What each option adds to the assistant's pay
The rate an assistant quotes is never the whole price. Every way of hiring adds something: a percentage of each payment, a subscription while you search, a one-time placement fee, or a monthly fee to employ the person. These are the published numbers as of November 13, 2026.
| Option | Where | Added to pay | Who screens | Who pays the assistant |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Job board, then hire directly | OnlineJobs.ph, LinkedIn, referrals | $69 a month for OnlineJobs.ph Pro while you search. A free LinkedIn post stays live for 14 days | You | You, directly |
| Freelance marketplace | Upwork, Fiverr | Upwork adds 5% to each payment (3% from a US bank account) and $0.99 to $14.99 per new contract. Fiverr adds 5.5% | You | The platform bills you |
| Recruiter-led placement | Cherry Assistant direct placement | $3,000 once with Cherry Assistant, and nothing if you do not hire | The recruiter | You, directly |
| Managed hire | Cherry Assistant managed hire | Nothing on top: $497 to $2,997 a month with Cherry Assistant covers pay, payroll and the search | The provider | The provider, one monthly price |
| Employer of record | Deel, Remote | From $599 a month per employee, plus the employer contributions their country requires | You (an EOR does not recruit) | The EOR, as their legal employer |
| US-based assistant service | Time etc, BELAY | Nothing on top: Time etc publishes $36 to $39 an hour all in. BELAY quotes each client | The service | The service |
Placement and managed hire are the two ways to hire through Cherry Assistant, and their figures come straight from our pricing page. The head-to-head pages on Upwork and Fiverr go further on those two platforms.
Freelance marketplaces: fast to start, and the screening is yours
On Upwork's Basic plan, the client pays a marketplace fee of 5% on every payment to a freelancer, or 3% for eligible US clients paying from a bank account, plus a one-time contract initiation fee of $0.99 to $14.99 for each new contract. Upwork's help center notes that some accounts sit on a flat fee of up to 7.99% instead, so check which one your billing settings show. Business Plus, the plan for teams, charges 10% (8% by bank) and drops the contract fee on most contracts.
For a long-term hire, the exit matters more than the percentage. Upwork's terms keep payments on the platform for 24 months after you meet a freelancer there, unless you pay a conversion fee that starts at $1,000. If you hire an assistant on Upwork and plan to keep them, assume the 5% runs for at least two years.
Fiverr is built around fixed-price packages. That suits a defined piece of work, such as cleaning up a CRM or building a slide template, much better than an assistant who works your inbox every day. Its help center lists a 5.5% service fee on each purchase, plus $3.50 on orders under $200.
Neither platform screens for you: you read every proposal and run every interview yourself. For a project with an end date that is a fair trade, and a small paid task through the platform is the cheapest way to see someone's work before you commit to more.
Job boards cost the least to run and the most to manage
OnlineJobs.ph is a board for hiring Filipino remote workers directly, and it charges for access to applicants rather than a cut of pay. Its free plan lets you post up to three jobs, but you cannot see applicants' contact details or message them until you upgrade. Pro costs $69 a month ($299 a year) and lets you contact 75 workers a month. Premium costs $99 a month ($349 a year) and adds unlimited background data checks. The site advertises no salary markups, so the subscription is the cost of the search.
LinkedIn covers South Africa and most other countries. One free job post can be live at a time, for up to 14 days, with an application cap that typically sits between 10 and 30 depending on the role. Promoted posts are billed per click against a daily or total budget you set.
Hiring from a board means the paperwork is yours, from the contract to every payment across the border. A US business paying a contractor abroad typically keeps a Form W-8BEN on file to document the contractor's foreign status, and every payment run carries a transfer fee. If you would rather not run payouts yourself, contractor management platforms handle contracts and payments for a monthly fee per person: Remote lists $29 and Deel $49. Our guides to paying an assistant in South Africa and in the Philippines compare the payment options, and the contractor or employee guide covers which country's rules decide the arrangement.
Recruiter-led placement
A placement splits the work at the offer. The recruiter sources, screens and shortlists candidates; you interview the finalists, choose one, and then contract and pay the assistant yourself. Cherry Assistant's direct placement is a one-time $3,000 fee, and you pay nothing if you do not hire. Candidates are South African, screened for a college education, fluent English and working hours that overlap yours, and matching typically takes about two weeks.
Placement suits an employer who wants to own the relationship and is comfortable paying someone abroad, or who plans to employ the person through an employer of record. Against managed hire, the one-time fee earns itself back over time. At 20 hours a week and associate level, placement costs less in total from month 11, provided you take on payroll, contracts and day-to-day management yourself.
Managed hire
With managed hire, the provider recruits the assistant, pays them and handles payroll and contracts, while you direct the work. Cherry Assistant prices it by experience and weekly hours:
| Experience | 10 hours a week | 20 hours a week | 40 hours a week |
|---|---|---|---|
| Junior (1-2 years) | $497 a month | $797 a month | $1,497 a month |
| Associate (2-4 years) | $597 a month | $897 a month | $1,697 a month |
| Senior (5+ years) | $1,097 a month | $1,997 a month | $2,997 a month |
There is no hiring fee, you pay nothing if you do not hire, and you can pause or cancel anytime with no hidden fees. The price is higher than paying the same assistant directly. The difference pays for the search, payroll, time tracking and check-ins, and the legal and tax side of employing someone in South Africa.
US-based assistant services
If the assistant has to be in the US, perhaps because a client contract requires it, the comparison changes. Time etc publishes its plans for a dedicated US assistant: $390 for 10 hours a month, $760 for 20 hours a month, $1,480 for 40 hours a month and $2,160 for 60 hours a month, which works out at $39 down to $36 an hour, billed monthly with no setup fee. BELAY does not publish a rate card; its FAQ puts US-based virtual assistants at $30 to $75 an hour on average.
Those plans are sized in hours a month, not a week. A 10-hour-a-week role is about 43 hours a month, which already sits near the top of Time etc's published range, and anything above 60 hours a month is quoted individually. The calculator uses $36 an hour, the lowest published rate, for every size, so ask for a quote on a bigger role.
When an employer of record makes sense
An employer of record (EOR) becomes the assistant's legal employer in their own country. It runs local payroll, the employment contract and statutory benefits, while you direct the work. Deel lists EOR from $599 per employee per month, and Remote lists $599 for annual contracts. You pay that fee on top of the salary and the employer contributions the country requires.
An EOR does not recruit, so you still need another route to find the person, and a flat fee weighs hardest on a small role. At 10 hours a week on the default junior pay of $4.25 an hour, the assistant earns about $184 a month and the EOR fee is more than 3 times that. For a full-time hire you expect to keep for years, the fee buys a proper local employment relationship. For a part-time role, contractor terms through a job board or a placement usually make more sense.
How the totals are calculated
- Monthly hours are weekly hours times 52, divided by 12, so 10 hours a week is about 43 hours a month.
- Direct pay is monthly hours times the hourly pay you enter. The defaults are the midpoints of the monthly bands in our South African salary guide, converted at R16.53 to the dollar (Federal Reserve H.10, November 6, 2026) and rounded to the nearest 25 cents: $4.25 an hour for junior (R12,000 a month, the entry level band), $7.00 an hour for associate (R20,000 a month, the experienced band) and $10.50 an hour for senior (R30,000 a month, the specialist band).
- Job board: direct pay, plus one month of OnlineJobs.ph Pro ($69) while you search.
- Freelance marketplace: direct pay plus Upwork's 5% fee, and the $14.99 maximum contract fee once.
- Placement: direct pay, plus Cherry Assistant's $3,000 fee once.
- Managed hire: Cherry Assistant's published price for your experience level and hours, with nothing added.
- Employer of record: direct pay plus the $599 monthly fee. Employer contributions and benefits vary by country and are left out.
- US-based service: monthly hours times $36, Time etc's lowest published hourly rate.
- Your time: the hours a manager spends before the first workday. Running the search yourself comes to about 9.1 hours, a recruiter-run search about 3.8, and a US service's matching call about 1. Leave the value of your time blank to compare cash only.
The hours behind those estimates are our working assumptions:
| Step | You run the search | A recruiter runs it |
|---|---|---|
| Write and post the job | 60 min | Done for you |
| Read 50 applications at 2 minutes each | 100 min | Done for you |
| Six 20-minute screening calls | 120 min | Done for you |
| Three 45-minute final interviews | 135 min | 135 min |
| Score three paid test tasks at 30 minutes each | 90 min | Done for you |
| Two 20-minute reference calls | 40 min | Done for you |
| Brief the recruiter on the role | Not needed | 60 min |
| Review the shortlist | Not needed | 30 min |
| Total | 545 min, about 9.1 hours | 225 min, about 3.8 hours |
Left out on every route: transfer fees, equipment and software, taxes, onboarding (which takes the same time whichever route you choose), and the cost of a hire that does not work out.
A worked example
An associate-level assistant at 20 hours a week, compared over 12 months, at the default pay of $7.00 an hour, with your own time left out:
| Option | Per month | One-time | 12 months | Your hours before day one |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Job board, then hire directly | $607 | $69 | $7,349 | 9.1 |
| Freelance marketplace | $637 | $14.99 | $7,659 | 9.1 |
| Recruiter-led placement | $607 | $3,000 | $10,280 | 3.8 |
| Managed hire | $897 | None | $10,764 | 3.8 |
| Employer of record | $1,206 | None | $14,468 | 9.1 |
| US-based assistant service | $3,120 | None | $37,440 | 1 |
The job board is the cheapest route in cash, $310 less than Upwork over the year, and both leave the whole search with you. Placement comes out $484 ahead of managed hire over the year, and in exchange you run the payroll and paperwork that managed hire would handle. The employer of record costs 2.0 times the job board route at this size, and the US-based service 5.1 times. At $7.00 an hour, Upwork's fee alone makes the assistant cost $7.35 an hour before the contract fee.
Which option fits
- A project with an end date: a freelance marketplace, whoever screens.
- An ongoing role that has to be filled in the US: a US-based assistant service.
- An employee in their own country, with local payroll and benefits: an employer of record, plus a job board or a placement to find the person.
- You will screen applicants and pay the assistant directly: a job board.
- You will screen applicants, and you want the platform to handle payment: a freelance marketplace.
- You will not screen, and you will pay the assistant directly: a recruiter-led placement.
- You will not screen, and you want one monthly bill: managed hire.
Mistakes that make the cheap option expensive
Comparing hourly rates instead of totals is the most common one. In the example above, the same assistant at the same $7.00 an hour costs $7,349 over a year through a job board and $14,468 through an employer of record.
Hiring outside your working hours is the next. South Africa runs on UTC+2 all year with no daylight saving time, so a 9am start in New York is 4pm in Johannesburg in the northern winter and 3pm in the summer, and most of the UK working day overlaps. A Philippine assistant covering US hours works through the night. The time zone overlap calculator shows the shared hours for your city.
On a part-time role, an employer of record's fee can outweigh the pay itself, as the 10-hour example above shows. Skipping the paid test task leaves you judging a hire on how well someone talks about work; a 60 to 90 minute paid task shows the work itself, and the test task generator builds one. Starting without a written agreement is the last: put the scope, hours, rate, confidentiality and ownership of the work in writing before you grant access, with the contract template and the access plan generator.
After you choose
- Count the hours with the hours calculator, so the plan you price is the plan you need.
- Write the role with the job description generator.
- Interview with the interview questions generator, then test your finalists with the test task generator.
- Put the agreement in writing with the contract template generator.
- Plan the first 90 days with the onboarding checklist and grant access with the access plan generator.
If you would rather hand the search to someone else, that is the work Cherry Assistant does. We recruit in South Africa for roles across many industries, and you can start with either managed hire or direct placement.
Sources
Third-party fees were read from each provider's own pricing or help pages on November 13, 2026 and change from time to time, so confirm them at checkout. Cherry Assistant's prices come from our pricing page. The time estimates and the recommendation rules are our own working assumptions from recruiting for these roles. None of this is legal or tax advice.
- Upwork, Pricing for clients (Basic plan marketplace fee of 5%, 3% from a US bank account, contract initiation fee of $0.99 to $14.99, Business Plus at 10%)
- Upwork Help Center, What is the Client Marketplace Fee? (accounts on a flat fee of up to 7.99%)
- Upwork Help Center, Contract Initiation Fee
- Upwork Help Center, What is the Upwork Conversion Fee? (24 month non-circumvention period, $1,000 minimum)
- Fiverr Help Center, Paying for orders, extras, or custom offers (5.5% service fee, $3.50 on orders under $200)
- OnlineJobs.ph, Pricing (Pro at $69 a month, Premium at $99 a month, no salary markups)
- LinkedIn Help, Differences between free and promoted jobs
- Deel, Pricing (employer of record from $599 per employee per month, contractor management from $49)
- Remote, Pricing (employer of record from $599 per employee per month on annual contracts, contractor management from $29)
- Time etc, Pricing (dedicated US assistant, 10 to 60 hours a month)
- BELAY, How much does it cost to hire a virtual assistant in the U.S.? ($30 to $75 an hour on average)
- Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, H.10 Foreign Exchange Rates, released November 9, 2026 (R16.5310 per US dollar on November 6, 2026)
- U.S. Internal Revenue Service, About Form W-8 BEN
