KeyPlayers or Contractanaut? Same price band, different promise.

At a glance

Both companies sell a dedicated, full-time person on a monthly subscription, with the vendor as the employer of record. That is where the similarity ends and the reading begins.

Where KeyPlayers is the better choice

Start with what they do well, because a lot of it is real.

Their pricing is public and plain. One number, on the homepage, with a page that explains it. In a category where most vendors want a call before they will say a figure, that is worth something, and it is the reason you can read this page at all.

Their proof is dated and named. Video case studies with company names you can look up, and Trustpilot reviews with real names and months attached, the most recent from July 2026 when we checked. They also claim 200 companies staffed. We can't match that count. What we can show you is four clients and 22 seats, which is a sample of recent work, not a track record of that size.

Their training story is concrete. The programme names tools and platforms rather than gesturing at "AI-enabled". Their content is deep too: ten comparison pages, a calculator, industry pages, a guide to hiring in the Philippines. If you want to read for a week before you decide, their site will keep you busy.

If the seat you need is an executive assistant in the Philippines, you want to spend a fortnight on research first, and you are comfortable with a match rather than a shortlist, KeyPlayers is a sound option and you should feel fine picking them.

The core difference

KeyPlayers is built around a scoping call followed by a match. You describe the role, they pick someone, and the person starts. That works well when you trust the vendor to choose for you.

We are built around a shortlist. Within 48 hours of the brief you get three named people whose availability we confirmed that week, and you interview them. The featured people on our front page are public, each with the date they last confirmed, so you can see people who are free before you talk to anyone. The person who starts is the one you chose, not the one you were assigned.

That difference sounds small until the first week. A match you did not pick is somebody else's judgement. A shortlist you interviewed is yours, and the guarantee is there for the cases where your judgement was wrong.

What you get for the money

The list prices are three dollars apart, so the money question is what sits behind each one.

At KeyPlayers, $2,397 a month buys a dedicated full-time assistant, their training programme, a client success team and the replacement promise. Their roles run wider than assistants, into bookkeeping, operations and outbound, but the positioning is EA-led and the price is one number for everything.

Our rates are set per lane, because a bookkeeper who closes the month is not the same hire as an inbox-and-calendar assistant. Executive and virtual assistants start from $2,400 a month. Operations, admin and sales development from $2,500. Finance and accounting from $2,800, which is our deepest bench and the seat we headhunt in Eastern Europe rather than the Philippines. The full card is on the front page, and every number carries the word "from" because seniority and market move it.

What both prices exclude is the cost you are actually comparing them against: the fully loaded US hire. A bookkeeper at the national median runs about $72,500 in year one once employer taxes, health insurance, retirement and recruiting are in. We built a calculator with every line sourced, and it applies to their seat as much as ours.

Two lines from their terms page worth reading before you sign

Cancellation at KeyPlayers requires 30 days' written notice to their email address, and there is no refund for a partial month already served. Ours is the same length of notice, in writing, and we say so on the pricing card rather than in the terms. Prices at KeyPlayers can change on 30 days' written notice, which is standard, and worth knowing.

The one line that surprised us: their homepage says nothing is paid until the assistant starts, and their terms page says billing is processed on plan confirmation following the scoping call. Those may reconcile in practice. Ask. Our version has one sentence: the first month is charged on the start date.

Speed, and who you actually meet

Speed is the part of this comparison where the two companies are not really in the same conversation, because only one of them publishes a number.

KeyPlayers' FAQ asks how quickly you can get started. The answer did not render when we read the page, and no time to first candidate or time to start appears anywhere else on the site. Their case studies describe placements measured in weeks. That is not a criticism. Most of the category works that way, because most of the category starts sourcing when you call.

We start from the other end. We headhunt continuously in the markets we work in, interview people before there is a seat for them, and confirm every week whether they are still free. When your brief lands we are matching against a bench we already know, which is how three candidates in 48 hours is possible without it being a marketing claim. On recent placements the brief-to-first-day time has been four days at the fastest and seven at the slowest, and we publish the slow number because the fast one alone would be cherry-picking.

Who you meet matters as much as when. At KeyPlayers you meet the person they matched you with. With us you meet three, and you pick. If none of the three is right, we say so and go again, and nothing has been charged.

How your risk is covered

Both companies promise to replace a person who does not work out. The useful comparison is not the promise but the conditions, and where each company puts them.

KeyPlayers' homepage describes replacement at no cost for as long as you remain a client, with no 90-day window. Their terms page, last updated on 15 June 2026 when we read it, calls it the "Unlimited Replacement Guarantee" and sets out the conditions: it applies to managed plans only, a minimum 30-day trial must pass before a replacement can be requested, written feedback describing the performance concerns is required, and the guarantee is described as not unconditional, not time-unlimited and subject to fair use. It also does not apply where the placement ends because of client conduct, a change in scope, or anything outside the assistant's performance. Read the page yourself; it is not long.

Ours has conditions too. We would be lying if we said otherwise, and a guarantee with no conditions would not survive its first bad-faith request. The difference is that we put the four conditions on the guarantee section of the front page: the replacement is for the same role and scope, you gave the person defined work and written feedback, you give us at least ten working days before asking, and after three replacements either side can walk away on the standard 30 days' written notice. Those are the rules. There is no second set in the terms.

On security, KeyPlayers describes NDAs, background checks and access control. Our answer is contractual. What we do: an NDA before any access, logins that belong to you and can be cut the same day, and offboarding on the day you ask. If you need a formal certification, ask both of us on the call and compare the answers in writing.

Which one should you pick?

Questions people ask when comparing

Sources and how this page was written

We read KeyPlayers'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. 01KeyPlayers homepage, pricing, roles, proof and guarantee wording, keyplayershq.com, read 17 September 2026
2. 02KeyPlayers terms of service, guarantee conditions, notice period and billing timing, keyplayershq.com/terms, page dated 15 June 2026, read 17 September 2026
3. 03KeyPlayers comparison hub, keyplayershq.com/compare, read 17 September 2026
4. 04Contractanaut starting rates and guarantee conditions, our pricing section and guarantee section
5. 05US hire cost figures, our cost of hiring page, BLS, KFF and SHRM data as dated there