What a virtual assistant actually costs a Singapore business in 2026

A breakdown of local hire costs versus Filipino VA rates in SGD, by role, for Singapore SMEs comparing their real monthly outlay.

Singapore employers tend to look at the salary line and stop there. The full cost of a local hire runs considerably higher once CPF, space, and equipment enter the picture. For many SMEs, the gap between a local admin and an offshore Filipino VA is closer to SGD 3,000 a month than the salary difference alone suggests.

What a local hire actually costs

A junior admin or PA in Singapore earns between SGD 2,500 and SGD 3,500 a month. Add employer CPF at 17% (the rate for employees under 55 as of 2026) and that becomes SGD 2,925 to SGD 4,095 before you have bought a laptop or allocated a desk.

Desk space in a Singapore office runs SGD 300 to SGD 600 a month depending on whether you are in a CBD building or a suburban business park. Co-working hot desks start around SGD 350. A laptop amortized over three years adds roughly SGD 50 to SGD 80 monthly. Bring those in and a local hire at the SGD 3,000 salary bracket costs the business around SGD 3,700 to SGD 4,800 a month in total.

Annual leave (14 days minimum), sick leave (14 days), public holidays (11 days), and the HR overhead of administering all of it do not appear in that figure.

What Filipino VAs charge in 2026

Filipino virtual assistants working with Singapore businesses typically charge between SGD 600 and SGD 1,200 a month, all-in. No CPF. No desk. No equipment. They work from their own setup in the Philippines.

The exchange rate helps here. SGD 800 converts to roughly PHP 34,000 at current rates, which is a competitive professional salary in Metro Manila and above average outside it. That dynamic means you can hire experienced candidates at rates that would be entry-level wages in Singapore.

Agencies handling placement typically charge a one-time fee of SGD 500 to SGD 1,500, or a small monthly markup on the VA's rate. Either way, the first-year total stays well below what a local hire costs in a single quarter.

What you get at each price point

SGD 600 to 700 covers general admin: inbox management, scheduling, data entry, travel bookings, and basic research. At this rate you are typically looking at candidates with two to four years of experience in office support roles.

SGD 700 to 900 reaches social media assistants who can schedule posts, repurpose content, respond to comments, and run basic reports in Meta Business Suite or Buffer. Some can handle light graphic work in Canva.

SGD 900 to 1,100 covers marketing coordinators who have run paid campaigns on Meta or Google Ads, can write copy, and know their way around tools like HubSpot, Mailchimp, or Klaviyo. At this level you are finding candidates who have worked with agency clients.

SGD 1,100 to 1,200 reaches senior executive assistants and specialists: bookkeepers with Xero or QuickBooks experience, recruiters who can source and screen candidates, or marketing specialists who can own a channel end-to-end.

The roles Singapore SMEs hire most

Based on placements in the Singapore market, these are the most common roles and their going rates:

A business replacing a SGD 3,200 local admin with a SGD 850 Filipino VA saves roughly SGD 2,900 to SGD 3,500 a month depending on CPF bracket and space costs. Over a year that is SGD 34,800 to SGD 42,000 in cost reduction, which is roughly what it costs to hire a mid-level local employee for ten months. The productivity question matters more than the cost question for most businesses. A VA working eight focused hours a day with a defined scope often produces more output in that scope than a local hire split across competing office priorities.