Hire a VA · QA Testing VA
QA testing virtual assistant: cost per test case, per bug report and per release
$8.50–$16.00 an hour · $1,360–$2,560 a month full-time
That's the agency example below for a dedicated QA Testing VA working only for you: no recruitment or setup fee, billed monthly for hours worked. Part-time (80 hours) comes to $680–$1,280 a month.
On this page
- Two receipts for the same test seat
- Three levels, three rate bands
- What the VA does, what your lead decides
- Price per test case, bug report and smoke test
- One release, priced in VA minutes
- Calculator: your hours and cost per release
- What your developers' testing time costs
- The regression pass, priced by suite size
- The automation level: what $14–$16 buys
- Three teams, worked through
- A full-time week, priced by block
- The first year, both ways
- Numbers to check every sprint
- Tool seats, staging and test accounts
- How the agency example bills
- A 30-minute test before you hire
- The first month
- QA terms, in one line each
- How to hire one here
Two receipts for the same test seat
Small software teams usually test in one of three ways: developers check their own work, a founder or product manager clicks through before each release, or the team hires a QA analyst. The third option has a clear US price. The first slip prices a full-time software quality assurance analyst at the national median, then adds what an employer pays on top of the wage. The second is one published agency rate for a remote QA tester, by level.
Published by Outsourcing Insider, a VA MASTERS company. The agency slip uses VA MASTERS' published QA testing VA rates, shown because they're public; other agencies' prices vary. About us
QA analyst and tester, US
Full-time, per month
- Median pay ($104,300 a year)a$8,692
- Paid leave1$727
- Supplemental pay (overtime, bonuses)1$387
- Health and other insurance1$739
- Retirement plans1$270
- Payroll taxes and required insurance1$927
Monthly total$11,741
Per year$140,896
- About $67.75 an hour loaded (monthly total ÷ 173 hours). The median covers all levels, from manual testers to automation engineers.
- Benefit costs are the average for private employers with 1–49 workers; your own package may differ.
QA testing VA, agency example Parent company
VA MASTERS, QA testing VA roles
- 160 hours, manual tester ($8.50–$11)$1,360–$1,760
- 160 hours, test-plan writer ($11–$14)$1,760–$2,240
- 160 hours, automation and API ($14–$16)$2,240–$2,560
- Recruitment or setup fee$0
Monthly total, one seat$1,360–$2,560
Per year$16,320–$30,720
- Part-time, 80 hours: $680–$1,280 a month.
- Card or PayPal payments add 4%; USD bank transfer has no fee.
- US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, May 2025 median pay: software quality assurance analysts and testers $104,300 a year (about $50 an hour at 2,080 hours). Checked Nov 2026.
- Software developers: median $135,980 a year ($65.38 an hour), BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, via O*NET OnLine (U.S. Department of Labor). Checked Oct 2026.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, June 2026, Table 6. Checked Oct 2026.
- SHRM, 'SHRM Releases 2025 Benchmarking Reports' press release (Oct 15, 2025). Checked Oct 2026.
- Agency example: VA MASTERS QA testing virtual assistant page ($8.50–$16.00 an hour, with the level bands shown), checked Nov 2026; terms from the VA MASTERS pricing page, checked Oct 2026.
The slips don't compare like with like at the top end. A US QA analyst on the median can often design a test strategy and build an automation framework. The VA levels below are priced for narrower jobs: running and writing tests, reporting bugs and keeping an existing suite green, which is usually the missing job in a team with no tester.
Three levels, three rate bands
The hourly range is wide because the job is. Where a hire lands depends on what you need them to produce on day one. Pick the level from the work, not from the title on a CV.
| Level | What they produce | Per hour | 80 hours a month | 160 hours a month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Manual tester | Runs the test cases you have, smoke tests new builds, files clear bug reports, verifies fixes, runs regression passes and exploratory sessions | $8.50–$11 | $680–$880 | $1,360–$1,760 |
| Test-plan writer | All of the above, plus test cases written from user stories, test plans for your lead to approve, release checklists, test data and a tidy test library | $11–$14 | $880–$1,120 | $1,760–$2,240 |
| Automation and API | Keeps an existing Playwright, Cypress or Selenium suite passing, adds tests in your framework's style, runs and extends Postman collections, reads CI failures | $14–$16 | $1,120–$1,280 | $2,240–$2,560 |
A common mistake is paying for the top band when you have no test cases yet: the first job is writing them, which is the middle band. If you aren't sure, describe the first month's work in the request.
What the VA does, what your lead decides
QA sits close to decisions that belong to your engineering lead, your security people or an auditor. Put this table in the first-day guide so the line is clear before the first release.
| The VA does | Your team (or your auditor) decides |
|---|---|
| Runs the release checklist and reports results, open bugs and known issues | Go or no-go. The VA never signs off a release; your engineering lead does |
| Tests on staging with the test accounts and data you provide | Whether anything is ever tested on production data or real customer accounts, and only under rules you write down |
| Logs each bug with a severity from your written scale | Priority, and what gets fixed before release |
| Checks forms and pages against your own accessibility checklist (keyboard use, labels, a contrast tool) | Whether the product conforms to any accessibility standard: your auditor decides |
| Runs the steps your security checklist lists, such as "a logged-out user can't open the billing page" | Penetration testing, vulnerability scanning and any SOC 2 or PCI question: your security team and auditor |
| Fixes and adds automated tests in your existing framework | Framework and pipeline changes, approved through your normal code review |
| Drafts the test plan for a release | Scope and exit criteria |
A VA who reports "regression passed, two medium bugs open, one known issue on Safari" has done the job; deciding whether that is good enough to ship stays with your lead.
Price per test case, bug report and smoke test
The VA's cost is the rate times the minutes, at the level that normally does the task. The minutes are example assumptions for a VA who already knows your product; a new area takes longer the first few times. Time your own first month and replace them.
| Task | What's in it | Minutes (example) | Level | Cost each |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Smoke test of a new build | 15–20 critical paths clicked through on staging, pass or fail posted in your team channel | 20 | Manual tester | $2.83–$3.67 |
| One manual test case run | Steps followed, actual result logged, pass or fail with evidence in your test tool | 3 | Manual tester | $0.42–$0.55 |
| Bug report filed | Steps to reproduce, expected vs actual, build, browser or device, screenshot or screen recording, severity by your scale | 12 | Manual tester | $1.70–$2.20 |
| Fix verified | Bug retested on the fixed build, closed or reopened with a note | 8 | Manual tester | $1.13–$1.47 |
| One flow on your browser and device list | The same flow on each browser and device you support, differences logged | 25 | Manual tester | $3.54–$4.58 |
| Exploratory session | A 45-minute timeboxed charter on one feature, notes written up, bugs filed | 60 | Manual tester | $8.50–$11.00 |
| Test cases from one user story | Six to ten cases: the happy path, wrong inputs, limits and empty states | 40 | Test-plan writer | $7.33–$9.33 |
| Test plan for a release | Scope, environments, risks, entry and exit criteria, drafted for your lead to approve | 120 | Test-plan writer | $22.00–$28.00 |
| Release checklist prepared | Your checklist filled with results, open bugs and known issues, ready for the go/no-go call | 30 | Test-plan writer | $5.50–$7.00 |
| Test data set prepared | Test accounts and records created in staging under your data rules | 30 | Test-plan writer | $5.50–$7.00 |
| API collection run | Your Postman collection run on staging, failed responses logged with request and response | 20 | Automation and API | $4.67–$5.33 |
| Failing automated test looked at | CI log read, rerun, flaky or real decided, locator fixed for review or a bug filed | 30 | Automation and API | $7.00–$8.00 |
One release, priced in VA minutes
Add the tasks up for one release and the cost of testing it becomes one number you can put next to the release itself. One example: a two-week sprint with five user stories, four builds on staging and a 200-case regression suite.
One two-week release, VA time
Example: 5 stories, 10 bugs, 200 regression cases
- Smoke tests on 4 builds80 min
- Test cases written for 5 user stories200 min
- 45 new test cases run135 min
- Two exploratory sessions120 min
- 10 bug reports120 min
- 10 fixes verified80 min
- Regression pass, 200 cases600 min
- Three flows on the browser and device list75 min
- Existing cases updated after changes60 min
- Release checklist for the go/no-go call30 min
VA time25 hours
Cost per release$224.58–$289.50
- Writing tasks priced at the test-plan band, the rest at the manual band. Tool seats and staging are separate lines on your side.
The biggest line is the regression pass: it grows with every feature you ship and shrinks when part of it is automated. Test case writing drops once a library exists. Bug reports and retests depend on the build, so leave room for a heavy sprint.
Calculator: your hours and cost per release
Put in your sprint numbers to see the VA hours a month and the cost per release, at the level you pick.
- VA hours a month–
- Suggested block–
- VA cost a month for those hours (agency example)–
- Per release–
- Same hours at a developer's loaded hour–
- Same hours at the QA analyst slip's loaded hour–
With the defaults, two releases a month come to about 50 hours: $550–$700 a month at the test-plan band, which fits an 80-hour part-time block. Billing is for hours worked, so a quiet sprint costs less than the block.
What your developers' testing time costs
In teams without a tester, the testing still happens. Developers click through their own changes, rerun the old flows before a release and write up what they find for each other. Here is what that time costs a month per developer at a loaded $88.33 an hour (the median for software developers, $65.38 an hour, plus employer costs from the slips), against the same hours from a manual tester. Minutes a day are examples; 21.7 working days a month.
| Testing per developer a day | Hours a month | At the developer's hour | Same hours from a VA |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30 minutes | 10.8 | $958 | $92–$119 |
| 60 minutes | 21.7 | $1,917 | $184–$239 |
| 90 minutes | 32.5 | $2,875 | $277–$358 |
Developers should still test their own code; unit tests and a check before a pull request are part of the job. What moves to the VA is the repetitive part: the full click-through, the old flows, the second browser, the written report. A developer running the regression pass is not building.
The regression pass, priced by suite size
A regression pass reruns the tests for features that already worked, to catch what a new change broke. It is the most predictable QA cost you have, because it is cases times minutes. At an example 3 minutes per manual case and two passes a month, at the manual band:
| Cases in the suite | Hours per pass | Cost per pass | Two passes a month |
|---|---|---|---|
| 100 | 5.0 | $43–$55 | $85–$110 |
| 250 | 12.5 | $106–$138 | $213–$275 |
| 500 | 25.0 | $213–$275 | $425–$550 |
| 1,000 | 50.0 | $425–$550 | $850–$1,100 |
A 1,000-case suite run twice a month is a full-time job on its own. Three ways to keep the pass affordable:
- Tier the suite: a short smoke set on every build, a risk-based set on every release, the full suite before a big launch. Your lead approves the tiers; the VA tags the cases.
- Retire dead cases: features you removed and duplicates. A test-plan writer can review the library once a quarter, at an example 8 hours, $88.00–$112.
- Automate the stable middle: flows that rarely change and run every pass. That is the next section.
The automation level: what $14–$16 buys
The top band is for keeping automated tests useful, not for inventing a test strategy. A VA at this level typically:
- runs your Playwright, Cypress or Selenium suite and reads the failures in GitHub Actions, GitLab CI or Jenkins;
- sorts each failure into a real bug, a changed screen or a flaky test, fixes locators and waits through your normal code review, and files bugs for the rest;
- adds tests for stable flows following the patterns your engineers set, so the suite grows in the same style;
- keeps API checks in Postman current: new endpoints, changed responses, environment variables for staging;
- moves manual cases to "automated" in your test tool once they run reliably, so the manual pass shrinks.
Building a framework from nothing, choosing the tools and changing the pipeline are engineering decisions. Some candidates at the top of the band can do parts of it; if that is the job, say so in the request and test it, and expect your engineers to review every change. Upkeep is the cost most teams forget: at an example 10 hours a month it costs $140–$160; at 40 hours, $560–$640.
Three teams, worked through
Example teams with example volumes, priced with the agency example's bands:
Two-developer SaaS
One web app, a release every two weeks
- 80 hours, manual tester$680–$880
Per release (2 a month)$340–$440
- Smoke tests on each build, a 150-case regression pass, bug reports in Linear, one exploratory session a sprint. The founder stops clicking through every release night.
Product team of six developers
Web and mobile, weekly releases, no test library yet
- 160 hours, test-plan writer$1,760–$2,240
Per release (about 4.3 a month)$406–$517
- First two months: the test library written in TestRail from existing features. After that: new cases per story, regression, the release checklist for the lead.
API platform with a Playwright suite
Two seats: manual and automation
- Manual tester, 160 hours$1,360–$1,760
- Automation and API, 80 hours$1,120–$1,280
Monthly total$2,480–$3,040
- One person on new features and exploratory work, one keeping the suite and the Postman collections green. Both under the same release rule.
None of these replaces a senior QA lead who sets strategy; if you need that person, hire them and give them a VA to run the tests.
A full-time week, priced by block
Where 40 hours of a full-time test-plan writer typically go, at $11–$14 an hour. Illustrative split; your release rhythm decides the real one.
| Block | Hours a week | Cost a week | Output |
|---|---|---|---|
| New feature testing | 12 | $132–$168 | Cases written from this sprint's stories and run on each build |
| Regression | 10 | $110–$140 | The agreed tier run before release, results in the test tool |
| Bugs and retests | 8 | $88.00–$112 | Reports filed, fixes verified, reopened bugs explained |
| Smoke tests and exploratory sessions | 5 | $55.00–$70.00 | Each new build checked, one charter a week written up |
| Library upkeep and test data | 3 | $33.00–$42.00 | Changed cases updated, staging accounts reset |
| Stand-ups, release checklist, report | 2 | $22.00–$28.00 | Status in your channel, checklist ready for the go/no-go call |
The first year, both ways
| Line | In-house QA analyst | Full-time VA (agency example) |
|---|---|---|
| Twelve months of pay and payroll costs | $140,896 | $16,320–$21,120 manual; $26,880–$30,720 automation |
| Average cost per hire2 | $5,475 | $0 recruitment fee |
| Laptop, test phones, desk | Your purchase | The VA's own computer; real-device testing through your device cloud seat |
| Test case library | Yours either way | Written in your tool, stays with you |
| Part-time option | Hard to hire for 20 hours | 80 hours: $8,160–$10,560 a year at the manual band |
Numbers to check every sprint
Your bug tracker and test tool already count most of this. Ask for a short report each sprint; you set the targets.
| Number | How it's counted | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Bugs found before release vs after | Bugs logged by the VA on staging vs bugs reported by customers or staff after release, per release | Whether the tests cover what users actually do |
| Retest turnaround | Hours from "fixed" to verified, in the VA's working hours | Whether fixes wait on QA |
| Regression pass time | Hours per pass, by tier | When the suite needs pruning or automation |
| Reopened bugs | Bugs reopened after the VA closed them | How carefully fixes are verified |
| Bugs sent back for more detail | Reports a developer couldn't reproduce | Whether the reports are usable |
| Flaky automated tests open | Tests marked flaky and not yet fixed | Whether the suite is still trusted |
| Blocked hours | Time waiting for a build, an environment or an account | What your side needs to fix |
Tool seats, staging and test accounts
The rate covers the person, not the tools. Bug trackers (Jira, Linear, ClickUp, Azure DevOps), test management (TestRail, Zephyr Scale, Xray, Qase), device and browser clouds (BrowserStack, LambdaTest, Sauce Labs), API tools (Postman), screen recording (Loom) and your CI service bill you per plan, per user or per minute, whoever does the testing.
Before day one, three things come from you, not the VA:
- A staging or test environment the VA can break without consequences, refreshed on a schedule you control.
- Test accounts for each user role (admin, member, free plan, paid plan), created by your team, plus test payment details from your payment provider's test mode.
- Written data rules: no real customer accounts or production data unless your rules allow it, and then masked or limited the way they say.
Give the VA named logins with only the permissions the role needs, two-factor login where offered, and no production admin access. Our guide on giving a VA access to accounts walks through it. Remove access the day the role ends; the test library, bug history and recordings stay in your tools.
How the agency example bills
- Billed monthly after the work, for hours worked only
- Nothing to pay before you choose your hire
- 30-day trial with each new hire: end it right away, no notice
- After the trial, 30 days' written notice
- Replacement at no extra cost
- A one-time advance payment once you choose your hire, credited against your first invoices and refundable
- Recruitment, placement or setup fee: None
- Bank transfer in USD: No processing fee
- Credit card or PayPal: 4% processing fee
A 30-minute test before you hire
What you are testing is how clearly they write and whether they know where their job stops. Tools can be learned.
- Bug report (10 minutes): give access to a staging page with two planted bugs. Look for a title a developer understands, numbered steps, expected vs actual, the browser and build, and a screenshot or recording.
- Test cases (10 minutes): a one-paragraph spec for a sign-up form. Do they go past the happy path to wrong emails, empty fields, very long names and double clicks on submit?
- Triage (5 minutes): five vague bug titles. Which do they ask questions about, and how do they order them by your severity scale?
- Release question (5 minutes): "Regression passed with one open medium bug. Can we ship?" The right answer reports the facts and leaves the call to your lead.
For the automation level, add a failing CI log and ask what they would check first. Our interview questions template has more, and the job description templates include a software developer brief you can adapt.
The first month
| Week | QA testing VA | You |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Learns the product on staging, reads open bugs, runs existing cases with your developers checking reports | Staging, test accounts, the bug report template, the severity scale, the "VA does vs your lead decides" table |
| 2 | Smoke tests each build; writes or updates cases for this sprint's stories | Review the first cases; answer what the product doesn't explain |
| 3 | First full regression pass; proposes the smoke and release tiers | Approve the tiers |
| 4 | Release checklist for the go/no-go call; first sprint report | Agree the numbers above and how often you want them |
QA terms, in one line each
Useful for the job description and for checking a candidate knows the work.
- Smoke test
- A quick check that a new build's most important paths work at all, before deeper testing starts.
- Regression test
- Rerunning tests for features that already worked, to catch what a change broke.
- Exploratory testing
- Timeboxed testing without a script, aimed at one area, with notes on what was tried.
- Severity vs priority
- Severity is how bad the bug is; priority is how soon you fix it. The VA proposes severity, your team sets priority.
- Flaky test
- An automated test that passes and fails on the same code; it needs fixing or removing.
- Go/no-go
- The release decision, made by your engineering lead from the test results.
How to hire a QA testing VA here
Requests from this site go to our recruiting partner, the agency in the example above, at $8.50–$16.00 an hour depending on level:
- Tell us the job: web, mobile or API, your bug tracker and test tool, whether test cases exist, any automation framework, and the hours and time zone overlap you need.
- Meet a shortlist: candidates with software testing backgrounds at the level you asked for, usually in about 2 business days.
- Choose and start: nothing is paid before you choose; billing is monthly, after the work, for hours worked.
The trade-offs: an agency costs more per hour than hiring a freelancer yourself, in exchange for screening, payroll handling and free replacement; the first weeks need your developers' time for staging, accounts and checking reports. For a full developer instead, see what software developers cost by country.
More: part-time vs full-time VA cost, outsourcing vs hiring in-house and VA vs freelancer vs agency.
Questions people ask about the cost
How much does a QA testing virtual assistant cost?
In the agency example on this page (our parent company's published rates), a dedicated QA testing VA costs $8.50–$16 an hour depending on level: $680–$1,280 a month for 80 hours and $1,360–$2,560 for 160 hours, with no recruitment or setup fee. Manual testers sit at $8.50–$11, testers who also write test plans and cases at $11–$14, and automation and API testers at $14–$16.
How does that compare with hiring a QA analyst in the US?
The US median pay for software quality assurance analysts and testers was $104,300 a year in May 2025, about $50 an hour, according to the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook. Payroll taxes and benefits come on top; the slip on this page adds them line by line from BLS employer cost data. A full-time VA in the agency example costs $16,320–$30,720 for 1,920 hours a year. The median covers senior people who set test strategy; the VA levels are priced for running, writing and maintaining tests.
What does one bug report or one test case cost?
Rate times minutes. At this page's example times, a bug report with steps, environment and a screenshot or recording (12 minutes) costs $1.70–$2.20 at the manual band, and one manual test case run (3 minutes) costs $0.43–$0.55. Writing six to ten cases for a user story (40 minutes) costs $7.33–$9.33 at the test-plan band. Time your own first month and use your minutes instead.
What does testing one release cost?
The example two-week release on this page (smoke tests on four builds, cases for five stories, ten bugs reported and retested, a 200-case regression pass and the release checklist) takes about 25 hours of VA time, roughly $225–$290. The calculator works it out from your own release rhythm, suite size and bug count.
Can a QA VA decide whether we release?
No. The VA runs the release checklist and reports the results, open bugs and known issues; the go/no-go decision stays with your engineering lead. Severity follows your written scale, and priority is set by your team.
Will a QA VA test on our live system or with customer data?
Only if your written rules say so. The normal setup is a staging or test environment and test accounts your team creates for each user role, with test payment details from your payment provider's test mode. Real customer accounts and production data stay out of testing unless you decide otherwise and write down how.
Can a QA VA do security testing or get us SOC 2, PCI or accessibility compliance?
No. A VA can run the steps your own checklists list, such as checking that a logged-out user can't open a private page or that a form works with the keyboard. Penetration testing, vulnerability scanning and any compliance or conformance question belong to your security team and your auditor; your auditor decides.
Can a QA VA write automated tests?
At the top band ($14–$16 in the agency example), yes, inside an existing framework: keeping a Playwright, Cypress or Selenium suite passing, sorting CI failures into real bugs and flaky tests, adding tests in your engineers' style, and keeping Postman collections current, all through your normal code review. Building a framework from nothing is an engineering decision; if that is the job, say so in the request and test for it.
Should I hire part-time or full-time?
Count it from your release rhythm. Two releases a month with a 200-case regression suite, five stories per release and about ten bugs comes to roughly 50 hours a month in this page's calculator, which fits an 80-hour block. Weekly releases, a mobile app next to the web app, or no test library yet usually need 160 hours.
Does the hourly rate include Jira, TestRail or BrowserStack?
No. Your bug tracker, test management tool, device and browser cloud, API tool, screen recorder and CI service bill you per plan, per user or per minute, whoever does the testing. Check whether one more user changes your plan before you compare totals.
Are there extra fees, when do I pay, and can I cancel?
In the agency example there is no recruitment, placement or setup fee and no fee for USD bank transfers; card or PayPal payments carry a 4% processing fee. A one-time advance payment is due once you choose your hire, credited against your first invoices and refundable. Billing is monthly after the work, for hours worked only. Each new hire has a 30-day trial you can end right away; after that, 30 days' written notice applies, and a replacement is provided at no extra cost. First candidates usually arrive in about 2 business days.