Interactive calculator

What will voicing your course cost?

Four ways to voice a course, priced for one year and for three years. Sources read on 30 September 2026; each one is listed under "How the calculator counts".

Minutes of finished narration (one language)

About 150 spoken words make one minute.

Languages, including the first

Translation is not counted: it costs the same whichever voice reads it.

Updates a year

Each time the script changes: a new rule, a new product, a correction.

How much of the script changes in an update

10%

Kukarella charges each changed paragraph again in full, so count every paragraph you touch.

What must your learners hear? My own voice, and they know me (my class, my team) My own voice, but they have never met me (a course sold online) A native speaker of each language Any clear voice A performance that moves people (a story, an ad, a character)

AI voices save money, not all of your time. Listen to every minute once and fix names and terms. Only the paragraphs you changed are charged again. The calculator does not count the time to regenerate lines that came out wrong.

Kukarella prices

How the calculator counts

900 characters per finished minute. Our assumption: 150 words a minute, the pace Voice123 prices by (page updated 2 June 2026, https://voice123.com/pages/voice-over-rates-calculator/), times about 6 characters a word, including the space.
480 characters per paragraph (about 80 words). Our assumption, used to round an update up to whole paragraphs.
Narrator: 25 to 55 US dollars per finished minute. GVAA Rate Guide, 2024 edition, e-learning: $1,500-3,300 per finished hour and $30-55 per finished minute; it calls $35 "an average rate". Archived 17 September 2024: https://web.archive.org/web/20240917030419/https://globalvoiceacademy.com/gvaa-rate-guide-2/
Smallest budget for a narration job, by length (low / high, US dollars): up to 1 minute 50 / 200; up to 5 minutes 200 / 350; up to 15 minutes 350 / 500; up to 30 minutes 500 / 750; up to 45 minutes 750 / 1000; up to 60 minutes 1000 / 1250; over 60 minutes, no floor. Voice123 reference budget, non-union, non-broadcast, "based on actual figures quoted by voice actors on the platform", updated 2 June 2026: https://voice123.com/pages/voice-over-rates-calculator/
Smallest charge for a change after delivery: 150 US dollars (GVAA Rate Guide, 2024 edition, minor pickups under 15 minutes: "$150 minimum or 50% of original rate") to 359.55 US dollars (SAG-AFTRA Corporate/Educational contract 2025-28: $299 for a partial-script retake within 60 days, 30-minute session, plus 20.25% health and retirement; rate sheet updated 1 November 2025, copy hosted by ART Payroll: https://www.artpayroll.com/ARTPDFs/2025_CO-ED_Non-Broadcast_Rate_Sheet.PDF).
Waiting for a narrator: 1 to 6 days per booking. Voices.com: "an average of 24 hours" (its own figure, archived 27 July 2026: https://web.archive.org/web/20260727234006/https://www.voices.com/client/how-it-works). Fiverr: voice-over jobs take "an average of 6 days" (archived 22 November 2025: https://web.archive.org/web/20251122075106/https://www.fiverr.com/hire/voice-over).
Checking a narrator's files: 1.2 minutes per finished minute. ACX, Audible's audiobook marketplace: "about 1.2 hours to review each hour of finished audio" (page dated 19 August 2025: https://help.acx.com/s/article/producing-and-recording-your-audiobook). Written for audiobooks.
Your working time: 3.5 minutes per finished minute to record it yourself, 2.25 with an AI voice. A randomised trial at Lyon's medical school measured 35 and 22.5 minutes of active work per 10-minute lecture video, from slides without audio to the finished video (JMIR Medical Education, 2 July 2026: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC13376843/).
Recording a sample for your clone: 5 minutes of your time, once. Kukarella's Clone-a-Voice accepts up to 5 minutes of audio; we recommend at least 15 seconds, and longer is better (https://www.kukarella.com/clone-a-voice, 30 September 2026).
Kukarella Prime: 21 US dollars a month, 300,000 credits a month, 1 cloned voice included. An extra cloned voice: 5 US dollars. Extra credits: 7 US dollars per 100,000. Kukarella pricing page, 30 September 2026: https://www.kukarella.com/pricing
A library voice uses 1 credit per character. 1,000 credits are worth 0.07 US dollars (21 / 300,000): about 6 cents per finished minute. Kukarella home page FAQ, 30 September 2026: https://www.kukarella.com/
After an edit, only the paragraphs you changed are charged again, each paragraph in full (how Kukarella charges, 30 September 2026). Making the same text again with the same voice is free (Kukarella home page FAQ, 30 September 2026: https://www.kukarella.com/).
Speech in a cloned voice is paid in credits; see the Pricing page (https://www.kukarella.com/pricing). For your clone, the calculator counts the Prime months as for a library voice.
Kukarella's own timings, September 2026: generating a 20-minute module usually takes 1 to 3 minutes, depending on the voice and the length. Making a clone takes under a minute from a recording, and about 30 seconds from a text description.
Why the recommendation says what it says: people who know a speaker picked out that speaker's clone well above chance, and strangers could not (UCL, 2025: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/10206954/1/1-s2.0-S2949882125000271-main.pdf). Listeners labelled 58-70% of clone clips "human", against 62-72% of real recordings (PLOS One, 24 September 2025: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0332692).
Not counted: translation, equipment, writing a brief, the time to regenerate lines that came out wrong, taxes. Generation time is shown as waiting, not as your working time. All prices in US dollars.