Belay hires in the US. We headhunt abroad and publish the price.

At a glance

Belay publishes very little about price, speed or notice, so several cells below say that rather than guess at it. Everything in their column came off their own pages on 17 September 2026, and nothing in it came from a third-party estimate.

Where Belay is the better choice

Belay has been matching US assistants to US leaders since 2010, and says on its assistant services page that it has matched more than 25,000 leaders across 50 or more industries (read on 17 September 2026). Nobody in this category is close to that. Fifteen years of doing one thing buys you a pattern library we do not have, and it is worth something real on the day your role turns out to be stranger than you described it.

The US-based part is not a marketing line either. If your assistant is in Charlotte, the timezone conversation never happens. No overnight handover, no explaining what a W-9 is, no pause while someone works out which state your payroll sits in. For a seat that spends its day on the phone with your customers, that context shows up in the first week.

Their finance offering is real work rather than a bolt-on. They publish bookkeeping, accounting, payroll, tax, fractional controller and fractional CFO services under one roof. We place bookkeepers and accountants. A fractional controller or CFO sitting above the ledger is a packaged service they sell and we do not, so if that is the purchase, they are the ones to call.

And a person does the matching. A Client Success Consultant scopes the role, then presents a candidate, which they position openly against algorithmic matching. They claim 93% of clients stay with the first person matched. We cannot check that figure because no denominator is published, but the model behind it is sound: a human who has scoped a few thousand of these will read a badly written role description better than a filter ever does.

The core difference

These are two different purchases that happen to sit in the same search results. Belay sells American labour with a consultant in the middle who chooses for you. We headhunt in the Philippines, Latin America, Eastern Europe and South Africa, put three profiles in front of you, and publish what the seat costs. Both are legitimate ways to fill a chair. They are not competing for the same decision.

The deciding question comes first and it is not about either company. Does this work have to be done by someone in the United States? Sometimes the answer is yes for a concrete reason: a client contract that says so, an insurer, a regulator, or a role where a US voice on the phone is part of what you sell. If that is you, everything that follows is academic.

If the answer is no, the comparison changes shape. You are then asking three things: what a full-time seat should cost, how fast it can be filled, and what happens when the first person is wrong. On all three we publish and Belay does not. Their price is quoted after a scoping call. Their time to first candidate is not published on their site when we checked (17 September 2026). Neither is their notice period.

That is not unusual for a fifteen-year-old firm selling a scoped service, and there is a fair argument behind it: a role nobody has scoped cannot be priced honestly from a table. Our argument is the opposite one. Most small businesses already know roughly what they need, and making them sit through a call to find out whether they can afford it wastes everyone's morning. Our rates sit on the pricing section and they are the rates.

What you get for the money

What Belay costs

We are not going to put a number in Belay's mouth. Their own FAQ says cost is customised per engagement: they scope the hours and the skill level, then quote. That is the only pricing statement on their assistant services page, and we read it on 17 September 2026.

Third-party sites do circulate estimates, roughly $42 to $50 an hour and roughly $1,200 to $3,500 a month depending on hours. Two of the sites carrying those figures sell services that compete with Belay. Treat the range as what outsiders guess, not as Belay's rate, and if you want Belay's number, ask Belay. It is one call and you will get a real figure for your actual role.

What can be said with confidence is the shape of it. A US-based assistant is US labour and US labour costs what it costs. Belay's own comparison table on that page sorts rival platforms into offshore or entry-level task work, which tells you they expect to be the premium choice and are comfortable being it.

What we cost

Executive and virtual assistants from $2,400 a month. Operations and admin from $2,500. SDR, BDR and CSR from $2,500. Finance and accounting from $2,800. Full-time, dedicated to you, working your hours, on one invoice. We contract and pay the person, so you are not running foreign payroll or chasing an invoice from a contractor in another country.

The word from is doing real work in those numbers. A bookkeeper who has run a multi-entity close for a US company costs more than one who has kept a single set of books, and a sales seat that needs fluent, unaccented calling into the US costs more than one working a CRM. We quote the seat on the call and then the number stops moving.

We are not the low-cost option in the offshore market and we never say we are. There are companies in this category at under $1,000 a month. What the gap buys is headhunting for your specific role rather than an assignment from a bench, plus a person who is yours full-time rather than a share of one. If you want the maths against a US hire on payroll, our cost calculator does the loaded-cost arithmetic without a call.

Speed, and who you actually meet

Belay does not publish a time to first candidate or a time to start. We looked on their assistant services page on 17 September 2026 and it is not there. What they do publish is the 93% first-match figure and a bench they describe as 2,000-plus pre-vetted US professionals, the top 3% of the US talent they screen. Read together, that is a promise about accuracy rather than speed: fewer attempts, not a quicker first one.

You also meet nobody before the call. There are no profiles on the site. A consultant talks to you, scopes the role, then presents a match. For a founder who wants the choosing delegated, that is a feature and they will say so. For a founder who wants to read three CVs on a Tuesday night and form her own view, it is not.

Our side works the other way round. You send the brief, and inside 48 hours you get three candidates whose availability we confirmed that week. On recent placements it has run 4 to 7 days from brief to the person's first day of work. We define time-to-fill as brief to first day rather than brief to shortlist, because the second number is easy to make look good and tells you nothing about when the work starts.

You can check us before you speak to anyone. The featured people on our front page are a dated selection of who is free this week, each with the date they were last confirmed, and we re-check it every week. No form, no call. It is a selection, not the whole bench; the full picture for your role comes with the shortlist, within 48 hours of a brief.

One caveat on speed, honestly held. A bookkeeper who starts on the 3rd and quits on the 28th has cost you a month, whoever found her, so the replacement terms deserve reading before the speed numbers do. We would rather be judged on both together.

How your risk is covered

Belay calls theirs the Right-Fit Guarantee. If the person is not a fit they rematch you at no additional cost, and they state you are not locked into a long-term contract. That is a genuine promise and it is stated plainly on their assistant services page. What their site does not publish is the shape of it: no window, no conditions, no notice period, nothing on money already paid. Not published is not the same as not good. It does mean you learn the terms once you are in the contract rather than before.

Ours are on the page. Free replacement, as many times as it takes, no cap. The four conditions are published on our guarantee section: the replacement is for the same role and scope, you gave the person defined work and written feedback, you tell us at least 10 working days before you need the change, and after three replacements either side can walk away on the standard 30 days' written notice.

We wrote those conditions down for a selfish reason. An unlimited promise with no conditions is not stronger, it is vaguer, and the argument about what counts then happens later, when you are already annoyed and short a bookkeeper. Conditions you can read in advance are the version that survives contact with a real problem.

On commitment, ours is $0 until the person starts, month to month after that, billed in advance, 30 days' written notice to end it. Belay's notice period is not published on their site when we checked (17 September 2026), so ask for it in writing before you sign anything.

Security, since US-based is often the security answer

Plenty of buyers choose US staff for data reasons, so here is our position undressed. Our position is contractual: an NDA before anyone gets access, logins that you own and issue, and same-day offboarding when someone leaves. If your auditor requires a formal security report from your staffing partner, raise it on the first call. We did not see a certification published on the Belay pages we read either, so put the question to both of us in writing.

Which one should you pick?

Questions people ask when comparing

Sources and how this page was written

We read Belay's public pages ourselves on 17 September 2026 and quote what they publish, not what a third party says about them. We describe their claims rather than reproduce their copy. If something here is out of date, tell us and we'll correct it. Our own numbers come from our pricing section and our published guarantee.

1. 01Belay assistant services, model and pricing statement, belaysolutions.com/services/assistant, read 17 September 2026
2. 02Third-party price estimate, published by a company that sells competing services, hireinsouth.com/post/belay-pricing, read 17 September 2026
3. 03Third-party review carrying a price estimate, usecarly.com/blog/belay-virtual-assistant-review, read 17 September 2026
4. 04Our own rates, terms and guarantee, contractanaut.com/#pricing, current on 17 September 2026