Guide
How much does a personal or executive assistant cost: human, virtual, and AI
A full-time US executive assistant earns a $76,590 median salary (Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2025, for executive secretaries and executive administrative assistants). Upwork says freelance virtual assistants average $18 to $35 an hour depending on skills and experience. AI assistants run from free to several hundred dollars a month, and Pally is free, with almost unlimited usage limits, calls and bookings included.
Salary or subscription price is only the starting point. Add employer costs, agency fees, minimum hours, software, onboarding time, and the cost of checking mistakes. Compare the price of a finished, dependable outcome rather than the price of access to a person or tool.
A practical approach
What to do
Price the role, not the label
Define the work before comparing rates: weekly hours, coverage, systems, and the decisions the assistant may make. A local assistant who runs errands is a different purchase from a remote one who clears email. Get every quote against the same scope, since a low rate can hide slow work.
Build the full human budget
Start from the national salary figure and adjust for your city, seniority, and duties. For an employee, add payroll taxes, benefits, equipment, recruiting, paid time off, and your management time. In return, a dedicated person learns your preferences and can own messy work across many systems.
Model virtual assistant hours
Multiply a realistic weekly hour count by the quoted rate and add agency or platform fees, and ask whether meetings and revisions are billable. Time zones and handoffs can slow urgent requests. Start with a small paid project before you commit to a monthly block.
Read the AI plan limits
AI has the lowest entry price, but a plan buys access, not outcomes. Check connected apps, usage limits, proactive alerts, and whether sending, booking, buying, or calling are included. Compare the monthly cost plus your supervision time for the exact tasks you want done.
Test a mixed setup
Use AI for repeatable summaries, drafts, reminders, and research, and save human hours for negotiation, sensitive messages, and exceptions. After a month, note which tasks finished and which came back. Add human hours where judgment is the bottleneck and automation where a repeated process eats paid time.
The Pally option
How Pally helps
Pally is free, with almost unlimited usage limits. That covers connected apps, daily briefs, reminders, web research, custom automations, web bookings and purchases, and calls to businesses. Pally gets its own phone number and email address the first time a task needs them. Compare it with the exact work you would otherwise pay a person to do.
Inbox, triaged
Ask what needs you. Pally reads the pile, flags the few, and handles the replies.
See the recipeMorning brief
A short morning brief with what matters: your day, your inbox, and the things you said you'd do.
See the recipeFollow-up chaser
You asked, they went quiet. Pally notices who owes you a reply and sends the nudge.
See the recipeCall it in
Pally makes real phone calls for you: books the table, chases the appointment, sits through the hold music.
See the recipeOptions
Other tools people use
Fair alternatives, including ones that overlap with Pally.
Upwork
Upwork fits people who want to hire a freelance virtual assistant for a defined set of remote tasks.
You must screen candidates, document the work, manage availability, and verify quality yourself.
BELAY
BELAY fits people who prefer a managed service for matching with a remote human assistant.
A managed service still requires onboarding and cannot cover the physical errands of a local assistant.
Instinct
Instinct fits people who want a personal AI assistant that can book, buy, cancel, and correspond from a text or phone request.
It is free, but access to its closed beta starts with a waitlist, and its terms say some features may require fees.
Compare Pally and InstinctLindy
Lindy fits professionals who want an AI executive assistant centered on email, calendar, and meetings.
Its narrower work focus may leave personal communications and offline errands in a separate system.
Compare Pally and LindyHey Noah
Hey Noah fits people who want to delegate scheduling, action-item extraction, and phone calls by email or text.
Access is by invitation, and pricing is not published.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
What is the salary benchmark for a full-time assistant?
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics reports a May 2025 median annual wage of $76,590 for executive secretaries and executive administrative assistants. Location, seniority, responsibilities, and employer costs can move the total budget substantially.
How much does a freelance virtual assistant cost?
Upwork says freelance virtual assistants average $18 to $35 per hour depending on skills and experience. Specialized executive, technical, accounting, or customer-facing work can require a higher rate.
Is an AI assistant always cheaper than a human?
The price usually is, and Pally costs nothing. But a tool that needs constant prompting or correction can be expensive in your time. Compare dependable finished tasks and risk, especially for work that affects customers, money, or relationships.
Should I hire hourly or pay a monthly retainer?
Use hourly or project work while the scope is changing. A retainer makes more sense after you know the recurring workload, expected response times, and amount of support you will actually use.
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