Nina Nikolic | KidKerrigan

Voice Over Costs in 2025 and Beyond

When clients approach myself or another voice over professional for a quote, there can often be a disconnect between the perceived value and actual value of professional voice over services. Voice actors are always championing each other to “know their worth.” And yet, quite rarely is that worth discussed openly.

Standard rates within various markets fluctuate from time to time; particularly due to the contact style work that we as freelance performers find ourselves beholden to. Cost of living may have an impact, as well as many other expenses from skills development to hardware to the operational software needed to run our small business.

These are, however, not arbitrarily pulled out of the sky.

What exactly are you paying for? Let’s dive into what voice over costs look like in 2025 and beyond.

A note for Australian Clients:

The Media Entertainment & Arts Alliance of Australia (a union representing Australian talent, of which I am a member!) has released a new Voiceover rate card that will be in effect as of July 1, 2025. You can expect myself and other union members to use this guide as our minimum base rate when quoting for your projects, and may affect global rates if our work reaches there too! Download the Voiceover rate card – July 1, 2025 from the MEAA website.

Voice Over Base Rates

Typically calculated per word, line, hour, finished hour, etc. This number might appear simple; though the value of the base rate encapsulates much more than “saying X number of words.” Some of these factors may include:

• Difficulty of the text – Does the text contain highly technical language that would require additional research, preparation or a specialist in that area?
• Difficulty or effort required for the performance – Are these high-stress efforts for a video game? Or a naturally spoken narration?
• Number of takes per word or line – Most narrations only require one take, while character performances may include many!

This value may also scale with any combination of the following factors that applies to a given talent. Speaking of, here is my rate card for common types of projects.

Performance and Technical Skill Development

What does a human voice artist have that AI doesn’t? Like any profession, maintaining a competitive skill set requires ongoing training. For professional voice actors this may include:

• Consistent acting and/or singing classes – keeping our mind and body malleable to embody whatever message or story we are telling for you.
• Supplemental voice, accent, dialect and performance classes in specific sectors – staying relevant in styles or trends for various markets year on year.
• Production skills to edit, master or mix audio – with the emergence of home studios, many voice talent are also required to perform audio engineering duties to deliver market ready audio for clients.
• Practice – even outside of class, it’s important to spend time reflecting on the effectiveness of our performance. Our value is in our ability to move people emotionally and connect to them on a level they can’t explain through our performance to make your message resonate most strongly with your audience.

Many of my jobs in recent years have been to “fix” the disconnected droning of the robot voice. It’s a common issue that using AI (even just for scratch) to quickly cut a demo piece has resulted in several setbacks for my clients to get content approved or funded by stakeholders because they’re so distracted by the voice over!

I personally take weekly acting and singing classes to keep my skills sharp, in addition to a number of workshops and private coaching throughout the year.

Time Factors for Voice Actors

Even before I draw a quote, I need to spend time understanding clients’ needs. These needs can differ from job to job. After the job has been completed, I still need to follow up and ensure the client was satisfied with the job. There are many phases to each gig that require my (or an assistant’s – if I can afford it!) time:

• Admin – quotes, scheduling… re-scheduling
• Preparation – focusing exclusively on your project (pronunciations, background, reading the briefs, analysing the script, setting up workflows or project files)
• Warm-ups – Physically, mentally and vocally preparing to do the work (the earlier in the day a shoot or recording session is, for me, the more time and effort is required to warm up for optimal performance)
• In the booth or on set – producing the work and focusing exclusively on your project
• Production – editing, cleaning up or mastering recordings (ready for delivery)
• Delivery – splitting files, invoicing, follow-up, etc.

So no, as you can see it will never take “just five minutes” to complete a job from inquiry to payment receipt. No matter how many words it is. If it does, it’s probably crap. Or you should be paying that voice artist ten times more for getting you such high quality work so quickly and seamlessly! They must have a whole factory working for them.

Voice, Likeness or Commercial Usage

Fees to use a performer’s voice or likeness typically scales with exposure of the content. The more customers that the voice is used to acquire, or educate, the more value the performer has provided. Usage can come in a few buckets with various use cases for different sectors, which may include:

• Will the content be available publicly, or for a restricted audience?
• Will the content be included in media that is behind a pay wall, or otherwise generating revenue?
• Is the content to be broadcast as advertising? Via which channels? For how long? In which regions? Is it nationally? Or targeted to a limited audience?
• Will the brand require exclusive use of the voice or likeness? Through which channels? For how long?
• Will you be using the recordings or data to generate additional content from that work? From AI, to lifts or cutdowns, the possibilities are endless – as can be the bill!

If talent specialise in a particular sector, it may be common to provide eLearning or corporate narration for many similar businesses in a given sector. If you don’t want me voicing your competitors’ content, it will cost extra to lose out on those jobs.

Professional Recording Equipment

This bucket is required by most of my clients. I record much of their content from home with my own recording spaces that I have invested in over time, which include:

• Professional quality microphone, interface, cables, computers and other tech to deliver the highest quality files possible.
• Purpose-built, sound proofed, acoustically treated spaces to ensure the voiceover recordings are clear and free of background noise.
• Maintenance, including repairs or even updates to this gear that can mean even better quality output for future work.

As I have accrued higher quality equipment, my rates have adjusted to reflect that.

Operating Costs

Oh, boy! My favourite line item *rolls up sleeves*

• E-mail service and hosting – so you can contact me!
• Hosting for my website – so you can find me!
• File hosting – so you can receive your deliverables.
• Accounting software – so you can pay for the service as quickly and easily as possible.
• Project management software – so you know I’m on top of it.
• CRM software – so you can receive up to date communication from me, schedule sessions, host calls to discuss your project, and more.
• Production software for:
  • Recording your scripts (on my own or live with yourself and clients providing direction)
  • Editing and producing audio and video (if I’m not outsourcing that)
  • Signing contracts, marking up scripts
• Internet – what would we do without it?
• Union fees to protect my vocation.

Who would have thought running a business doesn’t come cheap? Especially when all of these services periodically bump up their fees.

And there’s more!

Talent may also keep travel kits to be available on the road. Some require severe lifestyle restrictions or additional support to maintain a particular level of quality for their work. Others charge double for same-day delivery – I don’t… but maybe one day I’ll have to!

Fact is, having all of the above covered financially ensures that I can be ready and willing to give 100% at a moment’s notice for you.