Modernizing the vegetable advisory service has significant promise in enhancing the production and profitability of smallholder vegetable farming in Ethiopia. However, current agricultural advisory service (AAS) operates as a public mandate that does not meet the demand due to extension agents’ overburdened and poor facilities at farmers’ training centers. Private paid extension agents has been proposed as one way to modernize the mostly strained public system that continues to be slow in addressing the need to transform smallholder farming to provide enough healthy foods. This study, therefore, investigated the willingness of smallholder vegetable farmers to pay for private improved vegetable advisory services using data collected from 393 household heads from two districts in northwestern Ethiopia. The study employed discrete choice experiments (DCE), with eighteen choice occasions generated using Ngene software that were blocked into three survey groups and 7074 choice observations. The several choice cards define the proposed extension service by varied attribute and attribute levels. The data was analyzed using a random parameter logit model. The results show heterogeneity in farmers’ willingness to pay for advisory services. Specifically, farmers of different socioeconomic backgrounds such as education status, gender and age exhibited heterogeneity over preferred features of vegetable advisory services. Small-scale vegetable farmers in Mecha and Fogera districts preferred receiving enhanced advisory services, which include frequent visits from experts and a more hands-on on-site advisory service, as opposed to cell-phone assisted and on-stop advisory methods. Likewise, farmers are more willing to invest in vegetable extension services that focus on fruity and root-tuber vegetables than leafy vegetables. Through these findings we propose that efforts to establish private enhanced advisories be situated within the contextual differences in preferences exhibited within the smallholder population.