A professional voice-over is priced in two parts. The session fee pays for the recording. The usage fee licenses where the recording can run, in which region and for how long. For non-broadcast work like corporate, training or explainer video, experienced non-union talent usually charges a few hundred dollars for a script of up to about 3 minutes. Paid online ads cost more, from several hundred to a few thousand dollars, depending on ad spend, territory and term. Broadcast TV and radio cost the most: low thousands for a regional spot and well into five figures for a national union campaign, because the fee scales with audience. Script length matters far less than where the audio will be heard and for how long.
Why can a 30-second ad cost more than a 5-minute explainer?
The talent isn’t charging for time at the mic. They’re licensing their voice to sell your product, and the fee grows with the audience. A 30-second national TV spot might reach millions of people over 13 weeks. A 5-minute onboarding video might reach 400 employees on an intranet. The ad takes 20 minutes to record and the explainer takes an hour, but the ad costs several times more.
Our rule of thumb: if money is being spent to put the voice in front of people (paid social, pre-roll, broadcast, streaming audio), the usage fee is usually the biggest line on the invoice.
What does each type of project typically cost?
The figures below are working ranges for experienced professionals, not entry-level marketplace talent. The Global Voice Acting Academy (GVAA) rate guide is the reference most US non-union talent and buyers use. It is updated regularly, so check the current edition before you budget.
| Project type | How it’s usually priced | Typical range | What moves the price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Corporate / internal video | Flat fee by length | A few hundred dollars for up to ~3 min | Length, technical vocabulary, whether it’s public or internal |
| E-learning | Per finished minute | Rises with volume; discounts kick in on long courses | Total runtime, medical/legal terms, number of modules |
| Explainer on your own website / organic social | Flat fee, often unlimited web use | Similar to corporate, sometimes slightly higher | Whether it will later be boosted as a paid ad |
| Paid online ad (pre-roll, paid social) | Session + usage by term and territory | Several hundred to a few thousand dollars | Term (3, 6, 12 months), regional vs. national, number of cutdowns |
| Local / regional radio or TV | Session + usage by market and term | Low thousands | Market size, number of spots, renewal cycles |
| National broadcast (union) | Union scale plus use fees or residuals | Thousands to tens of thousands | Airing schedule, cycles, talent’s over-scale fee |
| Audiobook | Per finished hour (PFH) | Varies widely by narrator experience and genre | Finished length, character count, whether editing is included |
What exactly does the usage fee cover?
A usage license is defined by three things. Leaving any of them vague causes problems later.
- Media: broadcast TV, radio, streaming audio, paid digital, organic web, internal, trade show, IVR/phone system. Paid and organic placements are licensed separately.
- Territory: local market, regional, national or worldwide.
- Term: 13-week cycles are standard for broadcast. Online licenses are often 6 or 12 months. In perpetuity costs a premium, and many broadcast talents won’t offer it at all.
The most common problem we see is a client who licenses a website explainer, likes it, and then runs it as a paid YouTube pre-roll. That is a new usage, and the talent or their agent has every right to invoice for it. Name every placement you might use before you book, even ones you’re not sure about. Adding usage up front is cheaper than negotiating it after the spot is already running.
Does union vs. non-union change the price?
Yes. A union voice isn’t automatically more skilled, but the cost structure is different. A SAG-AFTRA commercial booking has set minimums for session and use fees, plus pension and health contributions paid on top. The producer has to be signatory to the contract, or work through a signatory payroll company that charges its own fee. In the UK, Equity agreements play a similar role.
Many excellent voices work non-union and negotiate their own rates. Some top-tier non-union talent charge more than union scale. Choose the voice first. The union question decides how you pay them, not whether they’re good.
What other factors raise the quote?
- Script difficulty: pharmaceutical names, legal disclaimers read at speed, and multilingual pronunciation take longer to perform and more takes to get right.
- Directed sessions: a live session where you direct over Source-Connect, ipDTL or Zoom often costs more than a self-directed read, and it’s worth it for brand-critical spots. Most talent book these in one-hour blocks.
- Rush turnaround: same-day or overnight delivery usually adds a surcharge, commonly a percentage of the fee.
- Revisions: pickups for the talent’s own errors are free. Re-records after you change the script are billed, often as a reduced session fee. Lock the script before the session. This is the cheapest budget control there is.
- Deliverables: most professionals include a clean, edited file. Raw takes, alternate reads, cutdowns (:30/:15/:06), music and sound design, and sync to picture are separate work. Broadcast delivery also has to meet loudness specs: −24 LKFS in the US under ATSC A/85 and the CALM Act, and −23 LUFS in Europe under EBU R 128. Confirm who is responsible for mixing to spec.
How has AI changed voice-over pricing?
Synthetic voice tools now handle a lot of low-stakes work: internal drafts, scratch tracks for edit timing, and some high-volume e-learning. Prices for that category have fallen. For ads, brand films and anything that has to carry emotion, human talent is still the standard. The pricing change is in the contracts.
- Recent SAG-AFTRA agreements require informed consent and separate pay before a performer’s voice is used to create a digital replica. Plenty of non-union talent now include “no AI training or cloning” clauses as well.
- The US Copyright Office’s guidance on AI says purely machine-generated material generally can’t be copyrighted. That matters if you need to own the voice track you’re putting into a campaign.
- If you want a cloned or synthetic version of a real performer’s voice, expect to negotiate it as a separate, often expensive, license. Using it without one is a legal risk, not a cost saving.
Is the cheapest option ever the right one?
Sometimes. A $100 marketplace read can be fine for an internal update. Where it fails is the audio. Home recordings with room echo, noise floors above −60 dB, and mouth clicks can cost more to fix in post than a better recording would have cost in the first place. Sometimes they can’t be fixed and you have to recast. Budget talent also tends to give one flat read with no alternates, so you have nothing to work with in the edit.
For context, the Bureau of Labor Statistics notes that performers’ work is largely freelance and irregular. Professional rates cover booth construction, equipment, training and unpaid audition time, not just the hour you book.
How do you get an accurate quote?
Before you contact talent or an agency, write down five things: the final script with its word count, every placement you might use, the territory, the license term, and the delivery date. Then ask for a quote that lists the session fee, the usage fee and any deliverables separately. That makes quotes from different providers comparable and keeps you out of usage disputes later. If you have a fixed budget, say so up front. Experienced talent will often adjust the term or territory to fit it rather than turn the job down.
