PRICE STUDY

How Much Does Dubbing Cost in 2026?

FAMILIAR RESEARCHUPDATED ALL ARTICLES
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ABSTRACT

Full human dubbing, translation plus voice, costs $70 to $150 per finished minute (rates verified August 5, 2026), so it isn't usable for most of the world: even top productions dub only a few languages because of the cost, the people and the time, and smaller productions, shows and vertical dramas don't dub at all. ElevenLabs quoted $3 at checkout, audio only. One Familiar render, by Studio contract, includes the translation, the speaker's own voice, the scene audio, and the lip-sync, delivered up to 4K with a true 5.1 or stereo mix. On the words alone, the translation matches the first-pass expert professional: 100.3% of their quality.

How much does dubbing cost per finished minute?

Anywhere from $2 to $150 per finished minute, depending on what the word covers.

$70–150

per finished minute for full human dubbing, translation plus voice.

$3

ElevenLabs Dubbing, per dubbed minute per target language. Audio only.

CHECKOUT QUOTE · AUGUST 5, 2026
FIG. 01 · PRICE PER FINISHED MINUTE, PER LANGUAGE · AUGUST 5, 2026 · RANGES AT MIDPOINT
ElevenLabs$3.00 audio
Script only$10
Voice package$39–94
Full human dub$70–150
Studio$128+
WHAT EACH PRICE COVERS · PUBLISHED RATES ACCESSED AUGUST 5, 2026
OptionPer finished minuteWhat the price covers
FamiliarBy Studio contractOne render: the translation, the speaker's own voice, the scene audio, and the lip-sync, delivered up to 4K with a true 5.1 or stereo mix
ElevenLabs Dubbing$3.00 (checkout quote, August 5, 2026)Audio only
HeyGen$2.00–3.33 (roughly $120–200 per hour of content)Avatar-led video plans
Full human dubbing$70–150The translator's per-word bill plus the voice package
Human dubbing packages$39–94 (about $60 at the midpoint)Voice actors, direction, and a finished mix
Premium studio dubbingFrom $128Frame-accurate studio dubbing for broadcast delivery
Professional translation, timing, and QC only$10 median / $11.95 meanScript-grade text, no voice

Translation quality, measured against professionals

100.3%

of the first-pass expert professional's quality, averaged across four languages, scored blind against expert reference edits (August 2026).

FRENCH, CHINESE, HINDI, INDONESIAN (FIRST PASS FOR EXPERT PROFESSIONAL TRANSLATORS)
That first pass at published professional rates: $0.15–0.30 per word, text only.
PER-WORD TRANSLATION RATES ARE PUBLISHED MARKET RANGES.

What a 60-minute video actually costs

FIG. 02 · ONE 60-MINUTE VIDEO · ONE TARGET LANGUAGE · RANGES AT MIDPOINT
Script only$600–717
Voice package$2,340–5,640
Full human dub$4,200–9,000
Studio$7,680+

At $4,200 to $9,000 an hour per language, smaller productions, shows and vertical dramas don't dub at all.

Familiar is sold by Studio contract at release spec: up to 4K picture, a true 5.1 mix, every actor's own voice, lip-sync (pricing):

CONTRACT

Sized to your catalog

30-day money back on signed annual contracts.

MIX

True 5.1 surround or stereo

Your pick, in 24-bit PCM. Streamers require the dub to match the original mix: 5.1 in, 5.1 out.

VIDEO

Lip-sync included

Video renders include the lip-sync; audio-only dubbing for podcasts and voice tracks, per language.

SUBTITLES

.srt and .vtt

With every dub, cut to Netflix's Timed Text Style Guide: two lines, 42 characters a line, up to 17 a second.

At catalog scale: How Streaming Platforms Close the Local-Language Gap.

Part of what the price covers: every dub is processed on Familiar's own eight-figure cluster of NVIDIA B300 GPUs in Toronto, Canada, never on a public cloud or a third-party inference provider.
PRIVATE INFERENCE · TORONTO, CANADA

Why per-minute prices are not comparable

WHAT EACH COST LINE COVERS

TRANSLATION
WHAT IT COVERSScript-grade text: professional translation, timing, and QC, no voice.
VOICE
WHAT IT COVERSVoice actors, direction, and a finished mix.
LIP-SYNC
WHAT IT COVERSAudio only: no lip-sync; the on-screen speaker still mouths the original language. All-in: AI lip-sync and everything past it; the whole face performs the new language, and the scene audio survives.
DELIVERY
WHAT IT COVERSFrame-accurate studio dubbing for broadcast delivery.

Priced out: $3 for ElevenLabs audio plus $8 a minute for Sync.so, the best standalone lip-sync tool, is $11 a minute stitched.

Format by format: Video Translation: The Complete Guide.

FIG. 03 · OBSERVED WORKFLOW LIMITS · ELEVENLABS DUBBING · AUGUST 5, 2026
20

items per batch: a catalogue upload moves in waves.

30

concurrent requests at most.

<11 s

clips under 11 seconds are rejected.

Workflow limits cost labor: a 10-video catalogue into 10 languages is 100 requests, at least four waves of manual batching before dubbing starts. More in Best Alternatives to ElevenLabs for Dubbing. For several markets at once: Multi-Country Launches: Dubbing Every Market at Once.

The quality, measured on the same clips

FIG. 04 · DUBBING V1 STUDY · 418 PAIRED OUTPUTS · 11 LANGUAGES · AUGUST 5, 2026
+27.8%

higher speaker resemblance for Familiar (0.461 vs 0.360); all 11 languages favored Familiar.

48.8%

fewer review-flagged spoken-output mistakes from Familiar (132 vs 258).

FIG. 05 · NEWEST-PRODUCT STUDY · ELEVENLABS DUBBING V2 (ALPHA) · 111 PAIRED OUTPUTS · 3 LANGUAGES · AUGUST 5, 2026
270%

more background-sound error from ElevenLabs (11.92 vs 3.22 dB): the laughter, the music, the ambience.

54.7%

fewer important spoken translation errors from Familiar (29 vs 64).

Both studies are written up in Familiar vs ElevenLabs Dubbing: Two Paired Studies.
TWO COHORTS, REPORTED SEPARATELY: 418 PAIRS (DUBBING V1) AND 111 PAIRS (DUBBING V2 ALPHA).
ElevenLabsElevenLabsElevenLabsTHEIR DOCS, READ OCTOBER 30, 2026

Editing the translation means their old model.

On ElevenLabs' current Dubbing v2, in alpha, editing the translation and regenerating the audio through the API is for their Enterprise plans only. Their full editor, Dubbing Studio, is "only available via the v1 model" and "in maintenance mode", in their words. Dubbing v1 is the model our 418-pair study measured, and its output is mono.

+27.8%

FAMILIAR CLOSER TO THE REAL SPEAKER · ALL 11 LANGUAGES

261%

ELEVENLABS MORE BACKGROUND ERROR · THE MUSIC, THE AMBIENCE

+243.7%

FAMILIAR ON LAUGHTER AND REACTION SHAPE

ELEVENLABS DUBBING V1 · 418 PAIRED OUTPUTS · 11 LANGUAGES · AUGUST 5, 2026Read the study Their docs

The interpreter comparison, and why it is not one

$69.92

median hourly rate for interpreters; the hour is bought again every time.

AMERICAN TRANSLATORS ASSOCIATION COMPENSATION SURVEY
NO REUSABLE SCRIPTNO DUBBED VOICENO FINISHED MIXNO LIP-SYNCED VIDEO

REFERENCES

  1. [1]Netflix, Timed Text Style Guide: Subtitle Templates, read October 30, 2026
  2. [2]Familiar vs ElevenLabs benchmark: full results, intervals, and listening examples
  3. [3]AI vs Human Translation: Tested Against Professionals (the first-pass quality study)
  4. [4]Netflix Preferred Fulfillment Partner rate card (program conditions)
  5. [5]Voquent: dubbing cost guide
  6. [6]Gotham Lab: dubbing services and rates
  7. [7]ATA Compensation Survey, Sixth Edition (interpreter and translation rates)
  8. [8]ElevenLabs Dubbing documentation (pricing by source duration and language count)

Multimodal Translation

Familiar Labs builds generationally better dubbing with a Multimodal Localization Decision Model (MLDM), the first foundation model for multimodal translation: one model decides what to localize across text, audio and visual, and shows you the choices. Your voice and lips, carried into new languages. They're a team of 8 with PhDs, backed by Samsung, RedBird, Gold House. Our mission

See the full benchmark →Talk with the team