Filipino Virtual Assistant Salary Report 2026: What 1,385 Applicants Ask For

The median Filipino virtual assistant asks for $714 per month (about PHP 40,000) for full-time remote work in 2026. That figure comes from 1,385 real job applications submitted to Armasourcing between October 2025 and July 2026, not from surveys or scraped job boards. This report breaks down what Filipino VAs actually ask for by role, experience level, education, and location, and what offers really close at.

For the geographic view of this same applicant pool, see where Filipino virtual assistants are located by region, mapped across all 17 administrative regions.

Key Takeaways

• Median asking salary: $714 per month (PHP 40,000). The middle 50 percent of applicants ask between $571 and $900.
• 52 percent ask less than $800 per month. 22 percent ask $1,000 or more.
• The ask stops climbing after about two years. Medians by experience band run $714, $800, $800, and $804. A 7-plus-year veteran asks only 13 percent more than a newcomer.
• Bookkeeping and accounting roles ask the most ($893 median); creative roles ask the least ($536).
• Hourly askers want a median of $6.00 per hour. About 13 percent of applicants quote an hourly rate; 56 percent quote in Philippine pesos.
• 86 percent hold a university degree or higher, including 4 percent with a master’s degree or doctorate.

Where this data comes from

Every number in this report is first-party data: 1,489 applications with a stated salary expectation, submitted directly to Armasourcing, a Philippine virtual assistant agency, between October 2025 and July 2026. Of those, 1,385 remained after removing 104 entries with obvious data-entry errors. We normalized every figure to US dollars per month, converting peso amounts at PHP 56 to the dollar and hourly rates at 160 working hours per month. Nobody was surveyed and nothing was scraped: these are the numbers real applicants typed into a job application when asked what they wanted to earn.

About the August 2026 update

This report was refreshed in August 2026, extending the window from May to July 2026 and growing the sample from 586 to 1,385 applications. The headline did not move: the median ask held at exactly $714 across a sample more than twice the size. What moved are the tails. The share asking under $800 fell from 61 to 52 percent, and the share asking $1,000 or more rose from 17 to 22 percent. Those two numbers are one shift seen from opposite ends, and it deserves a caveat: June and July volume came from a handful of concentrated hiring pushes rather than a broad cross-section, the largest of them in customer service roles, where the median ask rose from $625 to $800 on a much larger sample. That is a change in the mix of who applied, not evidence that Filipino VA rates are rising across the market. The clearest sign is that the overall median and the experience bands barely moved.

The headline numbers: what Filipino VAs ask for in 2026

The distribution has a clear center of gravity: $600 to $1,000 per month holds 53 percent of all applicants, split almost evenly between the $600 to $800 band (26 percent) and the $800 to $1,000 band (27 percent). Just under half of all applicants (47 percent) fall between $400 and $800. The tail is short: barely 1 percent ask above $2,000.

The ask stops climbing after two years

The most surprising finding in the data: the asking salary curve goes flat at about the two-year mark. Applicants with 0 to 1 years of experience ask a median of $714. At 2 to 3 years the median steps up to $800, and then it stays there: 4 to 6 years asks $800 and 7-plus years asks $804.

An applicant with 7 or more years of experience asks a median of $804, just 13 percent above the $714 median of applicants with less than 2 years, and virtually identical to the ask of someone with 2 years. For employers this is the quiet arbitrage in the market: seniority is dramatically underpriced relative to Western labor markets, where a decade of experience can double a salary.

What different VA roles ask for

Role families with at least 5 salaried applicants, ranked by median ask. Bookkeeping and accounting roles command the highest expectations at $893, followed by a broad $800 tier that now includes customer service, admin and executive assistant, and general VA roles. Creative roles sit at the bottom at $536. Treat the smaller samples (web and WordPress, SEO, creative) as directional rather than definitive, and note that the customer service median reflects heavy June and July recruiting in that family.

Hourly vs monthly: how Filipino VAs quote their rate

Filipino VAs overwhelmingly think in monthly figures: 56 percent of applicants quoted a monthly peso figure, 31 percent quoted a monthly dollar or Australian dollar figure, and only 13 percent quoted an hourly rate. Among the hourly askers, the median works out to $6.00 per hour, with the middle half falling between $5 and $7. If you are used to hiring on Upwork, where posted Filipino VA rates often run $8 to $15 per hour, direct applications price meaningfully lower because no marketplace fee is baked in.

Education and location: who is applying

The Filipino VA talent pool is highly educated: of applicants who stated their education, 82 percent hold a university degree and 4 percent hold a master’s degree or doctorate, while 14 percent list high school as their highest attainment. This tracks with what makes the Philippines the world’s dominant outsourcing destination for English-language work, which we cover in our guide to Philippine VA companies.

Location is the other surprise. Among applicants who named their city, Cebu is the single most represented metro, narrowly ahead of Metro Manila, with Davao close behind. The talent has spread far beyond the capital: provincial hubs offer VAs big-city skills with a lower cost of living, which shows up in their asking salaries.

Asked vs accepted: what offers actually close at

Asking salary is only half the market. Accepted offers in managed placements typically land in the middle of the asking distribution rather than at the top of it, which is why the median matters more than the ceiling. On top of the VA’s salary, a managed service adds recruiting, replacement guarantees, quality management, and payroll, so all-in managed pricing sits well above the raw salary figure. For the full employer-side math, see our virtual assistant cost breakdown and the US vs Philippines staffing comparison.

Why published VA rates disagree so wildly

Search for what a virtual assistant costs and the first page of results will quote you $10 to $20 per hour, $30 to $75 per hour, $36 to $39 per hour, and, in one case, $8 to $500 per hour. Those are not competing estimates of the same number. They are answers to four different questions, and none of the pages that publish them says which question it answered.

Our data covers one specific input into that number: what Filipino applicants ask for, which has a median of $714 per month. Here is how that figure turns into the range a buyer actually pays, and why the published numbers scatter the way they do.

Four things a quoted rate might include

The salary alone. This is what our 1,385 applications measure: the amount that reaches the VA. The middle 50 percent ask between $571 and $900 per month. A marketplace that lets you contract a freelancer directly is quoting something close to this, which is why marketplace medians sit at the low end of every published range.

Salary plus employer costs. Hiring someone directly means their government contributions, thirteenth-month pay, and payroll administration land on you rather than being folded into a rate. These are real, they are legally required in the Philippines, and a bare salary figure does not include them.

Salary plus the service around it. Recruiting, replacement when someone leaves, quality management, and coverage when someone is sick. This is what a managed provider is selling, and it is why managed pricing starts higher than the salary distribution alone would suggest.

A different labor market entirely. The $30 to $75 per hour figures on the same results page are quoting US-based assistants. That is not a markup on the same service, it is a different workforce with different costs. Comparing it to a Philippine rate without saying so is the single largest source of confusion in published VA pricing.

Why the same role produces different numbers

Even holding the model constant, the spread inside our own data is wide, and the drivers are visible in the applications themselves.

Role matters more than experience. Bookkeeping applicants ask a median of $893, creative roles $536. That is a 67 percent difference between two people with identical years of experience. Anyone quoting a single “VA rate” is averaging across roles that do not belong in the same average.

Experience mostly does not. Applicants with 0 to 1 years ask a median of $714. Every band above two years asks between $800 and $804. A seven-year veteran asks about 13 percent more than a newcomer, which is far less than most buyers expect and less than most published rate cards imply.

How the rate is quoted changes the number. Most Filipino applicants think in monthly salaries, not hourly rates. Only 13 percent quote hourly, and those who do ask a median of $6.00 per hour. Convert that to a monthly equivalent and it lands near $960, noticeably above the $714 monthly median. The people who quote hourly are not the same people who quote monthly, so an hourly figure and a monthly figure from the same market will not reconcile.

What this means when you compare providers

A rate is not comparable until you know what sits inside it. Before treating two quotes as competing offers, it is worth establishing which of them includes employer contributions, which includes replacement if the person leaves in month two, which includes any quality oversight, and whether the people being quoted are in the same country. Two numbers that look far apart often describe different scopes, and two that look close sometimes do not.

The reason the published ranges disagree is not that anyone is wrong. It is that a salary figure, an employer cost figure, an all-in service figure, and a US market figure are four different quantities that all get published under the same heading.

What this means if you are hiring

• Budget $700 to $900 per month for a strong full-time Filipino VA hired directly. A managed service costs more than the raw salary because it adds recruiting, replacement cover, quality management, and payroll, so ask for a per-role quote. Offers under $500 will still attract applicants, but you are shopping the bottom quartile.
• Do not overpay for years of experience alone. The asking curve flattens at two years, and a 7-year veteran asks only 13 percent above a newcomer. Screen for skills and English, not tenure.
• Specialist skills cost less than you think. Even the priciest family in our data, bookkeeping and accounting, asks $893 per month, roughly a quarter of the fully loaded cost of the same hire in the US, UK, or Australia.
• Look beyond Manila. Cebu, Davao, and provincial hubs now supply much of the talent, often at friendlier rates.

If you want the broader context on pay structures, benefits, and how agencies price, our virtual assistant salary guide covers the employer side in depth.

Citing this report

You are welcome to cite any statistic, chart, or table in this report with attribution and a link to this page. Suggested citation: “Armasourcing Filipino VA Salary Report 2026, based on 1,385 applications received October 2025 to July 2026.” For press inquiries or the underlying aggregate tables, contact us through the contact page.

Related first-party research: the Customer Service Screening Report covers what unproctored hiring assessments actually measure, and the AI Visibility Index tracks which outsourcing companies AI assistants recommend.

Frequently asked questions

How much does a Filipino virtual assistant cost per month in 2026?

Based on 1,385 applications, the median Filipino VA asks for $714 per month for full-time work, and the middle 50 percent ask between $571 and $900. All-in managed services add recruiting, replacement, and quality management on top of that salary, so they cost more than hiring directly and are quoted per role.

What is the average Filipino VA salary in pesos?

The median asking salary in our 2026 data is about PHP 40,000 per month for full-time remote work. The middle half of applicants ask between roughly PHP 32,000 and PHP 50,000.

How much do Filipino VAs charge per hour?

Among applicants who quoted hourly rates, the median is $6.00 per hour, with the middle half between $5 and $7. Only about 13 percent of Filipino VA applicants quote hourly; most think in monthly salaries.

Do experienced Filipino VAs cost much more?

No. In our data the asking curve flattens at about two years: applicants with 0 to 1 years ask a median of $714, and every band from 2 years up asks $800 to $804. A 7-plus-year veteran asks only 13 percent more than a newcomer.

Where does this salary data come from?

From 1,385 real job applications submitted directly to Armasourcing between October 2025 and July 2026, after removing entries with data errors. Peso figures were converted at PHP 56 per US dollar and hourly rates at 160 hours per month. It is first-party application data, not a survey and not scraped job listings.