What a voice-over costs in 2026: actor, freelancer or AI?
12 October 2026 · 7 min read · Figures checked on 12 October 2026
A voice-over can cost 1 or 100 depending on the route you take: a professional voice actor in a studio, a freelance marketplace, or an AI voice generator. Here are figures checked on 12 October 2026, with sources, so you can decide with the numbers in front of you. Human rates are those published by French professionals; AI rates are the vendors' own.
The professional voice actor: €200 to €500 for 3 minutes
A professional voice actor charges for two things: the recording session and the usage rights (distribution area, duration, internal or public use). Rate cards published in 2026 by independent French voice-over artists give this order of magnitude for a corporate or motion design video: about €200 up to 1 minute, €250 up to 2 minutes, €300 up to 3 minutes and €350 up to 4 minutes for internal use. Public or online distribution adds a per-word surcharge, often €0.25 to €0.30 per word. An audiobook starts around €300 per finished hour. Advertising follows its own conventions and costs significantly more.
What you get for that price: a performance, artistic direction, a unique voice nobody else will have, and professional accountability for the result. Typical turnaround is 24 to 72 hours, plus revision rounds, each billed or negotiated.
Freelance marketplaces: €30 to €150 per minute
On marketplaces (Fiverr, Malt, specialised sites) you will find French and English voices from around thirty euros for a short text up to €150 per minute for an established profile with commercial rights. The listed price is rarely the final price: revisions, commercial licence, split files and rush delivery are add-ons. Quality varies widely, and casting takes time: listen to ten demos, write a brief, wait, correct.
AI: from 1.5 cents to 20 cents per minute
AI voice generators charge per character or per minute. Using the usual equivalence of 1,000 characters for about 1 minute, the prices checked on 12 October 2026, excluding promotions, are:
- ElevenLabs: Starter $6 for about 30 minutes, Creator $22 for 121 minutes, Pro $99 for 600 minutes, i.e. about $0.17 to $0.20 per minute.
- Murf AI: Creator $29 per month ($19 billed annually) for about 120 monthly minutes, i.e. $0.16 to $0.24 per minute.
- Cloud APIs (OpenAI tts-1, Google Neural2, Amazon Polly Neural, Azure Neural, Mistral Voxtral): $15 to $16 per million characters, about $0.015 per minute, but you have to write code.
- Aievalu: a 100,000-character pack for €9, valid 12 months, about €0.09 per minute, no subscription and no code.
The tool-by-tool detail is in our price comparison, with a calculator for your monthly volume, and in the 2026 round-up of the best tools.
Table: ten minutes of voice-over, three options
| Option | Cost for 10 minutes | Turnaround |
|---|---|---|
| Professional voice actor (online distribution) | about €600 to €1,500, depending on the voice and rights | 2 to 5 days including revisions |
| Marketplace freelancer | about €300 to €1,000 with add-ons | 1 to 4 days, casting not included |
| AI voice (subscription such as ElevenLabs Creator) | $22 per month, 10 minutes used out of 121 | a few minutes |
| AI voice (Aievalu, €9 pack) | about €0.90 out of a 100-minute pack | a few minutes |
Human ranges are estimates derived from published rate cards; always ask for a quote.
When a voice actor is worth the money
A brand campaign, a commercial, a corporate film where emotion carries the message: there, the nuance of a performer, the ability to play a precise intention and to be directed live justify the price gap. The same applies when legal or union frameworks require it (radio and TV advertising, dubbing), or when you want an exclusive voice your competitors cannot use.
When AI is more than enough
For a weekly YouTube video, a podcast segment, a training module updated every quarter, short-form clips or a mock-up to get approved before hiring an actor, an AI voice does the job in minutes at a cost that no longer shows in the budget. The real criterion is no longer raw quality, now very good on recent neural voices, but the need for interpretation and exclusivity.
The hidden costs of each option
The listed price is never the full cost. With a voice actor, add your briefing time, the management of revision rounds and, if the script changes in six months, a new billed session. With a marketplace freelancer, add casting, the platform's commission and the risk of a voice that is no longer available for the rest of your series. With an AI subscription, the trap is the opposite: minutes paid every month and not used, since most subscriptions do not roll unused credits over. A pack valid for a year, or an API billed on usage, avoids that loss for irregular volumes. Finally, AI has a time cost people forget: the ten minutes spent fixing a comma or a misread number. Our guide to writing a script an AI voice reads well cuts them to almost nothing.
Size your need in three questions
How many minutes per month? Multiply by a thousand to get characters: four eight-minute videos are about 32,000 characters, so a 100,000 pack lasts three months. Does the content change often? If so, regenerating a single paragraph on demand is worth more than any studio quality. Is there an image or exclusivity stake? If so, set aside an actor budget for those specific pieces. With those three answers the choice makes itself, and the calculator gives the monthly amount tool by tool.
The mixed approach
Many creators combine both: AI for the daily flow, a voice actor for the three pieces a year that really matter. You keep the budget for what deserves a human voice, and you stop leaving videos unpublished for lack of a voice. Try it free with two sentences of your own script, then look at our pricing: €9 for about a hundred minutes, no subscription, commercial use included.