Most UK VAs don’t choose their rate. They borrow it.
They look at what other VAs charge, settle somewhere in the middle and hope it works out. For a lot of people, that middle is £30 an hour.
On paper, £30 sounds healthy. It’s well over double the minimum wage. But a VA charging £30 an hour isn’t earning £30 an hour. Once you take out the time you can’t bill, the costs of running a business and the weeks you’re not working, the real figure is much lower.
In some cases, it’s lower than a full-time job on the National Living Wage.
This guide breaks down what UK virtual assistant rates look like in 2026, how to work out the rate your business actually needs, and why AI is changing the way smart VAs price their work.
If you only take one thing away, make it this: your rate should come from your numbers, not someone else’s.
The Going Rate for UK VAs Right Now
The VA industry has no official government data, which makes rate-setting harder than it should be. The best source is the Society of Virtual Assistants’ annual UK VA Survey.
Its latest published results, from 2025, show UK VA rates running from £14 to £86 an hour, with £30 the most common choice. The 2026 survey is still collecting responses, so expect updated figures later this year.
Other sources point the same way. The VA Handbook put the UK average at £30 an hour in mid-2025 and noted it was creeping towards £35.
Specialists sit much higher. Experienced operations VAs in the UK charge between £45 and £75 an hour.
So the spread is wide. And what separates the top from the bottom usually isn’t years of experience. It’s what the VA is selling.
If you’re at the very start and still deciding what that is, read our guide to becoming a VA first.
Why online rate guides confuse everyone
Search for a virtual assistant hourly rate in the UK and you’ll see numbers from £5 to £75. That’s because most guides compare things that aren’t comparable.
- Salary sites: Payscale lists an average of £15.33 an hour for VAs. That’s what employees are paid, not what a business owner needs to charge.
- Global marketplaces: a study of 201 Upwork VA profiles found a median of $14.50 an hour. Different market, different costs.
- Hiring guides for business owners: these often tell clients to expect 10 to 15% off for booking a retainer.
You’re not an employee, and you’re not competing on price with the whole world. Those figures are background noise.
How to Work Out the Rate Your Business Needs
The most useful pricing exercise a VA can do takes about ten minutes. You work backwards from what you want to earn.
Start with billable hours, not working hours
A full working week isn’t a full billable week. Some of your time goes on:
- Invoicing and admin
- Marketing your business
- Discovery calls and proposals
- Learning new tools
- Holidays, bank holidays and sick days
A realistic split for a solo VA is around 30 working hours a week, with 20 of those billable.
Run the numbers
Here’s an example year:
- Income goal: £40,000 profit before tax
- Business costs: £3,000 a year for software, insurance, accounting and equipment
- Weeks worked: 46, leaving six weeks for holidays, bank holidays and illness
- Billable hours: 20 a week, so 920 hours a year
Add the income goal and costs together to get £43,000. Divide by 920 hours. The answer is £46.74 an hour.
That’s not an ambitious rate. That’s the floor for a modest salary.
What £30 an hour really pays
Now take the same VA charging £30. Over 920 billable hours, they bring in £27,600. After costs, that’s £24,600 before tax.
Compare that with employment. The National Living Wage went up to £12.71 an hour from April 2026. A full-time job at that rate pays roughly £24,785 a year, and it includes paid holiday and sick pay.
Then there’s tax. Self-employed people in 2026/27 pay Class 4 National Insurance at 6% on profits between £12,570 and £50,270, plus income tax.
Use your own numbers. But if you’re charging around £30 and wondering why money feels tight, this is usually why.
What AI Means for How Much a VA Can Charge
AI has made a lot of VA tasks faster. That’s good for your workload and bad for your income if you bill by the hour.
Basic task rates are under pressure because clients now use AI for simple jobs themselves. At the same time, 26.4% of VA roles opened between February and August 2026 included AI in their requirements. Clients don’t just accept that you use it. Many expect it.
Here’s the problem. If a job used to take three hours and AI helps you finish it in one, an hourly VA has just lost two hours of pay for doing better work.
That’s why task-based VAs feel squeezed while outcome-focused VAs don’t. We go deeper on which tasks are most at risk in our post on whether AI will replace VAs.
Hourly, Retainer or Package? Choosing How You Charge
How you charge matters as much as how much. Here’s how the three main models compare.
Hourly billing
Hourly suits short or unclear jobs, like a one-off tidy-up or a trial month with a new client.
But it caps your income at the number of hours you can work. It also means clients judge you on time, not results.
Block-hour retainers
With a retainer, a client pays for a fixed number of hours each month. You get steady income, which helps with planning.
The catch is that most VA retainer pricing is still about time. Clients buy hours in bulk, often at a discount. When budgets get tight, those hours are the first thing they cut.
Outcome-based packages
A package has a fixed price for a clear result. Think of a weekly newsletter written and sent, a monthly content calendar delivered, or client onboarding handled from contract to welcome call.
The client knows what they’re getting. You decide how to deliver it. If AI or a better process saves you time, the saving is yours.
This is where the most sustainable VA packages in the UK are heading.
How to Build a Package From the Work You Already Do
You don’t need new skills to start packaging. You need to look at your current work differently.
Take a VA who spends 10 hours a month on social media for a coach. At £30 an hour, that’s £300 a month. The client sees it as posting support.
Now look at the same work as a package:
- A monthly content plan built around the coach’s offers and dates
- 12 posts written and scheduled
- A short monthly report on reach and enquiries
- A 30-minute planning call each month
Priced at £650 a month, it’s easier for the client to understand and easier to justify. With AI helping with first drafts and a repeatable template, the work takes around six hours. That’s an effective rate of over £100 an hour.
To build your own:
- Write down every task you do for one client.
- Ask what each task is there to achieve.
- Group the tasks under one outcome the client cares about.
- Be clear about what’s included and what costs extra.
- Set the price based on value to the client, using your minimum rate as the floor.
Our £9 Starter Kit takes you through positioning and packaging step by step.
When your packages are ready, make sure clients can find them. It’s free to list on the VA directory. If you need more people to pitch them to, the free lead generation masterclass shows you who to target and how to start the conversation.
Price Like a Business Owner, Not a Freelancer
The most common UK rate is £30 an hour. That doesn’t make it the right one.
Here’s what to remember:
- Your rate has to cover the hours you can’t bill, your business costs, your time off and your tax.
- For many VAs working a normal week, the minimum sits closer to £45 an hour than £30.
- AI is making tasks faster, which means hourly billing pays you less for doing better work.
- Packages built around outcomes let you keep the value of the time you save.
Start small. Pick one client, list what you do for them, and turn it into one package with a clear result and a fixed price.
Sell outcomes. Not hours.