AI tools for virtual assistants: 10 priced, 6 prompts, and whose account to use

Which AI tools do virtual assistants need, and what do they cost?

A virtual assistant needs one chat app for drafting and documents, one proofreader and one meeting notetaker. The chat app decision is really an account decision. We priced every tool below from its vendor's own page on 3 October 2026. The chat apps all train on what you paste by default on their personal plans. The plans that don't train by default are sold per seat, and ChatGPT and Claude require two.

Business prices in the chart are yearly billing for the minimum seats a VA can buy. ChatGPT Business is $20 a seat yearly or $25 monthly with a two seat minimum. Claude Team is $20 a seat yearly or $25 monthly for teams of 2 to 150. Google Workspace, with Gemini in Gmail, was $7 a user a month for Business Starter on a one year plan, on Google's US page as of 21 September 2026. Claude Pro is shown at its $17 yearly rate. ChatGPT Plus and Google AI Pro are at their monthly list prices.

The full list, in US dollars for one person, as of 3 October 2026:

Two rows change the usual advice. Clockwise announced that its product "will no longer be available starting on March 27, 2026". Yet the VA agency list that ranked first in our 3 October 2026 search for this query (last updated June 2025) still recommends it. Calendly covers the booking half of that job. And the Gemini and Copilot rows aren't tools you buy. They come with the client's own Google or Microsoft account, which is the next question.

Whose account should the AI run on: yours or the client's?

The client's account is the safer place for client work whenever the client already pays for a business plan. Their admin owns the data, their training terms apply, and the history stays with them when your contract ends. Your own personal plan is fine only after you switch training off, because every major personal plan trains on chats by default as of October 2026.

Sources for each row: OpenAI's data controls help, Claude pricing and Anthropic's retention page, the Gemini Apps Privacy Hub (updated 24 September 2026), Google's Workspace privacy hub (updated 14 August 2026) and Microsoft's enterprise data protection page, all read 3 October 2026.

The decision rule follows from the table. Ask every new client one question at onboarding: do you have a Google Workspace, Microsoft 365 or ChatGPT Business account I can use? If yes, work there, and the client's admin can remove your access on your last day. If no, use your own paid plan with training switched off. Keep one project or folder per client so nothing crosses between them, and write the tool into your contract. A solo VA who wants a business tier of their own pays for a second, empty seat on ChatGPT or Claude. Workspace is the one that sells a single seat.

Whizi, which publishes this page, sits on the own account side, with one login for several model families. GPT and Claude Haiku come on Starter ($15.99 a month, $10.99 billed yearly), and Claude Sonnet and Gemini on Pro. Each client gets one Project holding that client's instructions (up to 32,000 characters) and up to 10 pinned files. Whizi doesn't use prompts or files to train models Whizi owns. A message still reaches the provider of the model you pick, through OpenRouter, and Whizi doesn't promise zero retention at every provider (data and privacy). Where it loses is the client side of this table: Whizi has no team seats, so a client can't administer the account or take the history over when the contract ends.

How do virtual assistants use AI for the inbox, scheduling and client documents?

Virtual assistants use AI for the writing inside three jobs: sorting and drafting email, offering and confirming meeting times, and turning a client's notes into documents. The six prompts below are written for a VA working on someone else's behalf, so each one keeps the client's decisions marked for the client.

Prompt 1, inbox triage: "You are triaging [client]'s inbox. For each email below give one line: sender, what they want, and one label: reply today, reply this week, file, or flag for [client]. Anything about money, contracts or a complaint is flag for [client], whatever else it says. Do not draft replies yet. Emails: [paste, oldest first, signatures removed]." Prompts to summarize emails covers the long thread version of this job.

Prompt 2, a reply in the client's voice: "Draft a reply from [client name] to the email below. Match the three sample replies I paste after it: same greeting, same sign off, same length. Under 120 words. Leave every date, price or commitment as [CHECK] for [client] to confirm. Email: [paste]. Samples: [paste three of the client's own sent emails]." The three samples do more for the voice than any tone adjective.

Prompt 3, scheduling across time zones: "Write a short email offering three slots for a 30 minute call between [client] in [city] and [guest] in [city]. Free slots in [client]'s time zone: [list]. Show every slot in both time zones with the day name, under 80 words." Check each converted time against a world clock before it goes out, since one wrong hour costs the meeting.

Prompt 4, meeting notes to actions: "From this transcript, list decisions, action items (owner, task, due date as stated) and open questions. Quote the sentence each item comes from. If no due date was said, write none stated. Transcript: [paste the Otter or Fathom export]."

Prompt 5, an SOP from a walkthrough: "Turn these notes from [client]'s walkthrough of [process] into a numbered SOP: the purpose in one line, the tools needed (names only, no passwords), one action per step, and a list of what can go wrong. Mark any step you inferred rather than read in the notes with [ASSUMED]."

Prompt 6, the weekly client report: "Write my weekly update to [client] from this task log in three parts: done, in progress with the next step, and needs your decision. One line per item, no adjectives, under 150 words. Hours this week: [number], by task: [list]." The hours line matters for the billing question below.

What should a virtual assistant never paste into an AI chat?

Never paste a client's passwords, two factor codes, card or bank numbers, or government ID numbers into any AI chat, on any plan. A business tier changes who may train on the text. It doesn't make a chat the place to store a credential, and a password manager the client controls already does that job.

Three more categories need the client's written yes first: their customers' health or financial records, anything an NDA covers, and personnel matters such as salaries or a disciplinary email. When the client says yes, paste the minimum: replace names with roles ("the supplier", "the candidate") and amounts with [AMOUNT] before the text goes in. What never to paste into AI has the full list with each vendor's retention terms.

How should a virtual assistant bill time that AI saved?

Bill the time you actually spent, review included, on an hourly contract. Move AI heavy work to a package price when a task that took an hour now takes fifteen minutes. No rule binds a VA's invoice. The nearest written standard is the American Bar Association's Formal Opinion 512 of 29 July 2024, and a VA working for a law firm bills a client who's bound by it. It says lawyers "who bill clients an hourly rate for time spent on a matter must bill for their actual time."

The opinion's own example fits a VA as well: drafting with AI in 15 minutes may be billed as the 15 minutes plus the time spent reviewing the draft for accuracy. It also says a lawyer may not bill the client to learn a tool they'll use for every client. The opinion adds that a flat fee unchanged after AI makes the work much faster may be unreasonable. Read as practice for a VA, that gives three lines for the contract. Hourly work is billed as logged. A package is priced by the output (an inbox cleared daily, four SOPs a month). And the AI subscription is your overhead unless the client asked for a specific tool and agreed to pay for it.

In the US the subscription itself is a business expense if it passes the IRS test in Publication 334: "An ordinary expense is one that is common and accepted in your field of business." Whether a given plan qualifies for you is a question for your accountant, not for this page.

Will AI replace virtual assistants?

AI is shrinking the routine document work, not the assistant role, on the US government's own projection. Virtual assistants aren't a separate category at the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. The nearest is secretaries and administrative assistants: 3,515,600 jobs in 2025, with a projected 2% decline from 2025 to 2035 and still about 314,400 openings a year over the decade. Median pay was $48,310 in 2025.

The same page names the cause: "Technology, including artificial intelligence (AI) systems and digital tools, enables staff in many organizations to prepare their own documents without the help of secretaries." The work that drafting tools can't take is the judgment in the prompts above: knowing which email gets flagged for the client, which slot the client actually wants, and which step in an SOP was assumed. A VA who sells that, and does the drafting with the tools in the first table, is selling the part that isn't declining.