Best Virtual Assistant Services in 2026: A Researched Shortlist

Most roundups of virtual assistant companies list twenty providers and say almost nothing concrete about any of them, which leaves the real question unanswered: which of these is actually worth paying for, and for what kind of work?

This list is short on purpose. Every company below has been researched against its own live website, and every claim here traces back to something that company publishes about itself. Where a current price could not be confirmed on the provider’s own site, this page says nothing rather than filling the gap with a figure from somewhere else.

One thing worth knowing before the list: eight of the nine options here sell you a person’s time, however that time gets priced. That single fact shapes what they cost you and how much you can really hand over.

The Best Virtual Assistant Services in 2026

Service	Model	Price
Catch	AI executive assistant, no hours to budget	$99/person/month flat
Wing Assistant	Dedicated assistant, managed, hour-based plans	From $699/month (80 hours)
Fancy Hands	Pooled US assistants, per-request	From $35/month (3 requests)
Zirtual	Dedicated US assistant, monthly hour bucket	From $599/month (12 hours)
Time Etc	Dedicated US assistant, monthly hour bucket	From $390/month (10 hours)
BELAY	Dedicated US assistant, managed, consultative	Not published
Prialto	Managed assistant with trained backups	Varies
Magic	Dedicated assistant with AI tooling	Varies
Athena	Dedicated full-time EA, flat subscription	$3,000/month on annual billing

Catch

Corporate travel booking is in beta for selected Catch customers. It covers supported flights and hotels, with approval required before purchase. Fares, room charges, and supplier change or cancellation fees are separate from the $99 per person monthly subscription. Ask about availability and supported trip types before relying on it. See the travel beta.

Catch is an AI executive assistant that handles the administration of an executive end to end. It runs the calendar, and when two things collide it contacts the other party to move the meeting. It triages the inbox, drafts what you actually meant, sends it, and chases the threads that have gone quiet when they matter. Scheduling gets booked rather than handed back to you as a link, with times chosen from your real availability and how urgent the request is. It reminds you of what is coming and flags what needs your attention. It makes restaurant and hotel reservations, offers supported business travel booking in beta, places outbound phone calls on your behalf, and updates HubSpot or Zoho when a deal moves. You reach it from Slack, email, text message, iMessage, or a phone call.

Price is $99 per person a month, flat, with voice included and no per-call fees. There is a 10-day free trial and setup takes under three minutes. Who it suits: executives and owner-operators with a heavy, recurring admin load who want the work gone rather than assigned. Catch does not handle expenses or receipts today, and it does no in-person or physical coordination.

Wing Assistant

Wing matches you with a dedicated remote assistant and keeps a Customer Success Manager over the relationship. Get the wrong fit and a replacement arrives within 24 hours at no extra cost. Assistants work inside your existing tools, with Slack, Google Workspace, Asana and CRMs named explicitly, and they also handle inbound and outbound phone calls, SMS and live chat. Scope covers email triage, calendar coordination and scheduling, expense tracking and invoice processing, travel booking, and personal tasks outside work.

Pricing is published by role and coverage. A general virtual assistant is $699 a month for 80 hours or $999 a month for 160 hours. An executive assistant starts at $1,299 part-time and $1,999 full-time, and a US-based assistant starts at $2,499 part-time and $4,999 full-time. Who it suits: founders and small teams who want a broad, supervised assistant across both admin and operational work, and who do not mind a management layer sitting in between.

Fancy Hands

Fancy Hands is the one genuinely different shape on this list. Its standard plans route discrete requests to a pool of US-based assistants, and a standard request is defined as up to 20 minutes of work. You submit by phone, web, text, email or the mobile apps, or by assigning a Trello card. Unused requests roll over while your membership stays active, and tasks can be set to repeat. Plans run $35 a month for 3 requests, $55 for 5, and $125 for 15.

There is also a separate dedicated tier, and it is really a different product. One matched assistant handles all your requests, billing is to the minute with no task credits, there is no contract, and you get a backup dedicated assistant, a support team leader, weekly usage reports and a project manager for larger projects. That tier’s published scope includes inbox management, light bookkeeping, file organization, purchases, calendar management, vendor research and CRM maintenance. The assistant can use your credit card, sign your NDA and work through Slack, and HIPAA-certified assistants are available. The price for it is not published anywhere, so you will have to ask. Who it suits: the standard plans fit low-volume, self-contained errands that finish inside 20 minutes. Ongoing executive admin needs the dedicated tier, not the request plans.

Zirtual

Zirtual pairs you with a dedicated, US-based, college-educated assistant and manages the hiring, vetting and performance side itself. Published scope covers inbox, calendar, expenses, social media, research, data entry, event planning, travel booking and website maintenance. If a task falls outside your assistant’s expertise they can pull in another Zirtual assistant. The service also promises a response during business hours within two hours, containing either the finished task or an estimated time.

Plans on the Virtual Assistants tab are $599 a month for 12 hours, $899 for 20 hours, $1,199 for 30 hours and $1,699 for 45 hours, month to month with no long-term contract. Unused hours do not roll over. Outbound calling, virtual paralegals and virtual legal assistants are sold as separate service lines on their own pricing tabs. Who it suits: executives and small firms who want a US-based person on a predictable monthly bucket, and who can realistically feed that bucket every month, since what you do not use, you lose.

Time Etc

Time Etc has the lowest published entry price of the dedicated US options here. Plans are $390 a month for 10 hours, $760 for 20, $1,480 for 40 and $2,160 for 60, which works out to roughly $36 to $39 an hour, with custom plans available on request. No setup fee. Unused hours roll over to the next month, and you can switch plans or cancel at any time.

Assistants are US-based (UK-based for UK clients) and applicants need five to eight years of relevant experience. Extra assistants on the account cost nothing, you can share one assistant across your internal team at no extra cost, and that assistant can have an email address on your own domain. Sickness and holiday cover is built in, and replacements are free if a match is not working. Published task categories include email management, scheduling, general admin, content marketing, personal tasks and social media. You delegate by email, text, phone, Zoom or the web and mobile app. Who it suits: solo founders and small business owners with steady but modest admin volume who want rollover and a low floor instead of a big commitment.

BELAY

BELAY sits at the premium, US-only end. Assistants are exclusively US-based and dedicated to you, and the matching process is deliberately high-touch: a sales call, a discovery call with a Client Success Consultant, a manual placement from BELAY’s bench, then a kickoff call. Published scope covers scheduling, booking, rescheduling, conflict-checking, inbox triage and blocking out focus hours; travel planned start to finish, including rebooking when plans change; and process-driven work like CRM updates and lead list cleanup. Beyond general admin, BELAY staffs sales, marketing, operations, personal and financial client service assistants.

BELAY does not publish its own rates. It does publish a market figure: a typical US-based virtual assistant, it says, runs $1,200 to $3,000 a month, or $30 to $75 an hour. Treat any specific BELAY number you see in a roundup as unconfirmed, which is why there is none here. Who it suits: mid-market companies and executives who want culturally aligned US talent with the hiring risk managed for them, and who are willing to sit through a sales process to learn the price.

Prialto

Prialto is a managed service built around continuity. Every account includes trained primary and secondary backup assistants, so coverage holds when your main assistant is unavailable. Published scope covers inbox management, where assistants filter, sort, organize and draft responses against your documented preferences; travel research, itineraries and booking for business and personal trips; expense report processing and routine bookkeeping; and data entry and maintenance in platforms like Salesforce and HubSpot. You reach your assistant through Slack, Microsoft Teams, email, video calls or texting, and Prialto’s assistants use AI tools in their own workflows. On security, Prialto cites SOC 2 Type 2 compliance, background checks and single sign-on with password management.

Pricing is the thing to pin down in writing. Ask Prialto directly for its current rate and the commitment that comes with it before you sign, rather than trusting a number from a roundup. Who it suits: teams in sales, marketing or operations that need process-driven support and cannot afford a gap when one person is out.

Magic

Magic pairs you with a dedicated human assistant, and backs that person up instead of leaving coverage to you. Published scope covers inbox triage and email management, meeting scheduling and calendar work, travel itineraries and reservations, compiling expense reports, and tasks that need a person on the phone. Its assistants get unlimited paid access to leading AI tools. There is also a “Magic 24/7” concierge for urgent work or when your assistant is offline, and full-time executive assistant clients get 10 hours of it a week at no charge.

You pay nothing until a hire is made, and referring someone earns four weeks free. Its terms also state you are not entitled to a refund on cancellation, though the company may grant one at its discretion. Who it suits: executives who want a dedicated assistant and an explicit fallback for urgent work that lands while that assistant is offline.

Athena

Athena is the full-time end of this list. You get one dedicated full-time executive assistant working 40 hours a week over five business days, and that person cannot be shared with your co-founder or your team. Published scope is wide: calendar and meeting coordination, inbox triage and email drafting, travel planning and international hotel booking, expense tracking and invoice follow-up, CRM and pipeline work, vendor sourcing and negotiation. It carries on into personal life as well, with household maintenance and moving logistics, medical and wellness appointments, insurance claims, and children’s activities. Assistants are given a US phone number through Zoom for calls such as booking hotels. You also get a Partnership Manager and access to a delegation training library, and assistants work only on Athena-owned, secured MacBooks with remote wipe, VPN, endpoint detection and device management, plus third-party background checks and an enterprise ChatGPT license.

Pricing is $3,000 a month on annual billing, or $3,600 a month month-to-month after an initial 90-day commitment. Who it suits: founders, C-suite executives and investors with enough work and life logistics to fill a full-time person, who want one accountable human across both.

What Every Human Service on This List Has in Common

They sell a person’s time. That is the economics of the model rather than a flaw in it, and it carries three consequences worth planning around.

Your cost scales with how much you delegate. On every hour-based plan here, the more you hand over, the more hours you buy. Someone who starts on 10 hours and actually learns to delegate ends up on 20 or 40, and the bill follows. The hour buckets make it explicit: Zirtual’s hours expire at the end of the month while Time Etc’s roll over, so the same 20-hour plan behaves quite differently depending on how your week went. Athena prices it the other way round, as a flat subscription, because you buy the whole person up front at full-time rates.

You pay for the briefing, not just the work. Hours spent explaining context are hours off the plan. That is the real reason a dedicated model beats a pooled one for ongoing admin, and Fancy Hands sells its own dedicated tier on exactly that point: one matched assistant handling all your requests. On a per-request plan, the 20-minute definition of a standard request also caps how far any single request can go.

Coverage has edges. A person works a shift, takes holiday, gets sick. Several services on this list solve that with backup assistants and built-in cover, which tells you the problem is real.

One number frames all of it: a fully loaded US executive assistant might cost $120,000 to $180,000 a year in a senior-role budget, depending on location and experience.

What Catch Does Differently

Catch is $99 per person a month no matter how much you delegate. No hours to budget, no bucket to use up, no briefing time billed back to you, and no per-call fees, since voice is in the price. Catch handles supported executive admin tasks, with your input when a decision needs you.

None of this requires letting anyone go. If you already have an assistant you value, Catch taking the traditional admin load off their plate frees a capable person for the operational and in-person work that genuinely needs a human in the room. Catch does not do physical or in-person coordination, but it handles supported administrative work.

Four differences show up in practice.

It acts instead of proposing

Delegation should mean the work leaves your plate. Catch sends the email, books the slot, places the call and closes the loop. A draft sitting there waiting for your approval is still your task. Before it does something on your behalf, Catch verifies the details, and that applies to everything it does, not only to sending email.

It applies judgment, not rules

Catch is not a workflow engine you sit down and configure. It learns your priorities, your key relationships and how you like things handled, from your connected calendar and email and from the corrections you give it along the way. It weighs what matters, decides what to handle and what to escalate, and asks when a situation genuinely needs you. Say “schedule time with John” when there are three Johns, and it can reasonably infer the right one from context, the way a good assistant does, instead of stopping to ask every time.

Autonomy grows as it learns you

Early on, Catch checks before it acts, and it will not do things without your permission. As it builds a picture of how you work, it handles more on its own. Independence gets earned with context rather than switched on at signup.

Availability and speed, not only cost

Catch is available outside business hours. No shift to cover, no holiday, no handover. On security, Catch is SOC 2 Type II certified and Google Verified at CASA Tier 2.

On the phone, Catch can talk with you directly to walk through priorities and take work off you, and it can place outbound calls on your behalf to book a hotel, a restaurant or an appointment. It does not pick up your incoming calls, and there is no inbound number outside contacts can call.

How to Choose

• You need in-person or physical work done. Hire a person. Nothing on the software side of this list is going to receive a delivery or set up a room.
• You want one accountable human across work and personal life. Athena is built for exactly that, and priced for it. Wing’s personal assistants handle family scheduling and errands outside work, and Prialto’s assistants book personal trips alongside business ones.
• You want US-based talent with the hiring risk managed. BELAY, Zirtual and Time Etc are the clearest fits, and of their published entry plans Time Etc’s $390 is the lowest. Wing sells a separate US-based tier from $2,499 a month part-time, and Fancy Hands staffs its pool in the US too.
• You have occasional errands rather than an ongoing load. Fancy Hands’ request plans start at $35 a month, the lowest entry price on this list.
• You cannot tolerate a coverage gap. Prialto and Magic both build backup into the model, Time Etc includes sickness and holiday cover, and Fancy Hands’ dedicated tier comes with a second assistant.
• You want the admin handled without buying hours. That one is Catch.

Who This Is For

• CEOs, founders and VPs at US companies of roughly 20 to 300 employees carrying a real admin load
• Owner-operators in law, construction, production and similar businesses handling their own admin with no assistant
• Executives who have already tried a virtual assistant service and found too much work coming back to their desk
• Leaders who travel the same routes repeatedly and want trips booked and managed rather than researched
• Executives with an assistant they would rather move onto higher-value operational work

How It Works

1. Sign up and connect your email - Gmail or Outlook, then grant permissions. Under three minutes, no sales call.
2. Connect the rest of your stack - calendar, Slack, HubSpot or Zoho, Asana, Notion, your note-taker.
3. Start delegating in whatever channel you use - Slack, email, text message, iMessage or a phone call.
4. Correct it as it learns - every piece of feedback sharpens its picture of how you want things handled.
5. Hand over more - as context builds, Catch handles more on its own without checking first.

Results You Can Expect

Calendar conflicts get resolved with the other party instead of landing back in your inbox. Scheduling gets booked from your real availability instead of coming back as a link. The threads that matter get chased. Eligible beta customers can approve supported flight and hotel options chosen around the meeting location. And the monthly subscription stays at $99 per person whether you delegate five things a week or fifty.

Frequently Asked Questions

Get Started

If you have read this far, you are probably choosing between buying hours and getting the admin handled. Catch is $99 per person a month, flat, with a 10-day free trial and setup in under three minutes. Connect your email, tell it what is on your plate, and see how much of next week it takes off you.

Pricing sources

Primary sources for the pricing and service descriptions: Time Etc. Annual billing, eligibility, usage allowances, and add-ons can change the total; confirm terms with the provider.

Additional provider sources: Wing, Fancy Hands, Zirtual, Athena, BELAY.