Speaker bureaus and speaking agencies in United Kingdom

JLA, and it's the clearest pricing anywhere in this directory. Every speaker profile carries a band: Band A is £50,000 to £100,000, Band B £25,000 to £50,000, Band C £10,000 to £25,000, Band D £5,000 to £10,000 and Band E under £5,000. The biggest names are marked price on application.

Gordon Poole also shows a guide fee group on each profile, with the caveat that it's indicative and can shift with travel, preparation and format.

Using JLA's published ladder as the reference, most working professional speakers sit in the £5,000 to £10,000 band. Established names with a book or a television profile move into £10,000 to £25,000.

Above that you're into former heads of state, household names and global thought leaders, where £50,000 to £100,000 is the stated range and the very top is quoted on request.

More of them take applications than you'd expect. JLA, Chartwell and London Speaker Bureau each run an open become-a-speaker page. Champions and NMP Live both have a join-our-roster route.

The older bureaus mostly don't. CSA, Gordon Poole, Kruger Cowne and Speakers Corner have no public application form and expect you to make contact directly.

Usually yes. Most UK bureaus work non-exclusively and expect their speakers to appear elsewhere, which is why the same faces show up across several sites.

Kruger Cowne is the one to read carefully. It describes itself as a talent management agency as well as a bureau, and management is a different commitment from a listing.

It's British-branded but operated by SpeakIn, an aggregator you contact on a Singapore number. The roster is global: 18,000 speakers across 47 countries.

It's a real service and the profile is free. Just know that it isn't a London bureau, and that SpeakIn runs the same playbook in other markets, including the Australian Speakers Bureau.

Nearly. JLA, Speakers Corner, Champions, Chartwell, Kruger Cowne, London Speaker Bureau, NMP Live, Speaker Agency and London Keynote Speakers Agency all operate from the capital.

The exceptions: CSA's head office is in Burnham, Buckinghamshire, with a second office in London. Gordon Poole works from Brockley near Bristol. The Professional Speaking Association is based in Eastbourne.

The PSA is the trade body for the UK and Ireland, not a booking agency. Its Find a Speaker directory carries Professional Members and Fellows only, and runs on eSpeakers, the same platform behind several bureau directories.

Members administer their own profiles, and the PSA office says plainly that it won't make introductions or referrals. Bookers contact speakers directly. Beyond the listing there are regional meetings, awards, speaking competitions and the annual Speaking Business Summit.

A bureau represents a lot of speakers non-exclusively and sells them to event organisers. Its roster can run into the thousands. JLA lists over 12,000 people and Speakers Corner 12,000 across 50 countries.

A talent agency manages a smaller group and usually represents them across everything they do, not just speaking. Kruger Cowne works this way, and Gordon Poole exclusively represents part of its list while booking more widely.

Routinely. London Speaker Bureau describes itself as the largest international network for corporations and governments. Chartwell has offices in the United States and Asia. Champions works through hubs in Dubai, Beijing and New York.

Speakers Corner's roster covers more than 50 countries. Booking a speaker for an event outside the UK through a London bureau is normal, not an exception.

Six to twelve months for a conference keynote, and longer for anyone with a television profile or a current book. Awards season and the autumn conference run are the tightest periods.

Short notice is more workable here than in smaller markets, simply because the rosters are so deep. You'll pay for the convenience in reduced choice, not usually in availability.

Yes, and for a speaker starting out they're often the better target. Great British Speakers is a boutique operation with an unusually wide topic list, including neurodiversity and speaker coaching. Speaker Agency runs a dedicated New Speakers stream.

The very large bureaus have thousands of people on the books already. A smaller agency has more reason to invest in someone new.

Email us. Every organisation here was checked on its own website on the date at the bottom of this page.

The UK market is big and we'd rather this list were complete than tidy, so tell us what we've missed. Nobody pays to appear, and nobody can pay to be removed or moved up. See how we verify.