Research
Original data
The virtual assistant statistics AssistBPO publishes come in two forms. Sourced market data from named third parties with the year, and two first-party data reports, the Virtual Assistant Rate Index and the Missed-Call Cost Index, each with its methodology, a downloadable CSV and a CC BY 4.0 license.
- Methodology published
- CSV download
- CC BY 4.0
Nothing here is an AssistBPO price or a client result.
2 reports
Which data reports are published?
-
Dataset and article
Virtual Assistant Rate Index 2026
Assistant hourly and monthly rate ranges by market and segment, from employed pay and premium onshore agencies to managed offshore assistants and answering services, with every source named.
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Dataset and article
The cost of missed calls small business owners absorb
A first-party method for the revenue a small business puts at risk by not answering the phone: the formula, the assumption table, and the first-party dataset that arrives in the next edition.
Quoted across the site
Which virtual assistant statistics do we cite, and where are they from?
Third-party figures as published, with the publisher and year. They are orientation for buyers, not AssistBPO prices or results.
| Statistic | Source |
|---|---|
| About 69% of US businesses use some form of virtual assistant support | Global Growth Insights, 2026 |
| Admin and marketing tasks are more than 62% of virtual assistant workloads | Wishup 2026 Industry Report |
| Human VA services market: $6.5B in 2026, projected $43.4B by 2035 (23.4% CAGR) | Wishup 2026 Industry Report |
| Small and mid-sized businesses are 44% of the virtual staffing market | Future Market Insights via Call Force, 2026 |
| A full-time in-house US executive assistant costs $4,700 to $9,100 a month loaded; a managed remote assistant $640 to $2,400 | PayScale and Indeed via Wishup, Cherry Assistant, 2026 |
| US virtual assistant pay averages $19.45 an hour on PayScale (range $12 to $30) and $27.15 on Indeed | PayScale, Indeed via Wishup, 2026 |
| Turnover of a freelance virtual assistant costs 2 to 3 months of salary in lost productivity | Zedtreeo, Catalyst, Nacho, 2026 |
| Entry-level human answering plans start around $235 a month for 50 minutes; AI receptionists run $25 to $300 a month flat | OnceHub, AIRA, NextPhone, September 2026 |
| In-house receptionist median pay in the US is $38,010 a year | US Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2025 |
Put to work
Guides that use these numbers
Where the rate ranges and the missed-call method turn into a decision: what to pay, what to cover and which option fits the phones.
- The real cost of a missed call by industry (2026 data) The cost of a missed call, calculated from your own numbers: calls, missed share, new-business share, average ticket and close rate, with worked examples.
- Virtual assistant statistics 2026: adoption, cost and market data Virtual assistant statistics for 2026: market size and growth, adoption by US businesses, workload mix, pay by market and published receptionist pricing.
- Per-minute vs dedicated receptionist pricing: the maths behind Ruby, Smith.ai and AnswerConnect plans Answering service per minute pricing worked at 100, 300, 800 and 1,500 minutes on published Ruby, Smith.ai and AnswerConnect plans, with the crossover.
- Virtual assistant vs answering service vs AI receptionist: which one fits your phones? Virtual assistant vs answering service vs AI receptionist compared on monthly cost, call quality, admin capacity, hours and compliance, with 2026 pricing.
- How much does a virtual assistant cost in 2026? (US, UK, Canada, Australia) Virtual assistant cost in 2026 across the US, UK, Canada and Australia: hourly rates, monthly plans, in-house comparisons and what moves a quote.
- State of Virtual Assistant Services 2026 (first-party report) State of virtual assistant services 2026: market size, adoption, workload mix, pay and pricing across the US, UK, Canada and Australia, every source named.
How is the research built?
Each report starts from published third-party data: agency and answering-service price lists, pay surveys, industry reports and regulator figures, every number cited inline with its date. The next edition adds an anonymized AssistBPO engagement dataset, aggregated across client desks with a minimum cell size so no single client can be identified: answer rates, speed to answer, hours per desk, tickets and calls per assistant, and the KPIs from the weekly review.
Reports are versioned. The date at the top of each report is the collection cut-off, the CSV carries the same version, and superseded editions stay linked from the report so a citation made this year still resolves. Everything is published under CC BY 4.0: cite it, chart it, link back to the report page. Corrections are welcome through the contact page.
How we count, what we exclude and how often each dataset refreshes: methodology.
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