Executive Assistant Salary Benchmarks

Executive Assistants typically earn 20–40% more than Administrative Assistants. EAs support senior executives with strategic calendar management, board prep, and confidential communications, while Administrative Assistants handle broader office support tasks.

Top Executive Assistants transition into Chief of Staff, Operations Manager, or Office Manager roles. The EA role provides unmatched exposure to executive decision-making, making it a strong launchpad for operational leadership.

Yes, significantly. EAs supporting CEOs and founders earn at the top of the $45,000–$90,000 range, while those supporting VPs or directors earn closer to the bottom. Our data from 203 salaries shows this is the single biggest factor in EA compensation.

On a median base salary of $63,250, an Executive Assistant at a US SaaS company makes about $5,271 a month, $2,433 every two weeks, or $30.41 an hour over 2,080 working hours a year. The middle half of salaries (25th–75th percentile) works out to $3,750–$7,500 a month. These are base-pay equivalents before tax, and they leave out bonus, commission, and equity.

Expect the lower half of this benchmark. Across 203 verified SaaS Executive Assistant salaries, the 25th percentile is $45,000 and the median is $63,250. A Executive Assistant at a seed or Series A startup, or at a bootstrapped company under roughly $10M ARR, will often land between those two figures. Base pay typically moves toward and past the $90,000 75th percentile as the company adds headcount and ARR. Those stage bands are a rule of thumb applied to this benchmark, not a breakdown by company size, which the dataset does not report.

Budget for more than base salary. On a median base of $63,250, the fully loaded cost of a US Executive Assistant is roughly $79,063–$88,550 per year once employer payroll taxes (~7.65% FICA plus federal and state unemployment), health and retirement benefits, software seats, and equipment are added. That 1.25–1.4x multiplier is a planning rule of thumb applied to the benchmark on this page, not a surveyed cost figure. Commission, bonuses, and equity sit on top where the role carries them. Also budget one-off hiring costs: agency recruiting fees commonly run 15–25% of first-year base, and a new hire takes weeks to months to reach full productivity.