Voice over rates are the least transparent part of the audio industry, and it is not an accident. Ask three suppliers to quote the same thirty-second script and you can get three numbers that are nowhere near each other, none of which come with an explanation. Here is what actually drives the price, what we charge and publish openly, and how to tell whether a quote in front of you is fair.
The Three Ways Voice Over Rates Are Set
Almost every quote you will ever see is built one of these ways, and knowing which one you are looking at is most of the battle:
- Per word or per script. Common for short reads, phone prompts and e-learning. Simple, predictable, and the model we use.
- Per finished minute or finished hour. Standard for long-form work: audiobooks, narration, corporate video. Note the word finished, which means delivered audio, not studio time.
- Per usage. The one that surprises people. The read costs X, then the licence to actually broadcast it costs more depending on where, for how long, and to how many people.
The third model is why a quote can double after you mention the ad is running nationally. It is legitimate, and it is standard practice in agency work. It is also why comparing two quotes without reading the usage terms is meaningless. To see how these models play out on real jobs, our guides to commercial voice over, IVR voice over and British voice over each break down the pricing from the buyer's side.
What Actually Moves the Number
Six things, in rough order of how much they matter:
- Usage and territory. A local shop ad and a national TV campaign can be the same script and the same read. They are not the same fee.
- Term. One year, two years, or in perpetuity. Perpetuity costs the most because it costs the artist every future renewal.
- Exclusivity. Asking a voice not to work for your competitors means paying for the work they turn away.
- Length. It matters less than people expect. The setup, the direction and the edit are much the same for fifteen seconds as for sixty.
- Revisions. Ask how many are included. This is the most common place a cheap quote becomes an expensive one.
- Turnaround. Same-day work is a real cost, because it displaces something else in the diary.
If a quote does not tell you the usage, the term and the revision count, it is not a quote. It is a number.
Why Marketplace Pricing Is So Confusing
On the big casting marketplaces the headline rate is rarely the rate. There is the artist's fee, a platform commission, sometimes an escrow charge, and a usage tier the buyer selects from a dropdown they may not fully understand. Add agent commission on the agency side and the same voice can reach you at two very different prices depending on the route.
None of that is dishonest, but it does mean the sticker price tells you very little. If you want the professional benchmark that voice actors themselves reference for usage-based fees, the industry's most widely cited public reference is the GVAA Rate Guide. It is worth ten minutes before any large campaign, if only to see how much of a fee is usage rather than performance.
What We Charge, and We Publish It
Our answer to the opacity is boring and deliberate: our voice over rates sit on the product page as fixed prices, with no usage tiers and no commission layer. As of today, 128 of the 156 artists in our voiceover collection sit at the same £20.85 for a standard read, and the full roster runs from £10.45 at the low end. You pick the voice, you see the price, you order. Three points on the ladder:
The gap between the first card and the others is the honest bit: one is a voice recording, the others are finished advertisements with music, sound design and a mix. Buying the cheap one and discovering you needed the expensive one is the most common budgeting mistake in this business. Browse the whole roster in our voiceover collection, every price on the page.
When Paying More Is the Right Call
Fixed pricing is not an argument that cheap is always correct. Pay the premium when the voice is doing something a standard read cannot: a national campaign where the exposure justifies a name, a brand voice you intend to keep for years, or a category where you genuinely need a competitor to be unable to hire the same person. Those are real reasons and they are worth real money.
What is not worth paying for is opacity: a quote you cannot break down, a usage tier nobody explains, or a rush fee on a deadline that was never tight. Ask for the breakdown. A supplier who cannot produce one is telling you something.
Getting a Straight Answer on Price
Before you brief anyone, write down three things: where the audio will play, for how long, and how many finished pieces you need. With those, any competent supplier can quote you properly in an afternoon, and you can compare two quotes meaningfully for the first time. For anything ongoing, where the same voice covers your ads, your phone system and your video, it is worth pricing it as one relationship rather than a string of one-off jobs, which is exactly how our business audio services are set up. See the voices and the prices, and skip the quoting round entirely.
