AI costs about $20 a month and is good at drafting, summaries and sorting. A virtual assistant costs about $10 to $50 an hour and is good at calls, follow-through and anything that needs judgment about people. Most owners do best with both: AI for the first draft, a person for the follow-through, and you for the final say.
The numbers
All figures in US dollars, as of October 2026.
AI. ChatGPT Plus costs $20 a month (OpenAI). Claude Pro costs $20 a month, or $17 a month billed yearly (Claude pricing). Gemini in Gmail comes with Google Workspace Business Starter at $7 per user a month on a yearly plan (Workspace pricing).
A freelance VA. Upwork's own rate page lists:
- A median of $10 to $20 an hour for virtual assistants.
- An average of $18 to $35 an hour, depending on skills and experience.
- By type: $12 to $20 and up for admin and data entry. $20 to $35 and up for marketing or customer service support. $38 to $50 and up for advanced and executive assistants. These bands are for North American freelancers with over 1,000 hours and a 90% success rate.
Marketplace fees come on top. See Fiverr vs Upwork.
A US agency. Time Etc publishes its plans: $390 a month for 10 hours, $760 for 20 hours and $1,480 for 40 hours, with US-based assistants and monthly renewal.
An employee. For comparison, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics lists a median wage of $23.23 an hour for secretaries and administrative assistants. The figure is for May 2025 (BLS), before benefits and payroll taxes.
A cost example
Say you hand off 10 hours of admin a month. This is a hypothetical, not a quote.
- Freelance VA at $15 an hour: about $150 a month, plus marketplace fees.
- US agency at Time Etc's 10-hour plan: $390 a month.
- AI alone: $20 a month, but only for the hours that are pure writing or sorting. Your review time still counts.
The real question is how many of those 10 hours AI can do on its own. For most owners, it is the drafting and summarizing part. The calls, chasing and checking stay with a person.
Which tasks a person still does better
- Phone calls: booking, rescheduling, chasing a supplier, calling a client back.
- Follow-through: noticing that an invoice is still unpaid and nudging until it is.
- Real-world problems: travel changes, deliveries, a venue that cancelled.
- Judgment about people: which client gets a fast reply, who needs a softer tone.
- Work across systems with no clear rules, such as cleaning up a messy shared drive.
- Anything where someone must be responsible for the result.
Which tasks AI does well
- First drafts of replies, proposals, posts and summaries.
- Summaries of long threads, calls and documents.
- Turning notes into a clean list of action items.
- Rewriting for tone or length.
- Research with sources, which you then check.
- Formatting and cleaning data you paste in.
AI can be wrong with confidence. Every draft that goes to a client needs a human read, either yours or your VA's.
The combination that works
- AI does the first pass. Drafts, summaries, the research list.
- The VA does the follow-through. Sends what you approved, makes the calls, chases the replies, updates the tracker.
- You decide. Pricing, client choices, anything you would sign.
Give your VA access to the same AI tool and your one-page business brief. Then they spend their hours on the work only a person can do. This can also lower the hours you pay for. Check that the AI plan you share is a business plan, or that training is turned off, before your VA pastes client data into it.
How to decide
- List every task you did last week that someone else could do. Note the minutes.
- Mark each one: words only, people involved, or real world.
- Words only goes to AI first. Try it for two weeks.
- People or real world goes to a VA. Add up those hours.
- Only a little people work each month? AI and your own time may be enough for now.
- More than that, or tasks that slip every week? Hire a VA for those hours, and give them the AI tool too.
Red flags when you hire: a VA who will not explain how they handle your data, who wants your main passwords instead of shared access, or who cannot show a past task like yours. Use a password manager or delegated access, never your own login.
A handover note for your VA
This week's tasks
- [Task], due [day]. Done means: [what I will see when it is finished].
- [Task], due [day]. Done means: [...].
Where AI helps
- Use [tool] to draft replies to [type of email]. Use the brief in the shared project. Send nothing to a client before I approve it, except [list of safe replies].
What only you do
- Calls to [people].
- Chase [invoices, documents] every [two days] until done.
Ask me before
- Any promise about price, date or scope.
- Anything you are not sure about.
Write the repeat tasks down once as steps, so neither the VA nor the AI guesses. The SOP template helps, and so does the guide on how to delegate tasks.
Nive is being built for this problem: you write how your business works and how you sound once, and it drafts emails in your voice for you to review and send. It saves time on writing, and the sending stays with you. Join the waitlist to get the demo first.