There is no SAG-AFTRA rate, so start with which agreement covers you
The union does not have a rate. It has a portfolio of separately negotiated agreements, and the same performer can be paid under three of them in a month at three different minimums.
That is the thing every page answering this question gets wrong at the first step. Twelve of the pages we audited present a handful of numbers as though they were the SAG rate. Four present a single figure per job type.
Every figure below was read off the union’s own published rate sheets on 8 September 2026. Where a sheet publishes a percentage rather than a dollar figure, we say so.
New Media pays a percentage of another agreement. So its dollar value moved on 1 July 2026 without New Media being renegotiated at all, because the television rate underneath it went up.
Music video has no principal minimum. Not a low one. None. The word on the rate sheet at every tier is negotiable, which means the floor is whatever you agree to.
Audiobooks has no published scale whatsoever. If a page gives you a per finished hour rate for union audiobook work, ask where it came from, because the union has not published one.
Which contracts expire when, including the one that already has
We could find no list anywhere, on the union’s site or off it, showing when each agreement runs out. That absence matters, because an expired agreement is not a theoretical problem.
Start with the finding. The Television Animation and Basic Cable Animation Agreements expired on 30 June 2026, and as of today we can find no ratified successor. Animation voice performers are working under a contract that has run out.
We checked this against the union’s own animation page, which states the 2023 agreements run through 30 June 2026. Of twenty-five pages we audited, not one mentions it.
The rates do not vanish. In practice the old minimums keep being paid while a successor is negotiated, and any increase agreed later is usually backdated, as it was for video games.
What you lose is certainty and time. The video game agreement expired in November 2022 and was not replaced until July 2025, nearly three years, eleven months of which were a strike. Performers worked that whole period on rates set in 2020.
So the practical instruction is to know your agreement’s expiry date before you plan around its rate. An animation voice rate quoted today is a rate from a contract that ended in June, and it may be backdated upward later or it may not.
A rate period is not a contract term, and that one confusion causes most of the errors
Almost every wrong number we found traces back to a single mistake. Sites read the dates at the top of a rate sheet and print them as the life of the agreement.
Those are two different things. A rate period is the year a particular set of figures applies for. A contract term is the whole span the agreement covers, usually three or four years containing several rate periods.
The video game agreement shows it plainly. Its term runs from 8 November 2022 to 31 October 2028. Its current rate period is 1 November 2025 to 31 October 2026.
Seven of the pages we audited mention that agreement. Not one of them states the term correctly, and three print the rate period as though it were the term.
Every rate you publish or rely on should carry three things. The figure. The rate period it belongs to. The contract term it sits inside.
Collapse the last two and you get exactly the errors we catalogued. One page has the commercials contract expiring in 2027 when it expires in 2028. Another says a voiceover rate runs through October 2026, which is a rate period, not a contract.
If a page gives you a number and one date, you cannot tell which of the two it means. That is usually a sign nobody checked.
The second recurring error is more specific and more expensive. Four sites print $783.10 as the commercial session fee. It is not. It is the Class A first use fee, and the session fee is $855.20.
The reason that survives is nasty. The old session fee and the current first use fee happen to be the same number, so anybody checking finds $783.10 on the live rate sheet and concludes the page is fine. A producer budgeting from it underbooks by $72.10 a performer before benefits.
How to actually find the right rate sheet
This sounds like a small point and it is not. The difficulty of finding the correct current sheet is the reason so much of the internet is quoting old numbers in good faith.
The union maintains at least four separate entry points, and they do not agree with each other. The one that presents itself as the master index carries only six categories.
Those six leave out Corporate and Educational, Music Video, the Sound Recordings Code, the Network Television Code, audiobooks, and every low budget agreement. A performer booked on a corporate video finds nothing there at all.
Then there is the format. Every rate sheet is a PDF and there is no HTML table anywhere, so none of it is searchable in the page, none of it reads well on a phone, and the wide multi-year wage tables are close to unusable on one.
Superseded sheets stay live and stay indexed. At least three old versions of one agreement’s rate sheet are still online alongside the current one, with nothing on the page saying they are obsolete. Searching for a rate sheet will often land you on one.
The columns can be read in the wrong order. A multi-year wage table puts a base column next to four dated columns, and our own researcher misread the video game table twice before resolving it by checking the three per cent arithmetic against a second document.
That is very probably the single largest source of wrong SAG-AFTRA figures online. The numbers are right, the column they were taken from is not.
So the honest instruction is unglamorous. Establish your agreement’s exact name first, then page through the rate sheet database. If it is not there, use the production centre. If it is still not there, telephone the department, because for several agreements there is genuinely nothing published.
What it costs to get in, and the advice that is wrong
A rates page has to cover the price of access, because the minimums only apply to people who can take the work. Two of the numbers in general circulation are out of date and one piece of standard advice is contradicted by the union in writing.
You will read everywhere that you collect three background vouchers to become eligible. The union’s own steps to join page states that background vouchers are not acceptable as proof of work.
The standard is three days of covered background employment, and what SAG-AFTRA accepts as evidence is a pay stub, the original performer contract, or a payroll printout. Each has to carry the date, your name, the production title, the production company and the wages.
The voucher is how the day gets recorded on set. It is not what you hand the union. Four of the pages we checked, including two large ones, tell readers to collect vouchers.
Two more things worth stating precisely, because they are usually described vaguely.
Financial core is not a membership tier. It is resignation from membership, after which you are a fee paying non-member. You keep the right to work union jobs and you lose the right to vote, to hold office, to attend meetings, and to call yourself a member on a resume.
You also lose pension and health credit on any non-union work you then take, because it is not covered earnings. As of April 2022 there were 4,486 financial core non-members against 171,157 active members, which is under three per cent.
Global Rule One is stricter than most people describe. It bars a member from rendering services or making an agreement to perform services for a producer with no union agreement in force, anywhere in the world. Signing is the violation, and penalties run from reprimand through fines to expulsion.
Getting paid, and checking they are actually signatory
Two practical mechanics sit underneath every rate on this page. When the money is due, and how you confirm the production is covered before you turn up.
Payment deadlines differ by agreement. A commercial session is due within fifteen business days. Background work in the Los Angeles zone must be postmarked by the Thursday after the work week, and in New York within seventy-two hours of the end of the day.
Residuals are a different clock. Expect payment within sixty days of the union receiving the cheque and the producer’s paperwork, which is why residuals feel slow even when nothing is wrong.
The general damages figure the union publishes is $3.85 per business day up to twenty-five days, capped at $96.30. Background late fees rose in the 2026 negotiation from three dollars a day to five, with the cap going from $75 to $125.
Here is the part that costs people money. Those damages are not usually added to your cheque unless the union has already filed a claim. You have to contact them and open one.
That is the same pattern as unclaimed audition payments on the commercials contract. The entitlement exists, the enforcement is yours to start.
Before any of that, there is the signatory question. A signatory is a company that has executed a specific agreement for a specific production, so status attaches to the project rather than to the company forever.
The union runs a searchable database, and it has three limits nobody else lists. Video games are deliberately excluded from it for confidentiality reasons, so a game performer cannot self-verify and has to telephone.
Commercials appear only if they were reported, so absence proves nothing. And a project marked Pending is not cleared for work, which is the one people misread. Pending means the producer is talking to the union, not that you are covered.
Twenty-five pages, and the square nobody is standing in
We opened every page ranking for this question and for the obvious variants, then checked each figure against the union’s own sheets. The pattern is unusually clean.
Two whole agreements went entirely unmentioned across all twenty-five pages. The Sound Recordings Code, which expires in under four months, and the Network Television Code. Dubbing and podcasts also appear nowhere.
Grading the sources
This page publishes figures from a dozen separate contracts, dates them, and says one of them has expired. So it owes you the method on each.
Where we differ from the standard account
What is the SAG-AFTRA rate?
Commonly saidA handful of film and television figures, presented as though they applied across the union.
What we foundTwenty-six separate agreements with separate cycles. The same performer can be paid under three of them in a month.
Are these rates current?
Commonly saidPresented as current on pages dated this year, several of which carry recent update stamps over old content.
What we foundSix of twenty-five are current on film and television. Two cover the portfolio and both are stale. Nobody is both.
When does the contract expire?
Commonly saidThe dates at the top of the rate sheet, quoted as the life of the agreement.
What we foundThose are the rate period. Seven pages name the video game agreement and none states its actual term.
What does animation pay?
Commonly saidThree pages give a figure, all of them one increase behind the last published rate.
What we foundThe agreement expired on 30 June 2026 and no successor has been ratified. No page in this search says so.
How do I become eligible to join?
Commonly saidCollect three background vouchers, stated as a route on several large sites.
What we foundThe union states that vouchers are not acceptable as proof. It wants pay stubs, contracts or payroll printouts.
What does it cost to join?
Commonly saidThree thousand dollars, on every page we checked, sourced from a form last revised in 2018.
What we found$3,121 on the union’s current page, plus $246.14 base dues and 1.575 per cent of covered earnings.
What is financial core?
Commonly saidA membership tier where you pay reduced fees, usually described as legal but frowned upon.
What we foundIt is resignation from membership. Under three per cent of the union has taken it, and the saving is not published.
How do I find the actual rate sheet?
Commonly saidNever addressed, on any page in this search, in either direction.
What we foundFour partial indexes that disagree, opaque contract numbers, and superseded PDFs still live and indexed.
So the first question is never what SAG-AFTRA pays. It is which agreement you are working under, what rate period that agreement is currently in, and when the whole contract runs out. Get those three and the number is easy to find and easy to check. Get them muddled, which is what almost every page on this subject has done, and you will quote a figure from a contract that ended, in perfect good faith, with the union’s own website agreeing with you.