How to Set Your Virtual Assistant Rates in 2026

Pricing is the question every new VA agonises over, and it's one of the most common things experienced VAs still get wrong. Charge too little and you'll burn out. Charge too much without the positioning to back it up and you'll struggle to win clients. Get it right and everything else in your business gets easier.

After a decade of running Virtalent and working alongside hundreds of VAs at every stage of their careers, I've seen what works and what doesn't. This guide gives you real UK market data, practical frameworks for setting your rates, and the confidence to charge what you're actually worth.

What are VAs charging in the UK right now?

Let's start with the numbers. UK-based virtual assistants typically charge between £25 and £45 per hour in 2026, depending on experience, specialism, and location. Here's roughly how that breaks down.

General admin and PA support - the bread and butter of VA work - sits around £25-£32 per hour. This covers things like email management, diary coordination, travel booking, data entry, and general organisational support. If you've come from a PA or EA background, this is likely where you'll start.

Specialist skills command higher rates. Social media management typically sits at £30-£40 per hour. Bookkeeping and financial admin ranges from £30-£45, depending on your qualifications. Marketing support, including email campaigns, content creation, and newsletter management, tends to fall in the £32-£42 range. Technical work like CRM management, website updates, or systems setup can push to £40-£50 or higher.

At the top end, experienced VAs with strong personal brands and niche expertise charge £45-£60+ per hour. These are typically VAs who've been running their businesses for several years, have a waiting list of clients, and offer a very specific set of skills to a clearly defined audience.

The Society of Virtual Assistants runs an annual UK VA Survey that provides detailed data on rates, income, and industry trends. It's worth purchasing if you want to benchmark yourself against the wider market.

Why most new VAs charge too little

The biggest pricing mistake is starting too low. I see this constantly - new VAs pricing themselves at £15-£18 per hour because they feel they need to be "competitive" or because they don't yet feel confident charging more.

Here's the problem with low rates. First, you attract price-sensitive clients - the exact clients who are most likely to be demanding, micromanage your time, and push back when you eventually try to raise your rates. Second, you need to work significantly more hours to earn a viable income. At £15 per hour, you'd need to bill 30 hours per week to earn £23,400 per year (before tax and expenses). At £30 per hour, you only need 15 billable hours per week to earn the same amount - giving you the other half of your week for business development, admin, and having a life.

Third, and this is the one people forget, low rates signal low value. Business owners are used to paying professionals properly. When they see a VA charging £15 per hour, they don't think "what a bargain" - they think "I wonder why she's so cheap." Pricing at £25-£30 per hour as a new VA is not overcharging. It's the minimum needed to run a sustainable business once you account for unbillable time, tax, insurance, software subscriptions, and the lack of holiday pay.

How to structure your pricing

You have three main options for structuring your VA rates, and most VAs use a combination of them across different clients.

Hourly billing is the simplest. You track your time and invoice the client for the hours worked. This works well for ad-hoc or project-based work, and it's transparent for both parties. The downside is that it creates unpredictable income - you don't know what you'll earn next month until you've done the work.

Monthly retainer packages are how most established VAs prefer to work. The client commits to a set number of hours per month (e.g. 10 hours at £30/hour = £300/month) and pays at the start of each month. This gives you predictable, recurring income and gives the client budgeting certainty. It also shifts the conversation from "how much do you cost per hour?" to "what does the monthly package include?" which feels more like a professional service than hiring by the hour.

Fixed-price packages work well for specific, repeatable services. For example, you might offer a social media management package that includes 12 posts per month, community engagement, and a monthly analytics report for a flat £500 per month - regardless of how many hours it takes. This rewards efficiency and lets you decouple your income from your time.

My recommendation for new VAs is to start with monthly retainer packages. They provide income stability, they're easier to sell than hourly rates, and they encourage longer-term client relationships. You can always offer hourly billing for one-off projects alongside your retainers.

When and how to raise your rates

If you're consistently fully booked and turning away enquiries, your rates are too low. If every prospect says yes immediately without any pushback, your rates are probably too low. A healthy sign is that roughly 70-80% of qualified prospects accept your pricing - meaning some people do say no, which tells you you're in the right range.

Raise your rates for new clients first. You don't have to increase prices for existing clients at the same time. When you do raise rates for existing clients, give them plenty of notice (at least a month), do it at a natural break point (the start of a new quarter or a contract renewal), and frame it positively: "As my business has grown, I've invested in new tools and training that allow me to deliver even more value. My rates will be increasing to £X from [date]."

A good rule of thumb is to review your rates every six months. You don't have to change them every time, but you should at least check whether they still reflect your experience, skills, and the market. If you haven't raised your rates in two years, you're almost certainly undercharging.

Calculating your minimum viable rate

If you're not sure where to start, work backwards from what you need to earn. Take your target annual income (say, £30,000), add 25-30% for tax and National Insurance (so roughly £39,000), add your annual business expenses (software, insurance, marketing - perhaps £2,000-£3,000), and divide by the number of billable hours you realistically expect to work in a year.

Most VAs can bill around 20-25 hours per week once they're established (the rest goes to admin, marketing, and business development). That's roughly 1,000-1,250 billable hours per year. So £42,000 divided by 1,100 hours gives you a minimum hourly rate of about £38.

That's your floor - not your ceiling. And it assumes you're fully booked all year, which rarely happens in year one. Build in a buffer. If your calculation says £38, charge £40-£45. You can always run promotions or offer introductory rates to win early clients, but it's much easier to discount down than to raise up.