What to Charge for Voiceover Work: A Pricing Guide

Pricing is the question that keeps more voice actors up at night than microphone choice, booth treatment, and audition technique combined. I've coached hundreds of voice actors through their first paid gig, their first five-figure job, and every awkward quote in between. The pattern is almost always the same: people either undercharge out of fear, or they pull a number from thin air and hope the client doesn't flinch.

Voiceover rates are not a mystery. They follow rules, traditions, and market expectations that have been around for decades. Once you understand the logic, quoting a job becomes a repeatable process rather than a nervous guess.

Why Voiceover Rates Exist on a Spectrum

If you search how much to charge for voiceover, you will find numbers ranging from fifty dollars to fifty thousand. Both can be correct depending on the project. Voiceover pricing depends on three big factors, not on how long you spend in the booth:

• Usage: Where will the audio play, for how long, and to how many people?
• Exclusivity: Can you voice a competitor next week, or are you locked out of a category?
• Production scope: Is this a fifteen second radio spot or a ninety minute eLearning module?

A thirty second script might take you six minutes to record. If that audio runs as a regional TV commercial for a year, the fee reflects the commercial value of that audio over the full run. This is the single biggest mental shift new voice actors need to make. You are licensing a performance, not selling studio minutes.

Ballpark Ranges for Common VO Work

These are working ranges I see quoted and paid in the non-union freelance market. They are starting points, not rules, and every project has variables that can push rates up or down.

• eLearning and corporate narration: $250 to $400 per finished studio hour, sometimes billed per word at roughly $0.15 to $0.30
• Explainer and web video (internal use): $300 to $600 for a one to two minute script
• Internet commercials (one year, one region): $500 to $1,500 per spot
• Broadcast radio (local, 13 weeks): $350 to $800
• Broadcast TV (regional, one year): $2,000 to $6,000
• Short phone IVR and on-hold messaging: $150 to $350 per system
• Audiobook narration: $225 to $400 per finished hour for non-union work, with royalty share options on platforms like ACX
• Character work for indie games and animation: $100 to $300 per character for small projects, far higher for major releases

The SAG-AFTRA rate card sets a union floor for broadcast and many commercial categories, and plenty of non-union freelancers quote at or near those floors to protect industry rates. If you're doing commercial work regularly, knowing the union scale for your category is non-optional homework.

The Mistake Almost Every New Freelancer Makes

The most common freelance VO pricing mistake is quoting a flat session fee without asking where the audio will run. A client books you for an internet video, you charge $200, and six months later you see your voice on national TV. The client isn't being sneaky. You failed to ask the right questions up front.

Before you quote anything, ask the client:

• What is the intended use? Internal, web, broadcast, theatrical, point of sale?
• What's the term? How long will the audio run?
• What's the territory? Single market, regional, national, worldwide?
• Is exclusivity required in the product category?

If the client doesn't know the answers, that's a signal to quote for the stated use only and specify in writing that expanded use requires a new agreement. I have seen voice actors lose five figures of income because they didn't put this in their invoice.

How to Actually Set Your Own Rates

You don't have to guess. Here's the process I walk my coaching clients through:

Start with a published reference. Use the Gravy For The Brain, Global Voice Acting Academy, or SAG-AFTRA rate guides as a baseline. Pick the category that matches the job and start at the middle of the range.

Adjust for experience. If you have a demo reel that's a year old and three credits to your name, you're at the lower end. If you have a decade of commercial work for national brands, you're at the top, and probably above it.

Adjust for the client. A nonprofit with a small budget is different from a Fortune 500 ad agency. I'm not suggesting massive discounts, but the person across the table matters.

Add a usage multiplier. If the stated use is bigger than the baseline assumes, build it in. National broadcast is often 3x to 5x a regional buyout. Worldwide adds another layer.

Never quote on the phone. Get the brief in writing, think about it, then send a written quote. Voice actors lose money when they blurt a number under pressure.

When to Hold the Line and When to Flex

Undercharging feels like winning the job. It actually trains your clients to expect cheap work from you, and trains the market to do the same. Hold your rates when:

• The client has a real budget and is using professional production
• Usage is broad or long term
• Exclusivity is being requested
• The project lives in a category with established rate expectations

Flex a little when you're building a portfolio piece you genuinely need, when a long term client is filling a gap for you, or when an agency pays quickly and books repeatedly. Those relationships are worth some flexibility. One-off clients looking for a deal rarely turn into anything more.

One more thing. If a client pushes back hard on a fair rate without offering a reason tied to usage, they are almost always not your client. The voice actors I know with sustainable careers lost plenty of those jobs early on and never regretted it.

Put a Real Number on the Next Job

Pricing gets easier the moment you stop treating every quote like a one-off improvisation and start treating it like the business decision it is. Read the rate guides, ask usage questions before you open your mouth about money, and put everything in writing.

If you want a deeper breakdown of category-by-category rates with real numbers you can plug into your next quote, the votrainer.com rate guide is written specifically for freelance voice actors pricing their own work. And if you're sitting on a job right now and not sure what to charge, book a 1-on-1 coaching session and we'll build the quote together. I'd rather you overprice your next gig than undersell the one after that.