Voiceover Casting Websites
My real world experience of Pay To Play sites
This article is written from the point of view of voiceover talent, though if you are a buyer looking to cast it will also tell you a few useful things. Alternatively, if you happen to be looking for a professional British male voiceover, you could always just (incredibly obvious bid for work klaxon) get in touch with me directly here!
Casting sites for voiceover have come to be known as Pay To Play sites, although the reality is that they really fall into two fairly distinct camps; the original form that requires you to pay a subscription to get access to published jobs, and one where the voiceover artists are simply given a profile on the site and prospective clients can contact either the site owner or the voice artist directly with a project offer. This latter type actually blurs into the many agent-style websites out there, which also present a “roster” of voice talent and also make their money by taking a percentage of any job fee earned, the key difference being that agent sites do not just allow anyone to join – the selection of voiceovers is curated.
So, these are sites that pretty much anyone in possession of a microphone and a working set of tonsils can join. A few have a quality threshold that is based on basic voicing competence and adequate audio fidelity, but that’s about it. They represent the modern way of getting started in the business of voiceover, when you don’t have an agent or any clients, or indeed probably much knowledge of how to get clients. While they are useful in this context, and also to an extent have a democratising effect on access to the business, they have undergone a process of evolution since changing the landscape on their arrival some 20 years or so ago.
Initially the jobs available offered quite competitive fee rates, but due to the combination of an apparently inexhaustible supply of new talent who didn’t know what a particular job was worth, and the bidding process involved in deciding the final fee, prices were driven down. The other thing that happened was that more and more voiceover casting websites were created, this competition meaning that a subscription to a single site no longer guaranteed access to such a large supply and variety of potential jobs. Kind of what’s happening to the video streaming sites in 2024 – to get at all the content you might want you now need to subscribe to a whole bunch of services, not just Netflix.
The consequence of all this is that, except in rare individual circumstances that provide fodder for a canny voiceover artist to plant a splashy article in the tabloid press about how many millions they’ve made by switching to voiceover from their previous career as a plasterer, Pay To Play no longer offers a substantial basis for a career. These days it represents less than 10 percent of my annual business. It is however still pretty useful to get on the ladder and start to learn your craft, so here’s a rundown of my experience of the sites I’ve used (or tried to use) over the last few years. It’s not comprehensive of course – many have bitten the dust (so I’ve naturally excluded those) and others may have looked too flaky on the face of it and hence I didn’t even bother to sign up.
One last thing to bear in mind about about the reason for all this, which is booking rates, and I see this all the time; one voiceover talent’s experience on a particular voiceover casting website cannot be regarded as conclusive, since as many people may report acquiring a decent amount of work via a specific site as conclude after a year that they will NEVER get a booking there. It may be luck, it may be the voice niche or language that a particular person fits into, it may be that they’re just not very good at voiceovering, who knows. So, keep the salt shaker handy. Here we go.
Bodalgo
Charges: a single annual fee, no commission taken from any job earnings
Job access: every posted job that matches your spoken language/dialect
Quality threshold: yes, you can only be on the site once your audio has been vetted and approved
Number of voice artists: around 12,000
Typical competition for an individual job: 100-200
Typical job types: corporates, commercials, e-learning, audio guides
Jobs on Bodalgo, which is German in origin, are presented with a budget range, and although you don’t have to bid within this range, the figures are system generated, so I believe this in turn generates an expectation in the client that this is about where offers should land. Generally two or three jobs appear each day for my particular voice language (English, in case you hadn’t guessed), although as this is a European site, many of the requests are for a neutral English accent – here, they often mean a non-specific country accent i.e. not my native British accent, but an impossible to place Europeany or possibly Transatlantic accent. So if you can only sound British (or American) then you won’t win many of those. Job fees are generally ok though, and four figure sums do occasionally appear. Don’t worry too much about the huge number of auditions that get submitted for every job, as the clients here are more conscientious than most and the percentage that get listened to is extremely healthy. I continue to subscribe here as I always more than make my subscription fee back.
Casting Call Club
Charges: free, with tiered paid monthly subscriptions for various features
Job access: every posted job that matches your search filters
Quality threshold: none that I noticed
Number of voice artists: 170,000
Typical competition for an individual job: 50-300
Typical job types: exclusively animation and gaming
We have entered the terrain of the (shudder) unpaid job. There are paid ones too, though there are a frightening amount of unpaid. If you are thinking of doing unpaid work, at least do it for a charity or similar worthwhile cause, not just “for the experience/exposure”. If somebody can’t afford anything other than an unpaid worker they can do what I and my friends do, ask each other, not a random stranger who they are then effectively exploiting. Rant rant rant. Right, where was I? Yes, this place is free up to a point, but you won’t get notifications when new jobs come in unless you pay at least the basic tier, so that will require you to visit the website every day to check through the job board. My experience has been that most jobs, while not requiring a lengthy read, are priced extremely low, average $20 for an animation role. Consequently that has not inspired me to so much as bother to audition.
CastVoices
Charges: free, with tiered paid monthly subscriptions for various features
Job access: every posted job
Quality threshold: none that I noticed
Number of voice artists: unknown
Typical competition for an individual job: 50-100, limit set by client
Typical job types: gaming, corporates
Set up by a well known US voice agent, this relative newcomer to the ranks of voiceover casting websites allows you to get job notifications and submit for them on the free tier. There is not much filtering going on here though – it’s a very US-centric site, and as a Brit who doesn’t advertise doing an American accent, I have largely received audition opportunities for US accented jobs. The job volume is pretty low, maybe one or two a month. But the fees offered are reasonable, and it’s free, so hard to complain. I have never booked a job here, but that is not that surprising given the very low volume of jobs.
Fiverr
Charges: free to use, platform takes 20% of booked work fees
Job access: no postings, clients contact voice talent directly
Quality threshold: audio vetted for access to Pro, evidence of prior work required
Number of voice artists: a few hundred on Pro, about 10,000 on all of Fiverr
Typical competition for an individual job: none visible
Typical job types: corporates, commercials
This is one of those voiceover casting websites that gets some voiceovers all riled up. Why would you be on a site that wants you to work for $5?! They’re ruining the industry! Well, the good news is that you don’t have to work for $5. You can in fact set whatever price you want for your services on here, which have to be published as what they refer to as “gigs” (it’s a gig economy, geddit?). Yes there are thousands of people pushing their services (not just voiceover, anything that can be provided remotely over the internet) for $10 or $20, but these days Fiverr has a quality checked Pro tier with an enforced minimum price of $100, and that’s before you start adding in those extras like word count limits that push the price up. There is a switch for buyers to use if they only want to see Pro users. You do have to advertise your costs upfront before anyone will hire you, so you need to look competitive compared to other voices on the platform. While there is no effort required in terms of auditioning for job cattle calls, you will have to deal with some timewasting enquiries from buyers who don’t read your specs and costs and then become outraged that you refuse to read a worldwide commercial for $100. And you need to deal with them because Fiverr will penalise you for tardy replies to enquiries. But if you can cope with sometimes patiently explaining to buyers how the entire platform works then you’ll get some work here.
Mandy
Charges: monthly or annual subscription to apply for posted jobs
Job access: every posted job
Quality threshold: none
Number of voice artists: 16000 on UK version of site
Typical competition for an individual job: no limit
Typical job types: gaming, corporates, commercials
I used this site back in the day when it was called Voices Pro and picked up the odd piece of work. Then it became Mandy and became impossible to book from as the quantity of posted jobs declined. My latest examination of the UK version of the site shows at best a couple of jobs per month that might apply to your specific voice. There are also a number of what they euphemistically term “opportunities”, which is another way of saying “unpaid work”. Fees offered on here are not utterly dire, but nor are they often entirely commensurate with the going rate for what is being requested. I’d say that the current subscription cost of £17 per month seems rather steep given the paucity of work offered. There are better voiceover casting websites out there.
Spotlight
Charges: annual subscription gets you an actorly profile that voice agents are still wedded to the idea of, as well as access to their jobs board
Job access: every posted job
Quality threshold: must provide evidence of acting jobs worked
Number of voice artists: not clear, they boast of 90,000 performers in total who are mostly visual actors primarily
Typical competition for an individual job: no limit
Typical job types: audiobooks, gaming
Spotlight started life as a venerable printed actors’ directory for the UK, and is really now just an online version of the same thing. It has always been primarily aimed at stage and screen actors, not voice, so the voiceover jobs found here are not particularly numerous nor of amazing quality. While this is UK focussed there may well be better opportunites here for non-UK voices as this seems to be a place casting directors turn to for difficult to fill niche jobs where they need someone who speaks Urdu or has a Bahamian accent. I subscribed for a year and found only one job I wanted to apply for. Not a brilliant hit rate and expensive for what you get.
StarNow
Charges: monthly or annual subscription to apply for posted jobs
Job access: every posted job
Quality threshold: none
Number of voice artists: 22,000
Typical competition for an individual job: no limit
Typical job types: commercials, short films
Hey! Do you wanna be a star? Feature in a TV reality show or be a dancer in short film? Then have I got a site for you! Payment may well be optional though, hope that’s ok! Owned now by the same company that has voiceover casting websites Backstage and Mandy, and consequently similarly light on paid voiceover jobs, this site doesn’t seem to have changed much since I tried it out some years ago – there is the odd voice job with a pretty OK pay rate, but if more than one of these appears every couple of months or so then I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. Almost everything that applies to Mandy applies to this site also, except that the unpaid jobs outweigh the paid by a factor of four. Not a priority hit amongst voiceover casting websites.
The Voice Finder
Charges: monthly or annual subscription
Job access: all posted jobs, or clients can contact you directly
Quality threshold: none
Number of voice artists: 400
Typical competition for an individual job: unknown
Typical job types: impossible to tell but my limited experience says in-store announcements, IVR and radio
The Voice Finder is one of those voiceover casting websites that mainly exists as a listing of talent with the means to contact them directly, although it also has a jobs board. This board currently just has a single job on it so I’d venture to suggest that this isn’t its main focus. I tried it out a couple of times and was offered a couple of very small jobs directly by the site owner early on, and then nothing came my way at all.
Voice123
Charges: annual subscription tiers
Job access: invitations selected by the platform according to how much you pay and your ratings on the site, direct client invitations also
Quality threshold: none
Number of voice artists: hard to tell, thousands though
Typical competition for an individual job: 15-50, specified by client
Typical job types: corporates, commercials, documentary, gaming, animation, e-learning
One of the big ones. The more you pay, the higher up the list you go in terms of who gets offered jobs first, as they usually release invitations in batches, until all available audition slots are filled. The top tier costs thousands of dollars, and is really only worth bothering with if you are a North American voice, since those represent the majority of postings. Some jobs specify a budget while many others just invite offers, which means, yes you guessed, a bidding war. I’ve gained some insight into what other voices bid on Voice123 for such jobs, and there are some pretty wild variations – while not in the bargain basement of sub-$150, people will bid $200 for a job that is worth ten times that. The best you can do is stick to your rates and hope that quality will be the most significant selection criterion, which it often can be. As a British voice I’ve had consistently good results on this platform that always more than pay back the subscription cost and generate repeat clients that can last for years.
Voice Crafters
Charges: free to join, 10% fee taken by the site off any job earnings
Job access: direct client invitations only
Quality threshold: audio quality vetted and 5 years of professional experience
Number of voice artists: hard to tell, probably a few thousand
Typical competition for an individual job: 1-25, specified by client
Typical job types: corporates, commercials, e-learning
My job invitation record on this site has been anywhere from one to five per month, so the resultant booking rate is not high. You also have to compete with whoever else the client has invited to audition. On the other hand it costs nothing to just be there, the commission taken on jobs is very reasonable, and they adhere to GVAA rates when showing the budget range for jobs which means that the amounts paid are good rates. In other words, a site with a conscience, which is distinctly refreshing.
Voice Fairy
Charges: free to join, 30% fee taken by the site off any job earnings
Job access: direct client invitations only
Quality threshold: all uploaded audio is vetted
Number of voice artists: 130
Typical competition for an individual job: none
Typical job types: corporates
Another voiceover casting website that costs nothing to be on (unless you opt for a paid premium highlighted listing – I tried this out for a while but it didn’t result in any new work) and relies on clients selecting and inviting you, with the key difference being that you won’t have to audition, an invitation is an invitation to just do the work. You also get to set your own rates of pay at a very granular level. I’ve only had the very occasional piece of voice work from here, averaging less than one a year.
Voicefinder.io
Charges: free to join, 30% fee taken by the site off any job earnings
Job access: direct client invitations only
Quality threshold: audio is vetted
Number of voice artists: impossible to tell as not all are listed
Typical competition for an individual job: unknown
Typical job types: corporates
Being primarily a Spanish language site that doesn’t always bring up the English language version of a page it is quite difficult to navigate and tell what’s going on here, and I have never received a booking despite having been on it for a few years. An invitation comes through every month or two.
Voiceover.biz
Charges: requires membership of World Voices trade body to access
Job access: direct client invitations only
Quality threshold: audio quality is vetted
Number of voice artists: 200
Typical competition for an individual job: none
Typical job types: nothing specific
This casting website is for members of the World Voices Organization only, for which you have to be a professional working voiceover and pay an annual subscription. It is purely a list of talent profiles with contact information. To my knowledge, at least one client has hired me through discovering me here.
Voice Realm
Charges: annual subscription
Job access: direct client invitations only
Quality threshold: audio is vetted
Number of voice artists: around 1000
Typical competition for an individual job: none
Typical job types: corporates, commercials, e-learning
Probably the most notorious voiceover casting website out there, and not in a positive way. The tales are legion of the strange and sometimes abusive behaviour of whoever the shadowy anonymous figures are who run this. Pay rates are set by a calculator on the platform, and while this ensures transparency they are on the lowish side unless it is high word count work. If you are selected for a job you are expected to complete it within a minimum of 24 hours, no excuses. I think the biggest problem with this site is that you don’t have a choice about accepting the work – if you are on there, you have to take whatever is offered to you, and while that may be fine for a £200 explainer video, it’s not so great if the job is a year long national TV campaign that offers less than £1000.
Voices.com
Charges: annual subscription and 20% fee taken by the site off any job earnings
Job access: platform selected and direct client invitations
Quality threshold: no
Number of voice artists: 10,000
Typical competition for an individual job: no limit, can be as high as 100
Typical job types: commercials, corporates, gaming. e-learning, audio guides
Probably the original pioneer of voiceover casting websites, Voices.com are famous for “double dipping”, which means that they charge an annual subscription, and then take 20% of your earnings too. It used to be triple dipping since it wasn’t uncommon for them to also charge the client for the service of sifting through the auditions and coming up with a shortlist, and then fail to disclose to anyone how much they had taken from the budget before advertising the job on their own platform. Quite audacious stuff. They also claim to have 4 MILLION voices on the site, but a cursory talent search will demonstrate this is patently untrue. Anyway, you’ll get at least three or four jobs popping up each day, with budget ranges that are in a decent area. My booking rate years ago was ok, but I tried the site again in 2023 as there was a special offer on the subscription fee and I booked just one job in an entire year, despite auditioning almost every day.
Voices UK
Charges: one-off fee to join
Job access: no barriers to job board
Quality threshold: audio is vetted
Number of voice artists: 500
Typical competition for an individual job: unknown
Typical job types: corporates, e-learning
Voices UK takes a straightforward approach where you are listed on the site and can apply for any suitable job that is listed. Sometimes the client will mention their budget, sometimes not, but you are free to try to charge whatever you want. There is not a huge amount of work passing through this site, probably somewhere around a couple of jobs a month, and this is reflected in the booking rate. I have acquired work via this site over the years though and it’s a thoroughly reasonable deal. There is also a US version of this site called, wait for it, Voices US.
VO Planet – the ethical guardian of voiceover casting websites
Charges: annual subscription
Job access: platform and direct client invitations
Quality threshold: audio quality is vetted
Number of voice artists: 800
Typical competition for an individual job: unknown
Typical job types: audiobooks, gaming, corporates
A North American focus distinguishes this voiceover casting website, so if you have any other accent you’ll see very few job invitations. Overall the site seems to generate a good 30 jobs every month, and the ethical standard is high – GVAA rates are quoted, and you are actually forbidden from bidding under this, though you are free to quote over. I have to confess I’ve never booked anything here.
Voquent – the black box of voiceover casting websites
Charges: free to join
Job access: platform owners let you know if they have a job for you
Quality threshold: audio quality is vetted
Number of voice artists: Thousands
Typical competition for an individual job: unknown
Typical job types: unknown
It’s a bit of a black box, Voquent. They like you to uploads lots of individual audio samples with specific characteristics rather than compilation demos, and clients can then search quite granularly for types and styles of read. But the client then has to ask Voquent for a quote and there is no way of knowing, short of being a client yourself, what is being quoted. All you will know is what job offer you get, which will have a budget attached. My offers from this site have not been numerous, but then it is an extremely crowded place and even if you follow their rules for better visibility on the site it is still difficult to get into the first page of results of a given search. Rates offered for corporate video are fine but not amazing.
Conclusion: summary of voiceover casting websites
They all work a little differently don’t they? Voiceover casting websites are not all the same, and while one voice artist’s results on a given platform may be vastly different to another’s, there is only one way to find out what works for you, and that’s to give them a try. Good luck out there.