A Casting Website Puts SAG-AFTRA Voice Over Rates Into One Free Calculator
Union voice over rates are public, but they’re spread across a dozen PDF rate sheets written for payroll departments. The Voice Realm has now put the voice over lines from those sheets into one free calculator: pick the job, answer two or three questions, and it adds up the SAG-AFTRA minimum line by line, with the producer’s pension and health contribution shown on top.
The page went live on September 30 in The Voice Realm’s Talent Resources section. Every figure below comes from SAG-AFTRA’s published rate sheets, and the calculator links the sheet under each result.
What the calculator does
It covers eight kinds of voice job: radio and audio commercials, TV and video commercials, video games, corporate and e-learning narration (phone systems included), dubbing, promos and trailers, TV animation and audiobooks. Each one asks only what that contract needs. A radio spot asks where it will be heard and for how long. A TV spot asks which media, ticked like a shopping list. A game session asks for one hour or a four hour day, and how many voices.
The answer comes back as an itemised receipt: session fee, use fee, any credit of one against the other, and the pension and health payment. There’s no sign-up and no email address. Results can be shared as a link that opens on the same numbers.
The page’s own introduction sums up why it exists: “Union rate sheets are written for payroll departments, not for people.”
One read, seven prices
The most useful thing on the page isn’t the calculator. It’s a single comparison: the same voice, the same 30 second read, 13 weeks of use, priced seven ways. Only the place the spot runs changes.
Those are minimums before pension and health, agent commission and tax. National cable pays more than three and a half times what the same read earns as online audio, because far more people hear it. That’s the logic of usage, and it’s the same logic behind any non-union quote: start with where the recording will be heard.
How a union fee is built
Almost every union voice job has the same three parts. The session fee pays for the recording itself. The use fee pays for where the recording runs and for how long; commercials buy it in cycles of 4 weeks, 13 weeks or a year. The pension and health contribution, P&H, is paid by the producer to the union plans on top of the fee and never comes out of the actor’s pay. On the commercials contracts it’s 23.5 percent.
Two rules catch people out, and the calculator applies both. On many commercial uses the session fee is credited against the first cycle’s use fee, so the actor gets the bigger of the two rather than both. And on the TV contract the session can’t be credited against online-only use unless TV or streaming use is bought too, which is why the online video line in the list above carries a separate session.
Dates that change the numbers
Union rates aren’t fixed for long, and several of these move soon. The page shows the next video game rates alongside today’s, and says it will update the rest as new sheets come out.
- Oct 31, 2026Video games: P&H rises from 17 to 17.5 percent
- Nov 1, 2026Video games: one hour, one voice goes from $567.62 to $584.65
- Apr 1, 2027Radio and TV commercials: Year 3 rates begin
- Jul 1, 2027Dubbing and trailers: the next rate period starts
- Jul 4, 2027Network TV promos: $276 rises to $282 an announcement
TV animation is the gap. The agreement behind the last published animation rates expired on June 30, 2026. SAG-AFTRA and the studios reached a tentative deal on September 17, but the new rates haven’t been published yet, so the page shows the last official figures and says so.
What it can’t tell you
Audiobooks don’t have one union rate. SAG-AFTRA has more than 90 separate agreements with publishers and producers, each with its own minimum per finished hour, and the page tells narrators to check the rate for a particular publisher with the union’s audiobook staff rather than trust a single figure.
VoiceEditSuiteTrim it, clean it, deliver it. One pass.It also only covers minimums, called scale. Plenty of union work pays more, and nothing stops a performer asking for more. Group rates, singers and on-camera work stay on the official sheets, which the page links under each contract.
The calculator is free at The Voice Realm’s SAG-AFTRA voice over rates page.
Voice Over Herald and The Voice Realm share an owner.
Sources: The Voice Realm, SAG-AFTRA voice over rates; SAG-AFTRA rate sheets for the Audio Commercials Contract, the Commercials Contract, the Interactive Media Agreement, Corporate/Educational and Non-Broadcast, Modified Dubbing and promos; SAG-AFTRA, tentative animation agreement; SAG-AFTRA, audiobooks. Images: The Voice Realm.
Lee este artículo en español: Un sitio de casting reúne las tarifas de locución de SAG-AFTRA en una calculadora gratuita
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