Freelance Voice-Over Artist Rate Calculator

How voice-over artists should actually price

One of the biggest mistakes voice-over artists make is quoting only a "recording fee" and giving away usage for free. Your time in the booth is the smaller half of the value. What a client pays for is the right to broadcast your voice: to whom, where, and for how long. A 30-second read might take fifteen minutes to record, but the same file is worth $250 as an organic social post and $3,500+ as a national broadcast commercial. If you price by the hour, you leave that difference on the table every single time.

Session fee plus usage, not hourly

Hourly pricing punishes your efficiency and ignores licensing entirely. Build every quote from two line items. The session fee covers your performance, direction, and delivery of clean audio. The usage fee licenses where the audio runs and for how long: a 13-week regional campaign costs less than a one-year national buyout, which costs less than perpetuity. A true buyout (unlimited use, in perpetuity) should be your most expensive tier, not your default. Name the market, the media, and the term on every invoice.

Rate models that fit each job type

• Commercial: base fee plus usage. A local radio spot is a different animal from national TV. Quote the session, then add the usage tier the client actually needs.
• eLearning and corporate narration: price per finished minute, not per recorded hour. In 2026, standard corporate eLearning runs roughly $180–$250 per finished minute; technical or medical narration commands more. A 60-minute module lands around $1,200–$3,600 depending on complexity.
• Explainer videos: a one-minute read typically runs $300–$600, usually as a buyout since it lives on the client's own channels.
• IVR and on-hold: word-count tiers with a project minimum, for example up to 300 words for $250, with a floor around $150.
• Audiobooks: per finished hour (PFH), which already bakes in your prep, recording, and editing time.

Costs that hidden hourly math forgets

For every finished minute a client hears, you spent time on script prep, multiple takes, self-directing, editing, noise cleanup, and mastering. A "per finished hour" rate that looks high is often three to six real hours of work. Price the deliverable, not the stopwatch. Build revisions into the quote: include one round of client-requested changes, then bill hourly or per-line for pickups caused by script rewrites, not by your performance.

Using this calculator

Start with your target annual income and realistic billable time. Remember that booth hours are a fraction of your week once auditions, editing, and admin are counted. Use the result as your session-fee floor, then layer usage on top for anything that broadcasts. If you work through pay-to-play marketplaces that take a commission, gross your rate up so the platform's cut doesn't erode your floor. When in doubt, cross-check against the GVAA Rate Guide, the non-union benchmark most of the industry quotes from, and never let a client bundle "unlimited usage" into a flat session fee.

Rate calculators for other freelance fields

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Once you've set your rate, turn it into fixed quotes with the project quote builder, price ongoing work with the retainer calculator, and set aside tax with the tax set-aside calculator.

Frequently asked questions