Virtual Assistant Markup: How a VA Price Is Actually Built

Direct answer. Virtual assistant markup is the gap between the price a client pays and the cost of the person doing the work. On marketplaces it is a disclosed percentage fee. In managed services it is bundled into one monthly price that also funds recruiting, statutory contributions, benefits, equipment and replacement cover — so high markup is not high profit.

What this page does, and what it deliberately does not do

Buyers of offshore administrative support routinely see a $1,999-a-month price on one page and a ₱26,000-a-month salary figure on another, and conclude that the gap between them is somebody’s profit. That conclusion is usually wrong, but the instinct behind it is sound: the price of a virtual assistant is a constructed number, and almost nobody explains how it is constructed.

This page explains the construction. It covers the arithmetic of markup versus margin, the fee structures the two large freelance marketplaces publish, the cost layers a managed provider has to fund, and the statutory employer costs that apply in the two prominent VA markets examined here — the Philippines and India. Every number below is linked to the exact page it came from, and every figure was re-checked on 27 July 2026.

What this page does not do is estimate any named private company’s margin, profit, or the pay of its workers. Those figures are not public. Where a company publishes both a client price and a worker package itself, we show that comparison and label it as arithmetic on published figures. Where it does not, we say so and stop. We also do not characterise any provider’s intent, ethics, or treatment of workers: none of that is establishable from public data, and inferring it from a price list is not analysis.

For the wider cost picture beyond markup, see our breakdown of fully-loaded employment cost and our benchmark of what virtual assistants are actually paid.

Definitions: five numbers people mistake for each other

Most confused arguments about virtual assistant markup come from mixing up five distinct quantities. They are not interchangeable, and the difference between any two of them is large.

Take-home pay. What the worker receives after their own statutory deductions and tax. This is the number workers quote to each other and the number salary platforms mostly collect.

Gross salary. The contracted monthly wage before the worker’s own deductions. In the Philippines this is the figure the 13th-month calculation and the SSS salary credit are built from; in India it is the figure EPF and gratuity are calculated on.

Fully-loaded cost. Gross salary plus everything the employer must add — statutory social contributions, mandated bonuses, mandated leave accrual — plus discretionary employer costs like private health cover, equipment and connectivity. We treat this in depth under total cost of employment.

Bill rate (or client price). What the buyer pays, per hour or per month.

Spread and gross margin. The spread is bill rate minus the worker’s cost. Gross margin is that spread expressed as a percentage of the bill rate. Neither is profit: overhead and operating expense still come out before profit.

The single most common error in public commentary is to subtract take-home pay from the bill rate and call the result gross margin. That overstates margin twice over — once by ignoring employer on-costs, and again by ignoring operating expense.

The markup ↔ margin conversion table

Markup and margin describe the same spread from opposite ends, and they are not the same number. Markup divides the spread by the cost; margin divides it by the price. A 100% markup is a 50% margin, not a 100% margin. Below, multiple is bill rate ÷ fully-loaded worker cost.

Two practical consequences follow. First, a provider quoting "a 50% markup" and a buyer hearing "a 50% margin" are describing prices that differ by half again. Second, because the denominators differ, small changes in worker cost move markup far more than they move margin — which is why providers prefer to discuss margin and procurement teams prefer to discuss markup.

Editorial note. RemoteStaffingWiki does not publish a "fair" multiple. Any such number would be an opinion dressed as a benchmark, because the correct multiple depends entirely on what the provider is contractually absorbing — a payroll-only arrangement and a fully managed arrangement with replacement guarantees are not comparable at the same multiple. Instead of a fairness rule, we give you the cost stack in the next section and the audit framework later so you can test a specific quote against what it actually includes.

How a virtual assistant price is built: five layers

Whatever the model, a VA price is assembled from the same five layers. The models differ in which layers are visible to the buyer and who carries the risk on each.

Layer 1 — worker compensation. Gross salary, and in some structures allowances that form part of an advertised "package".

Layer 2 — statutory employer cost. Social security, health insurance, housing or provident funds, mandated bonuses, mandated leave. This is non-negotiable and country-specific; the two statutory sections below quantify it from primary statutes and agency circulars.

Layer 3 — acquisition cost. Sourcing, screening, assessment and onboarding. This is not small: SHRM’s benchmarking distribution puts cost-per-hire at a median of $1,244, with a 25th percentile of $354 and a 75th percentile of $4,375, and an average of $4,683 (SHRM). SHRM’s later cycle reports a higher headline average of $5,475 for nonexecutive roles and $35,879 for executive roles, published 15 October 2025 (SHRM). SHRM’s 2026 recruiting brief states that executive cost-per-hire increased substantially while nonexecutive costs "remained relatively stable", without publishing a 2026 figure (SHRM).

Note the gap between the median and the average. The median cost-per-hire is in the low four figures; the average is roughly four times the median because a small number of expensive searches drag the mean upward. Commentary that says hiring "costs about $5,000" is quoting a mean; commentary that says "hundreds to low thousands" is quoting the median and quartiles. Both are defensible if labelled.

Layer 4 — service delivery and overhead. Account management, quality assurance, training, tooling, IT and security, payroll administration, currency and payment handling, plus the cost of carrying a bench so that a departure does not become the client’s problem.

Layer 5 — margin. What remains, before tax and before corporate overhead.

A marketplace exposes Layers 1 and 5 to the buyer and generally leaves Layers 2, 3 and most of 4 with the buyer or the worker. A managed provider typically absorbs Layers 2, 3 and 4 and presents Layers 1 through 5 as a single number. This is the structural reason managed prices look high next to marketplace rates: they are not the same purchase.

For the model taxonomy behind this, see staff augmentation and managed services.

The marketplace model: how Upwork and Fiverr actually charge in 2026

Marketplaces are the part of this market where fee structures are published as percentages on the operator’s own help pages, and where the operator’s blended economics appear in audited filings and investor releases. That makes them the right place to start — and it means several of the most widely circulated numbers about them are out of date.

Upwork: the flat 10% freelancer fee no longer exists

Upwork charged freelancers a flat 10% service fee for several years. That structure ended for new contracts on 1 May 2025, when Upwork moved to a variable Freelancer Service Fee that "may be higher or lower than 10%, and in some cases as low as 0%", applied to new contracts only, with existing contracts unchanged (Upwork).

The current published range is 0% to 15% per contract, set by Upwork and locked once a proposal, offer or contract is sent. Freelancers working with Enterprise clients "typically pay a 10% service fee", with the exact rate depending on the client’s programme terms. There are stated exceptions: Upwork Payroll participants pay no Freelancer Service Fee, Any Hire contracts carry no Freelancer Service Fee, and Direct Contracts carry a reduced fee (Upwork).

Any 2026 article still describing Upwork’s freelancer fee as "a flat 10%" is describing a structure that was retired more than a year ago.

Upwork’s client-side fees are tiered, and there is a per-contract fee as well

The buyer side is not a single 5%. Upwork’s published client pricing sets out two plans (Upwork client pricing):

So the client-side fee is 3%, 5%, 8% or 10% depending on plan and payment method, plus a per-contract initiation fee on the Basic plan. A buyer comparing "5% on Upwork" against a bundled managed price is comparing the cheapest cell in that table against a different product.

Upwork’s blended economics, from its own filings

Upwork Inc. trades as Nasdaq: UPWK (Upwork investor relations). Its FY2025 results report (Upwork FY2025 results):

Dividing revenue by GSV gives a blended take rate of 19.6% in FY2025 and 19.2% in FY2024. That is our calculation from the two reported figures, not a metric Upwork labels as "take rate" in the release; the release does not state a take rate. It is materially higher than the headline freelancer fee because it aggregates freelancer fees, client fees, contract initiation fees, Enterprise revenue and other marketplace revenue over the same volume base. Upwork does not separately break out Connects or advertising revenue in the FY2025 release, so any figure attributed to those lines is not publicly verifiable.

Note also the direction of travel: revenue grew about 2% while net income roughly halved, from $215.6M to $115.4M, and active clients fell from 832,000 to 785,000. A marketplace’s take rate rising is not the same as its business getting easier.

Fiverr: 80% to the seller, 5.5% from the buyer, 27.7% blended

Fiverr International Ltd. trades as NYSE: FVRR (Fiverr).

On the seller side, Fiverr states that "freelancers receive 80% of the client’s cleared payment", with a 14-day holding period, or shorter for Top Rated, Fiverr Pro and other eligible programmes (Fiverr).

On the buyer side, the standard service fee is 5.5% of the purchase price, charged on every payment within an order including extras and tips. Fiverr’s own help centre is internally inconsistent on the small-order surcharge: one page states "a $3.50 fee is added to orders under $200" (Fiverr), while another states "5.5% of the purchase amount. For purchases under $100, an additional $3.00 small order fee will be applied" (Fiverr). Buyers pricing small orders should confirm at checkout rather than rely on either page.

For historical context, Fiverr’s FY2021 revenue as filed on Form 20-F was $297,662,000 — so revenue has grown about 45% across four years while the marketplace take rate has been broadly flat in the high twenties.

The commonly repeated claim that Fiverr’s take rate is "31–33% of GMV" does not match what Fiverr reports. Its own reported marketplace take rate is 27.7% for the twelve months to 31 December 2025 and 27.6% for the prior comparable period.

What the marketplace numbers actually establish

Three things, all useful.

1. A disclosed take rate in the high teens to high twenties is what a high-scale, low-touch intermediary charges. The narrower and defensible distinction is this: a marketplace generally does not employ the worker, and does not contract to supply the per-engagement recruiting, payroll administration, day-to-day management and replacement cover that a managed provider does. Upwork’s own fee documentation illustrates the boundary — freelancers on Upwork Payroll "are paid through a third-party staffing firm" and are therefore excluded from the Freelancer Service Fee (Upwork), which is a different arrangement from the standard marketplace contract. Treat the disclosed take rate as a reference point for any conversation about markup, not as a target.

2. The headline fee understates the all-in fee. Upwork’s 10% freelancer fee is now 0–15%, sits alongside a 3–10% client fee and a contract initiation fee, and blends to about 19.6%. Buyers should compare all-in against all-in.

3. High take rate does not mean high profit even here. Upwork’s FY2025 net margin was 14.7% ($115.4M on $787.8M) and Fiverr’s was 4.9% ($21.0M on $430.9M), computed from the figures in the two releases above.

The managed-service cost stack: what sits between the price and the salary

A managed provider quotes one monthly number. Understanding markup means understanding what that number is contractually obliged to cover. The list below is derived from what providers themselves publish about their own operations.

Statutory employer contributions. Quantified in the two country sections below. This is the largest non-salary item and it is legally mandatory, not discretionary.

Recruiting and assessment. Layer 3 above. Providers that advertise heavy screening are describing a real cost centre, whatever one thinks of the marketing claims attached to it.

Paid pre-deployment training. One provider publishes what this costs it. Athena’s Quezon City executive assistant posting lists a PHP 30,000 training allowance during a training period of up to six weeks, with HMO coverage beginning in week 3 of training, and states that "not all trainees successfully complete the program" (Athena Labs posting, Quezon City). That is a real cost incurred on candidates who may never generate revenue.

Private health cover and welfare benefits. The same posting lists comprehensive HMO with a PHP 200,000 annual limit plus 2 free dependents, mental-health support, optical and medicine reimbursement, and a pet support programme (Athena Labs posting). None of this is statutory in the Philippines; all of it is employer cost.

Equipment and connectivity. The same posting references company-issued equipment, and Athena’s Philippine role descriptions elsewhere reference an issued MacBook on completion of training.

Infrastructure, where the provider runs it. Not all offshore providers are remote-first. VirtualEmployee.com describes physical delivery sites — a Noida headquarters in the National Capital Region "approximately 20 km (15 miles) from India’s capital" in a ten-storey building, a separate office inside the Noida Special Economic Zone, and an office in Kolkata, West Bengal (VirtualEmployee). The same company states its quoted prices are "inclusive of the employee’s salary and all other provided services such as hardware, infrastructure, office space, technical support, management and HR" (VirtualEmployee). Office-based delivery is a structurally more expensive model than home-based delivery, and that shows up in price.

Account management, QA, payroll administration, replacement cover, and currency handling. Rarely itemised separately, and present in some form wherever a provider carries the delivery obligation.

The analytical point: when a managed monthly price is two or three times a local salary, the multiple is not evidence of profit until you have subtracted every item on this list. Whether the residual is large or small at any given provider is not publicly determinable — see the gross-versus-net section below.

Verified statutory employer cost: Philippines

All rates below are from the administering agencies and the Department of Labor and Employment.

The four mandatory components

Social Security System (SSS). The contribution is 15% of the Monthly Salary Credit, paid 10% by the employer and 5% by the employee, effective 1 January 2025, on an MSC not exceeding ₱35,000 (minimum MSC ₱5,000). The employer additionally pays the Employees’ Compensation contribution alone: ₱10 where the MSC is ₱14,500 or below and ₱30 where the MSC is ₱15,000 or above (SSS).

PhilHealth. The premium rate is 5.0% of monthly basic salary, with an income floor of ₱10,000 and a ceiling of ₱100,000, producing a monthly premium between ₱500 and ₱5,000 (PhilHealth Advisory PA2025-0002). The premium is shared equally between employer and employee, so the employer share is 2.5%.

Pag-IBIG (HDMF). For a Fund Salary over ₱1,500 the rate is 2% employee and 2% employer, and the Maximum Fund Salary used in the computation is ₱10,000 — capping each side at ₱200 per month, ₱400 combined (Pag-IBIG Circular No. 460).

13th-month pay. "Not less than one-twelfth (1/12) of the total basic pay earned in a calendar year" — an 8.33% add-on. The same DOLE reference sets out the related mandated benefits: 5 days’ service incentive leave after one year of service, holiday pay at 100% of the daily rate if unworked and 200% if worked, and a night-shift differential of 10% of the effective hourly basic rate for work between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. (DOLE / NWPC, Pay Standards & Practices).

Computed employer on-cost, and why it falls as salary rises

Applying those four rates plus a service-incentive-leave accrual of 5 ÷ (26 × 12) = 1.60% of monthly salary:

Statutory employer cost in the Philippines therefore sits in a band of roughly 19% to 24% of gross salary across the range where administrative and executive-support roles are paid — and it is regressive: the percentage falls as salary rises, because SSS caps at a ₱35,000 salary credit and Pag-IBIG caps at a ₱10,000 fund salary.

This matters for markup analysis in a specific way. Anyone modelling a fixed "employer burden percentage" across salary bands will overstate cost at the top of the range and understate it at the bottom.

Two further points. First, reaching a 30–40% employer on-cost in the Philippines requires non-statutory items — private HMO, night-shift differential for US-hours coverage, equipment, connectivity allowances — not the four mandatory schemes. Second, the statutory wage floor moved this month: under Wage Order No. NCR-27, effective 25 July 2026, the National Capital Region non-agriculture minimum wage rose by ₱60 to ₱755 per day, with a second tranche of ₱25 taking it to ₱780 on 20 January 2027; the order was issued 23 June 2026 and published 9 July 2026 (NWPC). At 26 paid days, ₱755 per day is about ₱19,630 a month, or $317 at current rates. We cover the wage order’s implications separately in our note on the July 2026 NCR wage order.

Verified statutory employer cost: India

India’s structure is superficially similar and economically very different, because two of the three main schemes are capped at wage levels below what an experienced virtual assistant earns.

The three components, and their ceilings

Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF). An employee of a covered establishment drawing monthly wages up to ₹15,000 must join and contribute 12% of basic wages, dearness allowance and retaining allowance; the employer must also contribute 12% (Ministry of Labour & Employment). Of the employer’s 12%, 8.33% is diverted to the Employees’ Pension Scheme and the balance to EPF (EPFO FAQ). Contributions are payable on a maximum wage ceiling of ₹15,000, the rate is 10% rather than 12% for establishments with fewer than 20 employees, and the employer additionally pays EDLI at 0.5% and administrative charges of 0.50% (EPFO, Present Rates of Contribution). Above ₹15,000, contribution on higher wages requires a joint employee–employer request under paragraph 26(6) and is not automatic.

Employees’ State Insurance (ESI). The employer contributes 3.25% and the employee 0.75% of wages, with effect from 1 July 2019 (ESIC). Coverage applies to employees drawing wages up to ₹21,000 per month (₹25,000 for persons with disability), a limit effective from 1 January 2017 (ESIC). An assistant earning ₹25,000 or more is outside ESI entirely — a fact frequently missed in cost models that simply add 3.25% to every salary.

Gratuity. The statute requires, "for every completed year of service or part thereof in excess of six months… gratuity to an employee at the rate of fifteen days wages based on the rate of wages last drawn", and for a monthly-rated employee "the fifteen days wages shall be calculated by dividing the monthly rate of wages last drawn by twenty-six and multiplying the quotient by fifteen" (Payment of Gratuity Act, 1972, s.4(2)). That works out to 15 ÷ 26 = 57.7% of a month’s wages per year of service, or 4.81% of monthly wages as a monthly accrual.

Crucially, gratuity is a contingent liability, not a cash cost each month. It is payable on termination after not less than five years’ continuous service, with the five-year condition waived on death or disablement. Under the Code on Social Security, gratuity provisions apply with effect from 21 November 2025, the five-year requirement is additionally waived on expiry of fixed-term employment, gratuity is paid pro-rata for fixed-term and deceased employees, and the maximum is ₹20 lakh (Ministry of Labour & Employment, Labour Codes FAQ). In a market with high attrition, a large share of accrued gratuity never becomes payable — so treating 4.81% as a certain cost is conservative from the buyer’s perspective and generous from the provider’s.

Computed employer on-cost

The comparison that matters

At the salary levels where experienced virtual assistants are paid, statutory employer on-cost in India is roughly half the Philippine equivalent — approximately 9% to 13% against 19% to 24%. The reason is structural: India caps EPF at a ₹15,000 wage base and excludes ESI above ₹21,000, while the Philippines layers an uncapped 2.5% health premium and an uncapped 8.33% 13th-month obligation on top of a ₱35,000-capped social security contribution.

Any markup analysis that applies a single "offshore burden" percentage to both markets is wrong in both directions. Our side-by-side treatment of the two regimes is in India and the Philippines compared, with country detail in Hire in Philippines and Hire in India.

What the worker side looks like — with the limits stated first

Before any published salary figure: no government statistical agency in either market publishes a wage series for "virtual assistant" or "offshore executive assistant" as an occupation. The Philippine Statistics Authority’s Occupational Wages Survey was inaccessible to automated retrieval on 27 July 2026 (its site returned a bot-verification challenge at psa.gov.ph), so no official Philippine occupational wage figure is cited on this page. What follows is therefore platform-reported estimates and employer-published packages, each with its sample size and vintage attached, because those two facts determine how much weight the number can bear.

Philippines

A frequently repeated band of ₱35,000–₱60,000 for experienced executive-assistant work is broadly consistent with the Manila average and the employer-published package above, but at current exchange rates it converts to $566–$970 a month, not $600–$1,000. If you see the older dollar band, it is an FX artefact — see the currency section.

India

Both Indian sources carry serious limitations that should be stated wherever they are used: the Indeed national figure rests on nine reported salaries, and the AmbitionBox dataset was last updated in October 2024, before the 2026 rupee move. A frequently repeated band of ₹25,000–₹50,000 converts today to $259–$518, not $300–$600.

Two further cautions. First, city dispersion inside India is extreme — the New Delhi figure is more than double the national average on the same platform and date. Second, platform averages mix domestic-client and international-client work, which are different labour markets at different price points; agency-supplied VAs working US hours for international clients are not the same population as the platform mean. Our tiered treatment is in the virtual assistant pay benchmark.

One compact section on currency: why the same salary got more expensive to pay and cheaper to buy

Currency movement changes the dollar cost of an unchanged local salary. That is the whole mechanism, and it has been unusually large in 2026. Rates on 27 July 2026, from two independent central banks:

The peso has moved a long way inside eighteen months. BSP’s own monthly series shows a period average of ₱55.62 in May 2025 and ₱58.85 in December 2025, rising to ₱61.25 average and ₱61.23 end-of-period in June 2026 (BSP peso-per-dollar series). A dollar budget set against ₱57–58 — accurate for much of 2025 — understates today’s dollar value of the same peso salary by roughly 7%.

Worked FX sensitivity — a labelled illustration. A ₱45,000 monthly salary costs $782.61 at ₱57.5 and $727.67 at ₱61.841 — a 7.0% reduction in dollar cost for an unchanged peso salary. Nothing about the worker’s pay or the provider’s cost base changed; only the exchange rate did.

The same effect is larger in India. ₹28,333 a month costs $333.33 at ₹85 and $293.42 at ₹96.56 — a 12.0% reduction in dollar cost. Our dedicated analysis of the 2026 rupee move covers the interaction between local salary increases and the currency, and the conceptual framing of wage differentials is in cost arbitrage.

Three implications for markup analysis. First, any dollar-denominated salary or margin estimate needs a date and a rate; an undated dollar figure in this market has a shelf life measured in months. Second, currency movement can flatter or flatter-away a provider’s apparent markup without any change in behaviour, because the client price is usually set in dollars and the cost base is usually in local currency. Third, the direction is not guaranteed — a currency that has moved this far in one direction can move back, and providers on fixed dollar rate cards carry that risk on the cost side.

Gross margin, net margin, and the gap between them

This is where most public commentary about staffing markup goes wrong, and it is the most important section on this page.

What industry gross margin actually looks like

Staffing Industry Analysts’ published benchmark reports an average gross margin of 25.3% across 16 publicly traded staffing firms in 2018, with a range from 14.8% to 41.6% (Staffing Industry Analysts). The dispersion is the point: gross margin is a function of segment, not of virtue. Current filed accounts show the same spread. Computed from SEC XBRL company-concept data:

The finding: gross margin and net margin are not close

Robert Half converts a 37.2% gross margin into a 2.5% net margin. Kforce converts 27.2% into 2.6%. Heidrick & Struggles netted 0.8% on $1.1bn of FY2024 revenue. The 25 to 35 percentage points that disappear between the two lines are Layers 3 and 4 from the cost stack: recruiting, account management, sales, technology, premises, and corporate overhead.

For contrast, the two marketplaces — which generally do not employ the workers on their platforms and do not contract to supply per-engagement recruiting, payroll and replacement cover — netted 14.7% (Upwork, $115.4M on $787.8M) and 4.9% (Fiverr, $21.0M on $430.9M) in FY2025. Upwork also disclosed a 78% gross profit margin in FY2025 alongside that 14.7% net margin — a 63-point gap on a comparatively low-touch model.

The conclusion this supports: a large markup is a statement about a business’s cost structure, not about its profitability. It is entirely normal for a labour-services business to run a 30%-plus gross margin and a low-single-digit net margin. Commentary that treats gross spread as profit is out by an order of magnitude.

A labelled scale illustration

This is a hypothetical, not a measurement of any company. Assume 500 seats billed at $2,500 a month each against a fully-loaded worker cost of $1,100 a month each:

$8.4m of annual gross profit reads like a large number until it is set against the filed comparables above, where 25 to 35 points of gross margin are consumed before net income. On Robert Half’s FY2025 conversion ratio, a 56% gross margin business of this shape would be a low-single-digit net margin business. The illustration is included to show how gross figures scale, not to imply that any provider earns it.

What cannot be known from public data

This section exists because the honest answer to "what is my provider’s margin?" is usually "you cannot tell from outside, and neither can anyone else."

Private company margins are not public. No non-listed VA or offshore staffing provider publishes gross margin, net margin, or per-seat unit economics. Estimating them by subtracting a platform salary average from a published price produces a number that is wrong in a predictable direction — too high — because it omits every item in the cost stack and every statutory cost above.

Worker pay is not published by most of the providers reviewed for this page. Where a provider publishes a package in a job advertisement, that figure is verifiable as an advertised package. Where it does not, there is no substitute, and platform averages for the country are not a proxy for one employer’s pay scale.

Advertised selectivity and vetting claims are not independently audited. A "top 0.1% of applicants" claim (Wishup pricing page, retrieved 27 July 2026) is a marketing statement about a company’s own funnel. It can be quoted and attributed; it cannot be verified.

Salary-platform estimates carry real sampling risk. The Indian national virtual-assistant average cited above rests on nine reported salaries; the larger Indian dataset was last updated in October 2024. Neither is a wage census.

Some official data was not retrievable. The Philippine Statistics Authority’s Occupational Wages Survey returned a bot-verification challenge on 27 July 2026, so no official Philippine occupation-level wage is used here.

Intent is not observable. Whether a pricing structure is designed to be hard to compare, or is simply the normal outcome of bundling, cannot be determined from a price list. This page therefore describes how prices are presented and what is disclosed, and makes no claim about why.

Published price examples — dated, with billing basis, and nothing inferred

The prices below are what each company published on its own site or its own job posting, on the date shown. They are included so buyers can see the shape of published managed pricing. No margin, profit, or worker-pay figure is inferred for any of them.

Two notes on reading this table. First, billing basis changes the number. Wishup’s displayed prices move with an hours toggle (4 or 8 hours) and a billing toggle (quarterly or annual), and the page’s own metadata advertises different figures again — "Full Time Assistant @ $2,849/Month for 8 Hours and Part Time Assistant @ $1,899/Month for 4 Hours" (Wishup pricing page metadata). Comparing an 8-hour quarterly price against a 4-hour annual price is not a comparison. On the figures above, Wishup’s Elite tier is 1.50× its Prime tier and its US-based tier is 2.70× Prime — internal price laddering, which tells you about product tiering and nothing about cost.

Second, the only spread arithmetic available here is first-party against first-party. Athena publishes both a client price of $3,000 a month (Athena pricing) and, in its own Quezon City job posting, a PHP 46,000 a month package paid weekly (Athena Labs posting). At ₱61.841 to the dollar, ₱46,000 is $743.84, so the published client price is 4.03× the published worker package, a difference of $2,256.16, or 75.2% of the client price.

That 75.2% figure is a gross spread on two of the same company’s own published figures. It is not a margin estimate, and it should not be read as one. It sits before the employer statutory contributions the same posting confirms Athena pays ("All statutory benefits (SSS, Pag-IBIG and PhilHealth contributions…)"), before the PHP 30,000 training allowance over up to six weeks paid to candidates who may not complete training, before HMO with a PHP 200,000 annual limit and two free dependents, before company-issued equipment, and before recruiting, management, replacement cover and the entire operating expense base that the gross-versus-net section shows consumes 25 to 35 points of gross margin at listed comparables. We publish it because it is the only fully-sourced two-sided datapoint we located for this page, and we label it precisely because the unlabelled version of this calculation is the single most common error in commentary on this topic.

A buyer’s audit framework: testing a quote in six steps

The purpose of understanding markup is not to police providers. It is to work out whether a specific quote is buying you something. Six steps, in order.

Step 1 — Fix the unit. Convert everything to the same unit before comparing anything: fully-loaded cost per productive month, at the same hours per day. A $1,999 monthly price for 8 hours a day across roughly 176 monthly hours is about $11.36 an hour; the same $1,999 for 4 hours a day is about $22.72 an hour. Half the price comparisons circulating in this market are hours-mismatched.

Step 2 — Establish the local cost floor honestly. Use gross salary, not take-home, and add the statutory employer on-cost for the correct country and the correct salary band. Remember it is regressive in the Philippines and capped in India. Our remote hiring cost calculator will do the arithmetic for a specific role and country.

Step 3 — Add the acquisition cost you are avoiding. If you would otherwise recruit directly, the comparison is not price-versus-salary; it is price-versus-(salary + on-cost + your own cost-per-hire + your management time). SHRM’s median cost-per-hire of $1,244 and 75th percentile of $4,375 (SHRM) are the relevant reference range for a single administrative hire; use the mean of $5,475 (SHRM) only if your process actually looks like the average.

Step 4 — Price the risk transfer. Ask what happens if the person leaves in month two, underperforms, or is unavailable. A replacement guarantee, a bench, and a payroll entity that carries the employment relationship are the products you are buying at a higher multiple. If a quote carries none of them, the multiple should be lower.

Step 5 — Test the disclosure, not the margin. You will not get a margin figure and should not expect one. What you can test is whether the provider will tell you, in writing: the pay band for the role, which statutory schemes it remits, what equipment and health cover it provides, and what happens on termination. Disclosure quality is observable; margin is not.

Step 6 — Re-price annually against currency. A dollar rate card set eighteen months ago against ₱57 or ₹85 is priced against a world that no longer exists. Both buyers and providers should expect rate-card conversations when a currency moves 7% to 12%.

Ten questions to ask a provider

Each of these has a verifiable or at least documentable answer, and each maps to a cost layer above.

1. What is the gross monthly salary band for this role, and is the figure you quote me a salary or a package including allowances?
2. Which statutory schemes do you remit for this worker, and in which country’s entity? (In the Philippines, expect SSS, PhilHealth and Pag-IBIG plus 13th-month pay; in India, expect EPF, and ESI only if the wage is at or below ₹21,000.)
3. Is 13th-month pay, or its local equivalent, inside the price you quoted me or billed separately?
4. Do you contribute EPF on full wages or restrict contributions to the statutory ₹15,000 ceiling?
5. What health cover, equipment and connectivity allowance does the worker receive, and who pays for it?
6. How many contracted hours per day does this price buy, and what is the price at the other hours tier?
7. Is the quoted price monthly, quarterly or annual billing, and what is the difference?
8. What is the minimum commitment, the notice period, and is any part of it payable in advance?
9. What is your replacement policy, how long does replacement take, and is there a charge?
10. Which currency is the contract denominated in, and what happens to my rate if that pair moves more than 10%?

A provider that answers 1 through 5 in writing is giving you enough to run the audit framework yourself. A provider that will not answer 1 or 2 is asking you to price a black box — which is a reason to negotiate harder, not evidence of wrongdoing.

Decision framework: which model fits which situation

See direct hire versus agency for assistant roles, managed services, and cost arbitrage for the model detail behind this table.

A note on comparability across countries: the same nominal multiple implies a different residual in India than in the Philippines, because the statutory floor underneath it differs by roughly 10 percentage points of salary. A 2.5× multiple over a Philippine salary and a 2.5× multiple over an Indian salary are not the same commercial proposition.

The bottom line

Virtual assistant markup is not a scandal and not a secret; it is an accounting consequence of who carries which cost. The marketplaces show what a disclosed intermediary fee looks like when the buyer keeps the employment risk: 0–15% on one side, 3–10% on the other, blending to about 19.6% at Upwork and a reported 27.7% at Fiverr. Managed providers charge a bundled multiple because they have absorbed statutory contributions of 19–24% of salary in the Philippines or 9–13% in India, plus a cost-per-hire whose median is $1,244, plus training, benefits, equipment, management and replacement cover.

And the filed accounts settle the question the arithmetic keeps raising. Robert Half turned a 37.2% gross margin into a 2.5% net margin last year. That is what a 37% spread actually buys the business that earns it.

The practical takeaway for a buyer is not to hunt for a fair multiple. It is to fix the unit, establish the statutory floor for the right country and salary band, price the risk you are transferring, and judge providers on what they will disclose in writing rather than on what you can guess about their books. Everything on this page is designed to let you do that with numbers you can check.

Methodology and limitations

Sourcing hierarchy. Company filings and investor releases; company-published fee, pricing and careers pages; central-bank exchange-rate publications; statutes, agency circulars and labour-ministry publications; then, only where no official occupation-level data exists, salary platforms with sample size and vintage disclosed.

Verification. Every numeric value on this page was retrieved from the linked page on 27 July 2026. Percentages described as "computed by RemoteStaffingWiki" are arithmetic on the linked figures and are shown with their inputs.

Known limitations. The Philippine Statistics Authority’s Occupational Wages Survey was not retrievable on 27 July 2026; no official Philippine occupational wage is cited. The Indian platform figures carry small samples or older vintages (Indeed India n=9; AmbitionBox last updated 4 October 2024). ManpowerGroup FY2025 net income and Heidrick & Struggles FY2024 gross profit were not returned by the SEC concept queries used and are marked n.a. rather than estimated. The PhilHealth premium advisory cited is the CY2025 issuance; check for a CY2026 advisory before relying on it for current payroll. Provider prices change without notice and are toggled by hours and billing frequency. No private provider’s margin, profit or worker pay is estimated anywhere on this page.

Review cadence. Re-verify every 90 days, and immediately on: a new PhilHealth or SSS circular, a new NWPC wage order, a change to EPF or ESI ceilings, a change to Upwork or Fiverr published fees, or a move greater than 5% in USD/PHP or USD/INR. Wage Order NCR-27’s second tranche takes the NCR non-agriculture floor to ₱780 per day on 20 January 2027.

Disclaimer. This page is educational and analytical. It is not legal, tax, accounting, employment or investment advice, and it is not a valuation or audit of any company. Statutory rates, wage orders, platform fees, provider prices and exchange rates change frequently; verify against the linked primary sources before acting. Named companies appear solely in respect of information they publish themselves. Nothing here should be read as a statement about any company’s profitability, internal finances, treatment of workers, or intent.

RemoteStaffingWiki is an educational resource operated by LegelpTech Outsourcing Pvt Ltd, and is editorially independent. If you are evaluating managed providers, Zedtreeo is one option among many.