The first question every founder asks on a discovery call: what does it actually cost?

Here is the honest, AU-specific answer in 2026.

Headline numbers

DotVA prices (and the wider AU agency market) sit in three tiers:

VA tier	Hourly rate (AUD, excl GST)	Monthly @ 15 hrs/wk	Monthly @ 20 hrs/wk
General admin	$12-17/hr	$780-1,105	$1,040-1,470
Specialist (CRM, content, ops)	$18-25/hr	$1,170-1,625	$1,560-2,165
Bookkeeping / finance	$25-35/hr	$1,625-2,275	$2,165-3,030

Add 10 per cent GST on top if you are a registered business; most AU businesses claim it back through their BAS.

The most common DotVA placement is a 15-20 hour-per-week general admin or specialist VA at $1,200-2,200 AUD per month.

What is in the rate

The hourly rate covers:

The VA’s wages and benefits (paid through us as their employer)
Recruiting, screening, and placement
Onboarding and the first 30 days of supervision
A named DotVA team lead for ongoing escalations
Productivity monitoring infrastructure
A 30-day satisfaction guarantee (free replacement if the fit is wrong)
A 1Password Teams seat for credential security
Quarterly performance reviews

The rate does not cover:

Software you provide (Shopify seat, CRM seat, etc) — your existing licences
Hardware (VA uses their own equipment)
GST (added on top, claimable for AU businesses)

The honest local-hire comparison

This is where most founders undercount.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics 2026 admin assistant median sits at approximately $32/hr base. To turn that into a like-for-like comparison with a managed VA, you load it up:

Cost line	Amount	Notes
Base hourly	$32/hr	ABS 2026 admin median
Superannuation	+11.5%	Compulsory employer contribution
Annual leave + sick leave	+9% effective	4 weeks AL + 10 sick days loaded across 50 working weeks
Recruiter fee	$3,000-6,000 one-off	Amortised over 18-month avg tenure
Workstation + IT	$1,200-2,000/yr	Laptop, screens, software seats
Workers comp	+1-3%	Varies by state
Management overhead	+5-10% effective	Your time managing them
Total loaded cost	~$42-48/hr	Excl payroll tax for larger employers

At 20 hours per week, that is $35,000-40,000 AUD per year, plus the recruiter fee.

A DotVA managed placement at 20 hrs/wk and a $15/hr blended rate is roughly $15,600 per year. Same hours, 60 per cent less loaded cost, no employer obligations.

The cost saving alone is the headline. The bigger win is operational: no recruiting, no superannuation admin, no leave loading calendar, no IT setup. Those tasks do not show up in the spreadsheet but they show up in your evenings.

Direct hire vs agency: the underrated trade-off

You can hire a Manila VA directly off OnlineJobs.ph or a similar marketplace. Headline rates are $8-12/hr. So why use an agency?

Total cost of ownership for direct hire usually lands within 10-15 per cent of an agency placement once you count:

Your recruiting time: 8-15 hours screening, interviewing, testing. At your billable rate, this is real money.
Your onboarding time: 5-10 hours in the first week building the SOP and walking the VA through your systems.
Your replacement risk: 18 per cent of direct-hire VAs leave or underperform within 90 days based on industry data. Each replacement costs you the recruiting cycle again.
Management overhead: 2-4 hours a week of your time on direct line management.
Payroll, contracts, and Philippine tax compliance: 1-3 hours a month with an Australian-friendly Philippine payroll provider.

A managed agency placement adds roughly $4-7/hr on top of the direct-hire VA’s base rate, in exchange for absorbing all of the above.

If your time is worth more than $50/hr, the maths usually favour an agency. If your time is worth less, or you genuinely enjoy being your own recruiter, direct hire works.

Why our prices are higher than Upwork

Upwork lists Filipino VAs at $5-8/hr USD. The DotVA equivalent is $12-17/hr AUD ($8-11 USD-equivalent). What you are paying for is the difference between a marketplace and a managed service.

What you get with DotVA that you do not get on Upwork:

Pre-screened candidates (not “anyone with an account”)
Full-time employment for the VA (not gig-economy contracting, which affects retention)
Replacement guarantee
Management and escalation layer
AU-specific training (Privacy Act, ACL, GST, common tools)
No platform fees on top of the headline rate

If you have placed 20 VAs on Upwork and have a working playbook, you do not need us. If this is your first VA hire or your tenth, the agency premium pays for itself in fewer bad placements.

How pricing has moved

Three things to know about how AU VA pricing has moved in the last 24 months.

It has gone up by roughly 15-20 per cent. Manila wages are rising. Demand for English-fluent admin VAs from US and AU buyers has compressed supply. The “$8/hr Filipino VA” era is mostly over for placements with quality control.

AI-augmented VAs cost the same but produce more. Hourly rates have not moved much for AI-fluent VAs, but their output is roughly 1.5x what it was in 2024. Per-output cost is down significantly.

The premium for specialist VAs has widened. A VA who can run Xero or Klaviyo confidently is now 60-100 per cent more expensive than a general admin VA. The supply of true specialists is thinner.

Run your own numbers

The VA cost calculator is the easiest way to model a specific scope. Drag the rate and hours sliders to your scenario.

For a typical AU founder spending 15-20 hours a week on admin, the calculator output usually lands between $900 and $2,500 AUD per month, with the savings vs local hire in the $4,000-6,000 per month range.

What’s not in the price

A few things worth flagging that some agencies bundle in and we do not, intentionally:

A dedicated account manager. We give every placement a named team lead and direct access to founder. No account-management layer to pay for.
Branded reporting dashboards. We provide the productivity tracking; we do not build a custom client portal.
Marketing or PR support. If you need marketing strategy, we are not the right fit. We place VAs who execute the marketing your strategist designed.

Our pricing reflects what the VA actually does, not the agency theatre around it.

What’s next

For the wider hiring playbook, see How to hire your first VA in Australia.

For the onboarding rhythm, see Onboarding a VA week by week.

For a precise quote calibrated to your scope, book a discovery call. 30 minutes, no card, no obligation.