Subtitling is the most economical way to localise a video — but the price still moves with the language, the format and the turnaround. Here's what subtitling costs per minute, with real starting rates and the factors that drive the figure, so you can budget before you brief.
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Subtitling keeps the original audio and adds text, which makes it the cheapest of the three localisation methods. It's priced per minute of video, and the two things that move the figure most are the language and the type of subtitle. Here's what to expect.
What subtitling costs per minute
Translated subtitles — spotting (timing) plus native translation — are priced per minute of video, banded by language group:
- French (EU), German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish — from £15 per minute.
- Eastern European, Dutch, Greek, Turkish — from £18 per minute.
- Asian, Arabic, French (CA), Hebrew, Scandinavian — from £20 per minute.
There's a minimum fee per file from £150 (up to £225 for the higher-rate languages), so short clips are priced to that floor. See the full subtitling rates for the per-language breakdown.
Captions, SDH and burn-in
The format changes the price too:
- Same-language captions — transcribe, time and format the original language; a little cheaper than translated subtitles.
- SDH (deaf / hard-of-hearing) — adds sound and speaker cues, about £2 extra per minute.
- Burn-in (open captions) — subtitles baked permanently into the video, from about £5 per minute or a flat per-file fee for bulk.
Not sure which you need? The subtitles vs captions vs SDH guide explains the difference, and how to add subtitles to a video walks through the process.
What else moves the price
- Runtime — subtitling scales per minute of video.
- Number of languages — each one repeats translation and QC.
- Transcription — if there's no script, the video is transcribed first.
- Turnaround — rush deadlines add to the base rate.
Get an exact figure
The fastest way to a real number is to send us the video. Explore our subtitling services, see how subtitling compares with voice over and dubbing in how much does video localisation cost?, or send us your video for an itemised, no-obligation quote — usually the same working day, backed by our Price Match Promise.