How Much Does a Voice Over Cost in the UK?

Nobody publishes a single number for a voice over, because a single number does not exist. Here is the structure every quote is built from, so you can budget before you brief and compare two quotes that look nothing alike.

Ask five agencies what a voice over costs and you will get five different answers, all of them technically true. One quotes per finished minute. One quotes a day rate. One quotes a session fee and then adds a licence you did not know you were buying. The confusion is not an accident. It is what happens when an industry prices a recording and a licence in the same breath and only itemises one of them.

This is how the money is actually broken up, whether you are booking a radio advert, an explainer video, an e-learning course or a TV campaign.

What you are actually paying for

Every professional voice over quote in the UK contains some combination of four costs. Good agencies show you all four. Portals bundle them into one number and hope you do not ask.

• The session fee. The performer’s time and skill for the recording itself, including retakes and alternate reads. Charged by the hour, the half day or the script, depending on the job.
• The usage fee, also called the licence or buyout. What you pay for the right to broadcast the finished audio in specific places, for a specific length of time. No usage fee means no right to run the ad. This is the part clients most often discover late, and it has its own guide here.
• Studio and direction. A room, an engineer, and someone running the session so you get the read you briefed rather than the read the script suggested. Included when you record at one of our studios, or handled remotely over Source Connect or Cleanfeed.
• Post production. Editing, clean up, loudness compliance and delivery in the format your platform demands. See audio editing and mastering for what that involves.

For corporate video, training, internal communications and phone systems, usage is usually not charged separately, because the audio is not being broadcast to buy attention. For anything that runs as advertising, usage is a real and separate line.

The five things that move the price

Two scripts of identical length can be quoted 400% apart. These are the variables doing that work.

1. Script lengthAt around 150 words per minute of finished audio, a 500 word script is roughly three and a half minutes of speech and perhaps half an hour in the booth. A 5,000 word e-learning module is a different job entirely. Word count, not page count, is what to send.
2. Where it will runInternal training, a website, paid social, regional radio, national TV, cinema. Each step up the list widens the audience and raises the licence. A read for an internal induction video and the identical read on a national TV campaign are not the same product.
3. TerritoryUK only, UK and Ireland, Europe, worldwide. A worldwide licence costs multiples of a UK one because it removes every future negotiation.
4. TermHow long you can run it. Most advertising licences are sold in 12 month blocks. Some are three or six months. When the term ends you either renew or take the ad down.
5. The voiceA working professional, a recognisable broadcaster and a celebrity are three different price brackets. Recognisable talent also comes with an agent, and that negotiation is part of what an agency does for you.

What drives the price on typical projects

These are the shapes real jobs take. Find the row nearest your brief and you will know which lever is doing the most to your budget, which is more useful than a headline number you would have to caveat anyway.

Audiobooks sit outside this model completely. They are priced per finished hour of audio rather than per session, which is why we keep the audiobook numbers on their own page instead of squeezing them into a table built for advertising. If you are casting one, how to choose an audiobook narrator covers the decision that comes first.

We quote every job individually rather than publishing a rate card. Not to make you ask, but because a rate card either has to be so hedged it tells you nothing, or so simple it is wrong for most of the work that comes through. Send the brief and you get the real number, usually the same day.

What is not in the quote

Most budget overruns are not caused by the voice. They are caused by the things nobody costed.

• Script changes after recording. Fixing a handful of lines is quick. Rewriting the script means a second session, and a second session means a second fee. Locking the script is the single cheapest decision on this list.
• Extra cutdowns. If you need 60, 30 and 15 second versions, say so before the session. Recording them together costs almost nothing. Coming back for them later costs a booking.
• Translation and adaptation. Separate from the voice, and easy to forget on multilingual work. See language services.
• Music, sound design and the final mix. A voice over is a component of the finished ad, not the finished ad.
• Renewals. When a 12 month licence expires, running the ad on is a fresh purchase. Put the expiry date in a calendar the day you sign.

Where multilingual budgets go wrong

Multiply the English cost by the number of languages and you will underbudget. Two things get missed.

First, cost per language is not flat. Supply drives it. A French, German or Spanish voice is straightforward to cast. Welsh, Flemish, Finnish or Icelandic have a much smaller pool of professional native performers, and the rate follows the scarcity.

Second, translated scripts change length. German and French commonly run longer than English, and a script that fits 30 seconds in English will not fit 30 seconds in every language without adaptation. We wrote about that in text expansion and script timing, and it is the reason timing problems on international campaigns are almost always budget problems in disguise.

How to spend less without hurting the work

1. Buy the usage you need, not the usage you might needA worldwide perpetual licence on a campaign that will run in the UK for a year is money spent on a hypothetical. Buy 12 months UK and extend later if the campaign earns it.
2. Lock the script before the sessionEvery rewrite after recording is a new booking. This one habit saves more money than any negotiation.
3. Record everything you need in one visitCutdowns, alternate calls to action, regional variants, next quarter’s update. All cheap inside a booked session, all expensive outside it.
4. Brief properly and cast onceMost overspend is recasting after the client hears the wrong read. Our guide on how to brief a voiceover agency covers what to send.
5. Ask for the itemised breakdownSession, usage, studio, post. If a supplier will not separate them, you cannot tell what you are buying or what a renewal will cost.

---

Frequently asked questions