The Short Answer: What a Voiceover Costs
A voiceover costs about $125–$450 for a 90-second explainer and $400–$850 for a 3–5 minute YouTube or corporate narration on the 2026 rate cards of voice actors Rick MacIvor, Christa Lewis and Chris Butera, for unpaid use. On Fiverr, page-one voice over gigs start at a median of $50 per 100 words. An AI voice from ElevenLabs costs $6 a month on its cheapest paid plan, and a union actor under SAG-AFTRA's corporate rates starts at $550 for the first hour.
Some Fiverr links on this page are affiliate links: Mark Studios may earn a commission if you buy through them, at no cost to you.
Those are other people's published prices, checked October 31, 2026, not ours. Mark Studios quotes a voiceover on its own, next to the video it goes in, so there is no Mark Studios price on this page.
Voiceover Prices by Route
| Route | Published price | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| AI voice you generate yourself | $6–$99 a month | ElevenLabs Starter $6 (30,000 credits), Creator $22 (121,000) and Pro $99 (600,000); text to speech uses about one credit per character. The free plan has no commercial license |
| Fiverr gig | $1.25–$200 per 100 words to start, median $50 | The 44 gigs on page one of Fiverr's "voice over" search; 27 price per 100 words, the rest per 125–800 words |
| Marketplace, hourly | $40–$85 an hour | Upwork's median rates for voice actors |
| Voice marketplace | The talent's quote, plus a 4% payment processing fee | Voices: posting a job is free; Voices Plus is $299 a year |
| Managed voice service | $25 and up | Bunny Studio, with full buyout rights and revisions for 30 days |
| Rate card, per word | $0.15–$0.29 a word | John Kissinger $0.15–$0.20; Rick MacIvor $0.19–$0.29 with a $125 minimum; Butera $0.25 for e-learning |
| Rate card, per finished minute | $20–$115 a minute | Kissinger $20–$30; Carlos Kasse $115 for e-learning, with a $75 minimum |
| Rate card, one video | $350–$850 | Lewis $350 for up to 2 minutes, plus $50–$75 each extra minute; Butera $450 for one explainer up to 90 seconds and $850 for a 3–5 minute YouTube episode |
| Paid-ad usage | $450 and up | Lewis: digital and social ads starting at $450 for 3 months and $750 for a year; regional broadcast starting at $850 a year |
| Union scale | $550–$614 the first hour, $161 each extra half hour | SAG-AFTRA's 2025–28 Corporate/Educational rates for an off-camera voice, plus a 20.25% health and retirement contribution |
A gig's starting price is its smallest package. We read the search signed in, counted each gig once and left out the four personalized recommendation cards above the results. At the conversational pace of 150 words a minute, 100 words is about 40 seconds of finished audio, so the $50 median works out to about $75 a finished minute (our calculation). Marketplace fees come on top of any of these; our comparison of Fiverr, Upwork and an agency runs that math.
What One 90-Second Explainer Costs
Price the same 225-word script through each route and the spread runs $6 to $661. Two of the low numbers are floors, not rates: MacIvor's per-word price comes to $43–$65 for 225 words, so his $125 minimum sets the bill, and Kissinger rounds 90 seconds up to 2 minutes, which is $40–$60. What the higher cards add is the license. Lewis's $350 includes a worldwide, in-perpetuity license for unpaid and organic use, and Butera lists a $750 full buyout for web use.
The AI line is a subscription, not a per-script price. At about six characters a word, 225 words is roughly 1,350 characters, a small slice of Starter's 30,000 monthly credits (our calculation). For the whole video rather than the voice, see what an animated explainer video costs.
Usage: The Line That Moves the Price Most
Rate cards price unpaid use. MacIvor's prices are "for corporate or client single platform use only" and leave out broadcast and internet advertising. Kissinger's cover one platform or one video and exclude TV, broadcast and web ads. Once you pay to put the video in front of people, it is an ad, and the voice is priced by where it runs and for how long: Lewis starts paid digital and social at $450 for 3 months. Voices describes usage the same way, limited by media, duration and geography.
AI voices carry a license line too. ElevenLabs says its free plan "does not include a commercial license", while paid plans do. YouTube requires creators to disclose realistic AI content, such as making a real person appear to say something they didn't, but lists cloning your own voice for voiceovers or dubs as a use that needs no label. Our guide to AI voice cloning covers where synthetic narration holds up and where it reads cheap.
What Else Moves a Voiceover Price
- Minimums. $75 for Kasse, $125 for MacIvor and $250 for Butera. A 30-second read costs the minimum.
- Live direction. Butera adds $150 for a directed session, and Kissinger lists live client direction as a reason a price rises.
- Script changes. Lewis includes one round of minor performance pickups and bills script changes after recording at 50% of the base rate.
- Turnaround. Kissinger lists delivery in under 24 hours as a reason a price goes up.
- File splits. Lewis charges $1 a file, with a $50 minimum.
- Raw or edited audio. Butera prices e-learning at $1,500 a raw hour and $2,400 a finished hour.
- Union or not. SAG-AFTRA's rate sheet lists a 20.25% health and retirement contribution on top of scale.
Before You Book a Voice: A 6-Point Check
- Lock the script, then count it. Quotes are priced per word or per finished minute, and our script length calculator gives you both. A changed script after the session is a new fee.
- Write down where it will run. Your site and organic social, paid ads, or TV and radio, and for how long. Usage changes the price more than length does.
- Ask what the price includes. Retakes for performance, pickups for script changes, file splits, and whether the audio comes edited or raw.
- Hear your own lines. A demo reel is a voice at its best. Two or three lines of your script, read the way you'll use them, tell you more.
- Get the license in writing. Lewis's card says the license transfers on full payment and bars using the audio to train or clone an AI voice. Look for both clauses in any quote.
- Make the final AI read on a paid plan. ElevenLabs says content created outside a paid subscription, before or after it, can't be used commercially.
Where Mark Studios Fits
If you already have a voiceover, Mark edits the video to it. Faceless YouTube editing starts from your script and your recorded narration, and our breakdown of what a faceless YouTube video costs prices the voice as one layer of the whole video. If you need a voice, it goes in the same order as the video: animated videos come with voiceover, music and sound; scripting and voiceover for faceless channels sit in channel management; and AI voiceover and voice cloning run through AI and automation. Monthly editing plans don't include voiceover, so it's quoted on its own.
Voiceover or narration came up in 66 of 698 first messages from buyers in our inbox from July to September 2026. Mark Studios has delivered 8,000+ orders for 4,500+ clients, holds a 4.9★ rating and Top Rated status on Fiverr, delivers 99% on time and has edited work behind 100M+ views. If you're narrating lessons, our video work for course creators shows that route.
The Bottom Line
Price a voiceover by the finished script and by where it will run. For unpaid use, three of the four rate cards here that price an explainer put a 90-second one at $125–$450, a 3–5 minute narration runs $400–$850 on Lewis's and Butera's cards, Fiverr starts at a median of $50 per 100 words, and an AI voice costs $6 a month on a paid plan. Paid ads, broadcast and union work cost more, so name the usage before you compare quotes.
