HeyGen vs Synthesia for AI avatar video

Why the credit counts do not compare

The instinct is to line up the allowances — HeyGen Creator's 600 credits against Synthesia Starter's 1,200 — and conclude Synthesia gives you twice as much. It does not. The two vendors' credits are different units, and they are almost exactly a factor of two apart in value.

Dividing each official monthly price by its allowance gives the price of one credit:

A Synthesia credit costs almost exactly half a HeyGen credit at the entry tiers — $0.024 against $0.048. But Synthesia also spends 120 of them on a minute that HeyGen might render for 4. Credit counts are marketing units; the only comparable figure is what a finished minute costs in dollars.

Two smaller things fall out of that table. HeyGen Business costs about twice as much per credit as Pro, so it buys seats, SSO and a 60-minute ceiling rather than cheaper output. And Synthesia's ladder runs the wrong way — Creator costs more per credit than Starter, about 17% more billed yearly. Neither platform rewards you for climbing.

What a finished minute actually costs

This is the comparison worth running. Multiplying each platform's published credit rate by its cost per credit gives dollars per finished minute of avatar video. HeyGen's rates come from its credits help page; Synthesia's flat rate from its self-serve credits guide.

Read the two bolded rows together. Synthesia has no cheap tier of output. Because the rate is flat, its floor and its ceiling are the same number — every minute costs the same whether you use a basic stock presenter or its newest Express-2 model. HeyGen's spread means an Avatar III workflow produces finished video for about a fifth of a dollar a minute, roughly nine times cheaper than the cheapest minute Synthesia can sell you and about fifteen times cheaper than Synthesia billed monthly.

At the top of the range the two converge. HeyGen's Avatar V at ~$2.35 and Synthesia monthly at ~$2.90 are within about 25% of each other, and Synthesia billed yearly at ~$1.79 is the cheapest premium-avatar minute on this page. If you are committed to the newest model on either platform, price is close enough that the decision should turn on the other factors below.

The full per-plan breakdowns, including HeyGen's Expressive Motion add-on and the way its Photo/Video Look ordering flips between generations, are on the HeyGen profile and the Synthesia profile.

Why only one of them can advertise minutes

Synthesia's pricing page states plan sizes in minutes — 10 a month on Starter, 30 on Creator — and those numbers are exactly right, because 1,200 ÷ 120 = 10 and 3,600 ÷ 120 = 30. HeyGen's pricing page states credits and a maximum video length, never a monthly minute figure. That is not evasiveness: with a 12x spread between its cheapest and dearest avatar, no single minute number would be true. It does mean a HeyGen buyer has to do this arithmetic themselves before knowing what they bought.

Localisation is the widest gap

If the job is translating an existing video library rather than generating new footage, the two platforms are not close.

HeyGen's precision mode, its most accurate tier, still costs less than half a Synthesia lip-synced minute bought monthly, and about a third less than one bought yearly (~$0.75). Translation is comfortably the cheapest thing on HeyGen's price list.

The useful cross-platform point is that on both tools, dubbing existing footage costs far less than generating an avatar from scratch — 50 credits against 120 on Synthesia, 4 to 10 against 4 to 48 on HeyGen. If you already have a presenter on camera, dubbing is the cheap path on either platform.

Correction, 11 September 2026: an earlier version of the Synthesia profile on this site listed AI Dubbing at 240 credits per minute with lip sync and 120 without, and said dubbing cost double standard video. That was a misreading — 240 is the Basic plan's monthly dubbing allowance, not a rate. Synthesia's credits guide gives the rates as 50 and 25 credits per minute, which makes dubbing cheaper than generation, not dearer. The Synthesia profile has been corrected.

The APIs run in opposite directions

Both vendors sell programmatic access, and they price it as near-mirror images of each other.

• HeyGen's API is a separate, dearer meter. Its API pricing page says it is "standalone from our regular HeyGen plans" — no subscription includes it. It is billed in dollars: about $1.00 a minute for a standard avatar video, $4.00 for Avatar IV at 1080p, $2.00 per minute of source for translation.
• Synthesia's API is cheaper than its own app. It draws on the subscription credits you already have at 75 credits a minute against 120 in the editor — 37.5% less, or 1.6x more finished minutes from the same pool. Access starts on the Creator plan.

The counterintuitive part is what happens when you convert both to cash. Synthesia's API works out around $1.31 a minute on Creator yearly and $1.85 monthly. HeyGen's standard-avatar API minute is $1.00 — cheaper in absolute terms, despite being roughly five times its own credit-funded rate. So "Synthesia's API is the cheap one" is true only relative to Synthesia. Against HeyGen, it is cheaper only once you move up to Avatar IV, where HeyGen's $4.00 is comfortably the dearest option here.

Rollover: the difference that is not on either pricing page

HeyGen's credit help page says unused monthly plan credits roll over for one additional billing cycle, giving them up to 60 days, and that annual subscribers accumulate credits until their renewal date. Synthesia's credits guide is blunt in the other direction: "credits for usage are reset at the start of the billing period and there is no accumulation of unused credit."

That single rule can outweigh the per-minute arithmetic. A team producing 30 minutes one month and nothing the next keeps its unused HeyGen allowance for a cycle and forfeits its Synthesia one outright. Steady weekly output makes the difference disappear entirely. It is the clearest reason to match the platform to your production rhythm rather than to a spreadsheet.

One quiet detail in Synthesia's favour: its yearly allowances are slightly more than twelve monthly ones — 14,500 credits against 14,400 on Starter, and 44,000 against 43,200 on Creator. It is a bonus of under 2%, but it runs the opposite way to the no-rollover rule, and an annual plan is the only form in which Synthesia credits survive a quiet month.

Ceilings, seats and limits

The Avatar V ceiling is the trap most likely to bite. Your plan advertises 30- or 60-minute videos, but HeyGen's help centre states Avatar V supports videos up to three minutes. If the use case is a 12-minute training module, HeyGen's newest model cannot render it in one piece on any plan — and long-form training is precisely where Synthesia's flat rate and unlimited-length Enterprise tier are aimed.

Which one to buy

Choose HeyGen if you will genuinely use an older avatar model, because nothing on Synthesia's price list comes close to $0.20 a minute; if localisation is the main workload; or if your output is lumpy enough that rollover matters. Marketing, social and founder-update video under three minutes all fit comfortably.

Choose Synthesia if you need to budget exactly, since a flat rate means the minutes on the pricing page are the minutes you get; if your work is long-form training or onboarding where Avatar V's three-minute cap is disqualifying; or if you are generating from a script pipeline, where the API's 75 credits a minute is the cheapest route on its own price list.

If neither fits, HeyGen alternatives extends this same dollars-per-finished-minute method across the rest of the avatar field — Speechify Studio, Pictory, Colossyan, Fliki and Creatify — and finds the full spread runs about 109x, with HeyGen holding the price floor and the premium tier of every vendor landing within 1.9x of each other. Best AI avatar video tools ranks the category by use case instead. For generative video without a presenter, Runway and Seedance are metered per second rather than per minute. If you publish into the EU, both platforms' output falls under the disclosure duties covered in our EU AI Act labeling guide.

Frequently asked questions

Is HeyGen or Synthesia cheaper per minute?

It depends on the avatar model. On official monthly prices a finished minute is about $0.20 on HeyGen's Avatar III Video Look, about $2.35 on Avatar V, and a flat $2.90 on Synthesia Starter. Synthesia billed yearly comes to about $1.79 and undercuts every HeyGen Avatar V option.

Why does Synthesia advertise minutes when HeyGen advertises credits?

Synthesia charges a flat 2 credits per second for any avatar, so 1,200 credits is always 10 minutes. HeyGen's rate spans 4 to 48 credits a minute, so its 600-credit Creator plan is anywhere between about 150 and about 12 finished minutes. No single minute figure would be accurate.

Do credits roll over on either platform?

On HeyGen, yes — one additional billing cycle, up to 60 days, with annual plans accumulating to renewal. On Synthesia, no; credits reset each billing period with no accumulation.

Which is cheaper for dubbing existing video?

HeyGen. Its video translation runs 4 to 10 credits a minute (~$0.20–$0.49 on Pro) against Synthesia's 25 to 50 (~$0.60–$1.21 on Starter monthly). On both platforms dubbing costs much less than generating an avatar from scratch.

Is this comparison based on hands-on testing?

No. It is a public-data comparison. Plan prices and credit rates are quoted from official pricing pages and help centres checked in September 2026, and the dollars-per-minute figures are CartSignal's arithmetic on those published rates. No quality or realism testing is claimed.

Sources

• HeyGen official pricing (checked 11 September 2026)
• HeyGen — How to use credits (per-model credit rates, rollover rule)
• HeyGen API pricing explained (standalone API meter)
• Synthesia official pricing (checked 11 September 2026)
• Synthesia — credits on self-serve plans (flat rate, dubbing rates, no-rollover rule)
• Annual HeyGen prices were not present as readable text on the pricing page when checked, so the per-minute figures above use monthly billing for HeyGen and both cycles for Synthesia.