How Much to Charge as a Virtual Assistant in 2026

What a virtual assistant quote needs to include

A quote that just says "£500 a month for admin support" leaves too much unsaid for either of you to rely on later. Cover these and there's nothing to renegotiate six weeks in:

1. 1The task categories covered — inbox and calendar management, research, data entry, customer support, social media scheduling, basic bookkeeping support — spelled out rather than a vague "general admin."
2. 2A monthly or weekly hour cap, and the rate that applies to anything over it.
3. 3The software and platforms you'll be working in (Gmail, Asana, Xero, Buffer, Canva), and who holds and pays for which subscriptions.
4. 4Response-time expectations stated as a service level — "replies within one working day" — rather than open-ended "available whenever you need me," which reads as on-call availability.
5. 5Confirmation that you work with other clients, and that your hours and working pattern are your own to set.
6. 6Whose equipment you're using — almost always worth stating plainly that it's your own laptop and software, not kit the client supplies.
7. 7A reference to the signed contract or engagement letter covering confidentiality, data handling and IP in anything you draft or manage on the client's behalf.
8. 8Payment terms: retainer in advance or hourly invoiced in arrears, plus the notice period either side needs to end the arrangement.
9. 9What's explicitly NOT included — bookkeeping beyond basic data entry, content you didn't actually write, or anything that would need its own specialist quote.

The self-employment status test that actually matters

IR35 gets mentioned a lot in VA pricing guides, and most of it doesn't apply to most VAs. IR35 is specifically about people who supply their labour through an intermediary — usually their own limited company — to an end client. If you invoice as a sole trader, which most VAs do, IR35 as a set of rules doesn't touch you directly.

What does apply to every self-employed VA, sole trader or limited company, is the older and broader question underneath IR35: employment status. HMRC's own Employment Status Manual sets out the factors it weighs when deciding whether someone is genuinely in business on their own account or effectively an employee in all but name — and a client who dictates your hours, insists on their own equipment, and gives you no right to send a substitute or take other work is building a relationship that looks a lot like employment, regardless of what the contract is titled. Get that wrong and it isn't only your problem: a successful HMRC challenge can leave the client facing backdated PAYE tax, employer's National Insurance and holiday pay they never budgeted for, which is exactly why a well-advised client will welcome a quote that heads this off rather than treat it as you being difficult.

Five things genuinely strengthen your self-employed status, and all five belong in how you write a quote, not just in how you actually work: take on more than one client at a time; set your own working hours and location rather than agreeing to fixed "office hours"; use your own laptop, software and phone; price in deliverables or an hour cap rather than open-ended "on call" availability; and, where it's genuinely feasible for the work, keep a right to send a suitably briefed substitute for planned absence. None of this needs legal drafting — a sentence or two on the quote, stated plainly, does the job.

Not every VA client is the same job

A solo founder who needs their inbox triaged twice a week is a different product from a small agency that wants a semi-dedicated ops hire covering scheduling, light bookkeeping data entry and client-facing email — price them accordingly, not off the same flat hourly number.

Hourly vs fixed monthly retainer

Hourly billing suits a brand-new client or a one-off project, because you genuinely don't know yet how long their tasks take. Once you've worked together for four to eight weeks, a fixed monthly retainer with a stated hour cap is usually better for both sides: the client can budget for it, and you're rewarded for getting faster rather than penalised for it.

Specialist skills command a real premium

Generalist admin — inbox, calendar, basic data entry — sits at the lower end of VA pricing precisely because the pool of people who can do it is large. Executive-level diary management, social media content and scheduling, light bookkeeping, or systems/CRM setup are a genuinely different job and should be priced as one, not folded into a generalist hourly rate because the same person happens to be doing both.

How to price the work

UK virtual assistant pricing varies by experience, specialism and whether you work direct or through an agency, but these ranges are a fair starting point for 2026:

• Generalist freelance VAs commonly charge £18–£35 an hour direct with clients; agency-represented VAs typically sit at £25–£45 an hour for semi-dedicated capacity.
• Specialist VAs — bookkeeping-trained, executive-assistant-level, social media and content, or systems/CRM setup — commonly charge £35–£60 an hour, reflecting a narrower pool of people who can do the work well.
• Starter retainers commonly run £280–£350/month for roughly 10 hours; growth retainers £500–£650/month for around 20 hours; full support £750–£950/month for 30–35 hours with same-day response built in.
• When you're setting a floor rate, work from your target income, not a market-rate guess: add your personal and business costs, a savings or pension contribution, and a UK tax buffer of roughly 20–29%, then divide by realistic monthly billable hours — commonly 60–80 for a home-based VA once admin and marketing time for your own business is accounted for, not the 150+ hours a full-time employee bills.
• Review your rates every six months, raise them when you're consistently fully booked or have added a genuinely new skill, and give existing retainer clients 30 days' notice of any increase.

A worked example

A 20-hour monthly growth retainer for a small business client, priced the way described above:

£550 a month for 20 hours covering inbox and calendar management, social media scheduling and content prep, research and admin support, plus a monthly reporting call — a blended rate of £27.50/hour across generalist and lighter-specialist tasks. Hours over the 20-hour cap billed at £30. Client confirmed as one of several the VA works with, own laptop and software, payable monthly in advance, with two weeks' notice either side to end the engagement.

Five details that get VA quotes accepted faster

• State your hour cap and overage rate on the quote itself. "20 hours/month, additional hours billed at £28" closes off the single biggest source of VA-client friction — a retainer that quietly turns into unlimited hours because neither side ever wrote down where it stopped.
• Say plainly that you work with other clients and set your own hours. It reads like a throwaway line, but it's doing real work: it tells a careful client — the kind worth having — that you've thought about how this arrangement is classified, and it's one of the clearest, cheapest ways to keep the relationship looking like what it actually is.
• Name the tools and who pays the subscription. "Canva Pro, paid by you" or "included in my monthly fee" removes one of the most common points of confusion between a VA and a client three months into a retainer.
• Separate one-off project work from the ongoing retainer. A client who wants a one-time inbox clear-out or a CRM migration isn't the same job as ongoing weekly admin support — price the one-off as its own clearly labelled line, then move them onto your standard retainer once it's done.
• Put a notice period on the engagement, not just a price on the quote. Two to four weeks' notice either way, stated in the contract the quote refers to, protects you from a client disappearing mid-month and protects them from a VA who wants out with no handover.

The fastest way to do all of this

Quoting one new client from a blank page is manageable enough. Quoting six clients, each with a different hour cap, task mix and overage rate, from memory or last month's invoice, is exactly where retainers quietly drift and scope creeps in unpaid.

This is what QuoteRocket is for. Describe the job in plain English — "20-hour monthly retainer, inbox and calendar management, social scheduling, admin support, monthly call" — and it turns that into a branded, itemised PDF quote in under a minute, with a valid-until date and clear pricing. Your client accepts it with one tap on their phone, and an accepted quote becomes an invoice in one click, so you're billing for the retainer, not reconstructing it from memory every month.

Whichever way you produce the quote, the principle holds: price task complexity and specialism rather than a single flat hourly number, state your hour cap and overage rate plainly, and put the detail that protects your self-employed status — other clients, your own hours, your own equipment — in writing rather than leaving it implied.

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