What AI dubbing actually costs per minute
One dubbed minute runs from about $0.16 to $2.34 across the tools listed here, at each vendor's best published annual rate — and the ordering is the opposite of what you would guess. Rask AI, the only dedicated dubbing product on the list, is the most expensive way to buy a lip-synced minute at $0.78, against $0.24 for the same job inside a HeyGen Creator subscription. Buy them as identical throughput and the gap is plain: 1,200 lip-synced minutes a year costs $288 on HeyGen and $936 on Rask.
"Dubbing" is two different products at two different prices
Before any rate makes sense, the word has to be split. Every tool here takes a finished recording and gives it back speaking another language. Only some of them move the speaker's mouth to match.
ElevenLabs is the clearest case, because it says so plainly. Its dubbing product guide states verbatim: "At the moment, ElevenLabs does not offer lip syncing as part of Dubbing." You can feed it a video — the website accepts files up to 2 GB and 180 minutes — and it returns translated audio over the original picture, in 90+ languages. That is a genuinely useful product for podcasts, narration and voice-over-b-roll. It is not the same product as a talking-head video whose lips match the new language, and comparing the two on price alone is how most "cheapest AI dubbing" lists go wrong.
So the table below carries a lip-sync column, and the honest gaps are marked as gaps.
Cost per dubbed minute, at each vendor's best annual rate
Plan prices and credit rates are the vendors' own. The dollars-per-minute column is CartSignal's arithmetic: plan price divided by credit allowance, multiplied by the published credits-per-minute rate.
| Tool and mode | Published rate | Cost per dubbed minute | Lip sync |
|---|---|---|---|
| Speechify Studio Creator ($300/yr, 345,600 credits) | 3 credits per second | ~$0.156 | Claimed, not priced separately — see note |
| HeyGen Creator annual ($24/mo, 600 credits) — audio only | 4 credits per minute | ~$0.160 | No |
| HeyGen Creator annual — Speed mode | 6 credits per minute | ~$0.240 | Yes |
| ElevenLabs Pro or Business annual — automatic, watermarked | 2,000 credits per minute | ~$0.275 | No (stated by vendor) |
| Synthesia Starter yearly ($18/mo, 14,500 credits/yr) — no lip sync | 25 credits per minute | ~$0.372 | No |
| HeyGen Creator annual — Precision mode | 10 credits per minute | ~$0.400 | Yes |
| ElevenLabs Pro or Business annual — automatic, no watermark | 3,000 credits per minute | ~$0.413 | No |
| Synthesia Starter yearly — with lip sync | 50 credits per minute | ~$0.745 | Yes |
| Rask AI Creator Pro annual ($936/yr, 1,200 minutes) — Standard | 1 minute of video = 1 minute | $0.780 | Yes |
| Rask AI Business annual ($6,000/yr, 6,000 minutes) | 1 minute of video = 1 minute | $1.000 | Yes |
| ElevenLabs Dubbing Studio, no watermark (Pro annual) | 10,000 credits per minute | ~$1.375 | No |
| Murf Dub, pay as you go — Automated | 2 credits per minute per language, $1 per credit | $2.000 | Not documented |
| Rask AI Creator Pro annual — Enhanced lip sync | 1 minute of video = 3 minutes | $2.340 | Yes |
The floor-to-ceiling span is about 15x, and about 12.8x if you stop before Rask's Enhanced mode. Two caveats sit on this table and neither is small. First, these are list prices for different products — a lip-synced minute and an audio-only minute are not substitutes, and nothing here is a judgement about how good any vendor's output is. Second, monthly billing moves several rows sharply: Synthesia Starter billed monthly is $29 for 1,200 credits, which turns its lip-synced minute from $0.745 into $1.208, and Rask Creator billed monthly is $2.40 a minute against $1.32 annually.
The Speechify asterisk
Speechify's Studio pricing page publishes exactly one dubbing rate — 3 credits per second — and no separate lip-sync rate. Its video dubbing editor page markets "precise lip-syncing capabilities", and its dubbing page advertises "Dub Content in 60+ Languages". Whether that lip sync is included at the 3-credit rate is not establishable from public data, so CartSignal does not claim the cheapest minute on this page is also the cheapest lip-synced one. If it is, Speechify undercuts everything here. Ask before you buy on that basis.
The specialist premium
The result worth arguing with is that the purpose-built tool is the expensive one. Rask AI sells dubbed minutes directly rather than in credits, which makes it the easiest product here to budget — Creator Pro is "$78/mo billed $936 yearly" for 1,200 minutes a year. That is $0.78 a minute with Standard lip sync, and Rask's own pricing page gives the multiplier for the better mode: "Standard Lip-sync: 1 minute of video = 1 minute. Enhanced Lip-sync: 1 minute of video = 3 minutes." So Enhanced is $2.34.
Held against HeyGen at matched throughput, with no credit conversion in the way:
| 1,200 lip-synced minutes a year | How it is bought | Annual cost |
|---|---|---|
| HeyGen Creator, billed annually | 600 credits a month ÷ 6 per minute = 100 minutes a month | $288 |
| Rask AI Creator Pro, billed annually | 1,200 minutes, pooled across the year | $936 |
That is 3.25x for the same number of minutes. What the extra buys is real but it is not price: Rask's pool is annual and can be spent in any distribution, while HeyGen's is a monthly allowance with its own rollover rules, and Rask's API documents 130 destination languages against HeyGen's cap of 10 languages per job. If your localisation arrives as one big batch twice a year, the pooled minutes matter. If it arrives steadily, they do not.
Rask also contains the pattern this site keeps finding in credit ladders — it runs backwards at the top. Business billed annually is $6,000 for 6,000 minutes, exactly $1.00 a minute, which is 28.2% more per minute than the Creator Pro tier beneath it. On monthly billing the two are identical at $1.50. Buying the bigger plan buys volume headroom and, on Business, $3.00-a-minute overage — not a discount.
Dub it, or regenerate it?
If the source is already an AI avatar video, you have a choice most buyers never price: translate the render you have, or generate a fresh one from a translated script. Both platforms that publish rates for each make dubbing the cheaper move.
| Platform | Generate a fresh minute | Translate an existing minute | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Synthesia | 2 credits per second = 120 per minute | 25 without lip sync, 50 with | Dubbing is 4.8x or 2.4x cheaper |
| HeyGen | 4 credits/min on Avatar III Video Look, up to 48 on Avatar V | 4 audio only, 6 Speed, 10 Precision | Precision is 4.8x cheaper than Avatar V — but exactly ties Avatar III Video Look at 4 credits |
HeyGen's tie is the useful oddity. Translating a video without lip sync and generating a completely new minute on its cheapest avatar model cost the identical 4 credits. So if your source is an avatar video and you still hold the script, regenerating in the target language is free relative to dubbing it, and gives you a clean render instead of a lip-sync pass. That only works when you own the script and the avatar; for filmed footage of a real person, translation is the only route. Both models' full rate cards are on the HeyGen vs Synthesia comparison.
The multiplier nobody puts on the pricing page
Dubbing bills per language, not per video. Murf's help centre is the most explicit about it: "2 credits are consumed for every minute of your file for each language selected." HeyGen allows up to 10 target languages per translation job, and charges for every one. So the quantity you are buying is source minutes × languages, and it grows much faster than people plan for.
Here is one realistic job — a ten-minute explainer into ten languages, which is 100 billed minutes:
| Tool | What the job costs | Against the plan it sits on |
|---|---|---|
| Speechify Studio Creator | $15.62 | 18,000 of 345,600 credits — 5.2% of the year |
| ElevenLabs Pro annual, watermarked | $27.50 | 200,000 of 600,000 credits — a third of the month |
| Rask AI Creator Pro annual | $78.00 | 100 of 1,200 minutes — 8.3% of the year |
| Murf Dub, pay as you go | $200.00 | 200 credits bought outright |
| HeyGen Creator annual, Speed lip sync | 600 credits | Exactly 100% of one month's allowance |
| Synthesia Starter yearly, with lip sync | 5,000 credits | 34.5% of the entire year's 14,500 |
Two things fall out. The same job is 12.8x dearer on Murf than on Speechify. And on the two avatar platforms, the plan allowance binds long before the price does — one ten-minute video, localised once, eats a whole month of HeyGen Creator or a third of a Synthesia Starter year. This is the same shape the best AI video tools ranking found in the generative lane: the sticker price is rarely the constraint.
Five traps in the small print
- ElevenLabs charges to remove its watermark. Automatic dubbing is 2,000 credits a minute with a watermark and 3,000 without — a flat 50% surcharge on every minute. Its Dubbing Studio route is 5,000 and 10,000 respectively, up to 5x the automatic rate, for in-app editing on a product the docs describe as in maintenance mode.
- Murf rounds up to the half minute. Its credits article states file durations are "rounded up to the nearest(subsequent) 30 seconds". A 31-second clip bills as 60 seconds — a 94% overcharge on short social cuts, and it applies per language.
- Entry plans buy startlingly little. ElevenLabs Starter billed annually is 30,000 credits, which at 2,000 a minute is 15 dubbed minutes a month. Speechify Creator's 345,600 credits are 32 dubbed hours for the year. Check the allowance in minutes, not in credits.
- Synthesia credits do not accumulate. Its credits guide says so directly: credits reset at the start of the billing period with no accumulation of unused credit. A localisation batch you postpone is a batch you pay for twice.
- The cheapest mode may not survive your footage. HeyGen documents Speed mode as suited to front-facing video, and Precision as the mode that handles speaker switches, side-profile shots and facial occlusions. If your source is an interview, the honest planning rate is $0.40, not $0.24.
How to choose
- Already paying for HeyGen or Synthesia? Dub there. You are almost certainly not going to beat $0.24 a lip-synced minute, and you avoid a second subscription.
- Audio only — podcast, narration, voice-over-b-roll? ElevenLabs at ~$0.28 on Pro annual, or Speechify Studio at ~$0.156 if its allowance fits. Neither moves lips, and for these formats neither needs to.
- Large, lumpy batches in many languages? This is the case Rask AI is actually built for — 1,200 pooled annual minutes and 130 destination languages, at a unit price you pay for knowingly.
- Just testing? Synthesia's dubbing page offers a first free minute, and Murf Dub's free trial carries 200 credits — 100 automated dubbed minutes, watermarked and limited to one project.
- Publishing into the EU? A dubbed video is synthetic media. Article 50 duties apply to you, not to your vendor — see labelling AI video and voice under the EU AI Act.
What this page does not establish
No audio or video was dubbed for this comparison, so there is no finding here about translation accuracy, voice likeness across languages, or how convincing any vendor's lip sync looks in motion — and those differences are very likely larger than the price differences. Three specific gaps are worth naming: whether Speechify's 3-credit dubbing rate includes lip sync; whether Murf Dub performs lip sync at all, since neither of its dubbing help pages mentions it; and what Murf's Quality Assured dubbing really costs, because the published rate of 62 credits a minute per language sits on an Enterprise plan with custom pricing and volume discounts, so the $62.00 that falls out of the $1 pay-as-you-go credit price is an upper bound rather than a quote. Per-character narration rates for the same vendors, which are a different meter again, are ranked on ElevenLabs alternatives.
FAQ
How much does AI dubbing cost per minute?
At each vendor's best published annual rate: about $0.156 on Speechify Studio Creator, $0.16 on HeyGen without lip sync, $0.24 with Speed lip sync, $0.275 on ElevenLabs Pro or Business, $0.372 on Synthesia Starter yearly without lip sync and $0.745 with it, $0.78 on Rask AI Creator Pro, and a flat $2.00 on Murf Dub. That is about 12.8x across the list, or 15x including Rask's Enhanced lip sync at $2.34.
Is a dedicated dubbing tool cheaper than dubbing inside a video tool?
No. Rask AI's cheapest lip-synced minute is $0.78 against HeyGen's $0.24. Bought as identical throughput — 1,200 lip-synced minutes a year — HeyGen Creator annual is $288 and Rask Creator Pro annual is $936, about 3.25x. The specialist sells a flexible annual pool and 130 destination languages, not a cheaper minute.
Does ElevenLabs dubbing do lip sync?
No. Its product guide says so verbatim. It takes video and returns translated audio in 90+ languages over the original picture, so the speaker's mouth still moves to the old language. Removing the watermark costs 50% more.
Is it cheaper to dub a video or regenerate it in the new language?
Dubbing, on both platforms that publish both rates. Synthesia generates at 120 credits a minute and dubs at 25 or 50, so dubbing is 4.8x or 2.4x cheaper. HeyGen translates without lip sync at 4 credits a minute, exactly what generating a fresh minute on Avatar III Video Look costs — so if you own the script and the avatar, regenerating is a free alternative there.
Does dubbing bill per language?
Yes. Murf states it outright, and HeyGen bills each of the up-to-10 languages in a job. A ten-minute video into ten languages is 100 billed minutes: $15.62 on Speechify Creator, $27.50 on ElevenLabs Pro annual, $78.00 on Rask Creator Pro annual, $200.00 on Murf — or the whole of one HeyGen Creator month.
Source links
- Official ElevenLabs pricing (plan prices, annual monthly-equivalents, 1 credit per character, dubbing at 2,000 / 3,000 / 5,000 / 10,000 credits per minute) — checked 15 September 2026
- Official ElevenLabs dubbing product guide (no lip syncing, 90+ languages, 2 GB and 180-minute upload limit, Dubbing Studio in maintenance mode)
- Official HeyGen credits article (translation 4 / 6 / 10 credits per minute, avatar model rates)
- Official HeyGen video translation guide (Audio Only, Speed and Precision rates, up to 10 languages per job, per-tier video length caps, Speed vs Precision footage guidance)
- Official HeyGen pricing (Creator $29/mo with 600 credits, Pro $49 with 1,000, Business $149 with 1,500)
- Official Synthesia credits guide (2 credits per second of video, dubbing 25 without lip sync and 50 with, plan allowances, no accumulation of unused credit)
- Official Synthesia AI Dubbing page (140+ languages, first minute free)
- Official Speechify Studio pricing (Free 600 credits, Starter $100/yr for 86,400, Creator $300/yr for 345,600; voiceover 1, dubbing 3, avatar 30 credits per second)
- Official Murf Dub credits article (2 credits per minute per language, 62 for Quality Assured, rounding up to the nearest 30 seconds)
- Official Murf Dub pricing (pay as you go at $1 per credit, $5 minimum, free trial of 200 credits with watermarked export)
- Official Rask AI pricing (Creator, Creator Pro and Business monthly and annual prices and included minutes, Standard vs Enhanced lip-sync multipliers, $3 per extra minute on Business)
- Official Rask AI destination languages documentation (130+ languages for dubbing)