Ask this question online and you will get vague ranges, hidden pricing, and a dozen "book a call to find out" answers. We think that is silly. Our own pricing is public, so here is the whole market laid out with real numbers: what a full-time hire actually costs once you count everything, what virtual assistants really cost once you count your own time, and where fractional support fits in between.
The short version: in 2026, executive support costs anywhere from $15 per hour for a marketplace virtual assistant to $175,000 or more per year for a senior full-time executive assistant. Fractional executive assistant support, the model in the middle, typically runs $1,500 to $5,000 per month.
The three price tags, side by side
- Virtual assistant: $15 to $30 per hour. Task execution only. You manage the work.
- Part-time or freelance EA: $25 to $50 per hour. More capability, still one person with no systems behind them.
- Full-time executive assistant: $85,000 to $175,000 or more per year in salary, before benefits, taxes, and recruiting.
- Fractional executive assistant: $1,500 to $5,000 per month for senior support backed by a team and systems.
Those are the sticker prices. The real story is what each number hides, so let us take them one at a time.
What a full-time executive assistant really costs
A senior EA commands $7,000 to $14,000 a month in salary. That is the number on the offer letter. It is not the number on your books.
Add payroll taxes, health insurance, PTO, equipment, and software, and the true cost of an employee typically runs 25 to 40 percent above salary. A $100,000 EA is really a $125,000 to $140,000 line item. Then add the one-time costs: recruiters charge 20 to 30 percent of first-year salary to find senior administrative talent, and even a great hire needs roughly three months to learn your world before they are operating at full speed.
In South Florida specifically, the market has tightened. Experienced EAs supporting C-suite executives in Boca Raton, Miami, and Fort Lauderdale commonly earn $75,000 to $120,000, and the strongest candidates get bid up quickly because every family office and growing company wants the same short list of people.
And there is one more number nobody puts in the job description: the average EA tenure is around 18 months. When they leave, the institutional knowledge leaves with them, and you pay the recruiting fee and the three-month ramp all over again.
What a virtual assistant really costs
On paper, a VA is the budget option. At $20 per hour for 15 hours a week, you are spending about $15,600 a year. That is real savings, and for pure task execution it can genuinely work.
The catch is the work you cannot hand off. Most VAs execute instructions: you define the task, provide the context, check the output, and handle everything that requires judgment. The management overhead stays with you, and that overhead is billed in the most expensive currency you have, which is your own time.
If you spend five hours a week directing, checking, and re-explaining work for a $20 per hour assistant, and your time is worth $200 an hour, your cheap assistant costs $67,600 a year. The hourly rate was never the real price.
There is also the turnover problem, which marketplace platforms make worse rather than better. When your VA disappears, there is no system holding your operations together. There is just a new stranger and another round of training. We wrote a full breakdown of these trade-offs in our comparison of executive assistant service models.
What a fractional executive assistant costs
A fractional executive assistant gives you senior-level support for a fixed monthly rate, without hiring anyone. Across the industry, that runs $1,500 to $5,000 per month depending on scope and seniority. Most providers keep their pricing hidden until you get on a sales call.
Ours is public. At Elite Executive Ease, packages start at $1,500 per month for focused support, $3,500 per month for full coverage across business and personal, and $4,500 per month for priority, multi-stakeholder support with in-person availability in South Florida. Annualized, that is $18,000 to $54,000 per year.
What makes the fractional math different is not just the lower number. It is what the number includes: senior people, the systems and AI-powered workflows behind them, a client portal that tracks everything, and continuity that does not depend on any single person staying in the seat. There is no recruiting fee, no ramp time, and no restart when life happens.
A full-time hire costs six figures and locks all the value in one person. Fractional support costs a fraction and locks the value into a system.
The annual math, all-in
- Full-time senior EA: $105,000 to $220,000 per year once benefits, taxes, and recruiting are counted. Best when you truly need 40 or more hours a week of dedicated presence.
- Virtual assistant: $15,000 to $30,000 per year in fees, plus the unpriced cost of your own management time and periodic retraining.
- Fractional EA: $18,000 to $54,000 per year, flat and predictable, with senior judgment and systems included.
One more comparison worth making: the cost of doing nothing. If you earn $450,000 a year and spend 15 hours a week on admin, that time is worth roughly $160,000 a year. Doing it yourself is the most expensive option on this page. We broke that math down fully in the real cost of doing everything yourself, and you can run your own numbers with the calculator on our packages page.
What actually moves the price
Scope. Calendar and inbox support costs less than full operational coverage across business, travel, vendors, and personal life. The more of your world you hand off, the higher the tier.
Seniority. Task execution is cheap. Judgment is not. An assistant who can make decisions on your behalf, handle sensitive information, and represent you to clients and investors will always command more than someone working from a checklist.
Systems. Support that comes with processes, documentation, and technology costs more upfront and dramatically less over time, because nothing has to be rebuilt when a person changes.
Location. In-person availability and high cost-of-living markets carry a premium. This is why remote-capable fractional support often beats a local full-time hire on price without giving up quality.
How to choose
If you need under 10 hours a week of pure task execution and you enjoy managing the work, a good VA is the economical choice. If you genuinely need someone in your office 40 hours a week, hire full-time and pay the premium knowingly. For nearly everyone in between, which in our experience is most founders and executives losing 10 to 25 hours a week to work that does not need them, fractional support is the strongest math in the market.
If you are still weighing the models, our guide to fractional EAs versus virtual assistants goes deeper on the capability differences. And if you want to talk through your specific situation, book a free consultation. We will tell you honestly which option fits, even when it is not us.