HeyGen public-data review: what the credits actually buy
HeyGen's plan prices are simple — Creator at $29/month ($24 annual) with 600 credits, Pro at $49/month with 1,000, Business from $149/month plus $20 per seat with 1,500 — but the credit allowance tells you almost nothing on its own. The same 600 credits produce roughly 150 minutes of Avatar III video or about 12 minutes of Avatar V, because HeyGen's models burn credits at rates from 4 to 48 per minute. Pick the plan after you pick the avatar model, not before, and budget the API separately because no subscription includes it.
The official plans
These are HeyGen's own published figures from its pricing page. One correction worth making up front: a lot of third-party pricing round-ups still list Pro at $99/month with 2,000 credits. HeyGen's current page lists it at $49 with 1,000, so check the vendor page rather than the blog posts.
| Plan | Price | Monthly credits | Max video length | Seats |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 3 videos/month, watermarked | 1 min | 1 |
| Creator | $29/mo ($24 annual) | 600 | 30 min | 1 |
| Pro | $49/mo | 1,000 | 30 min | 1 |
| Business | $149/mo + $20/seat | 1,500 | 60 min | Multiple |
| Enterprise | Contact sales | Custom | No stated max | Custom |
The free plan is a demo rather than a usable tier: three videos a month, one minute each, watermarked. Creator is the first plan with voice cloning, watermark removal and the full 175+ language list. Pro adds 4K export. Business adds workspace collaboration, SAML/SSO and five custom video avatars. Annual prices for Pro and Business were not retrievable as separate figures during this review, so they are left out rather than guessed.
The number that actually decides your bill
HeyGen's credit help page publishes a per-minute burn rate for every generation type. This is the table the pricing page does not show you, and it swings the cost of a finished video by more than an order of magnitude.
| Generation type | Credits per minute |
|---|---|
| Avatar III — Video Look | 4 |
| Avatar III — Photo Look | 7 |
| Avatar IV — Photo Look | 16 |
| Avatar IV — Video Look | 31 |
| Avatar V — Photo and Video Look | 48 |
| Custom Expressive Motion (Avatar IV only, on top) | 40 |
| Video translation — without lip-sync | 4 |
| Video translation — speed mode | 6 |
| Video translation — precision mode | 10 |
| Video Agent — standard | 40 |
| Video Agent — Seedance mode | 120 |
The same page prices several non-per-minute items: 1 credit per generated Look, 2 credits per generated image, 60 credits to train an AI model, 60 or 150 credits for a Seedance2 video at 720p or 1080p, and 90 credits for a Veo3 video. If you want the standalone Veo comparison, the Veo profile covers Google's own per-second API rates.
What that means per plan
Dividing each allowance by each burn rate gives the finished minutes per month. The arithmetic below is CartSignal's, applied to HeyGen's published numbers.
| Avatar model | Creator (600) | Pro (1,000) | Business (1,500) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Avatar III Video Look (4/min) | ~150 min | ~250 min | ~375 min |
| Avatar III Photo Look (7/min) | ~85 min | ~142 min | ~214 min |
| Avatar IV Photo Look (16/min) | ~37 min | ~62 min | ~93 min |
| Avatar IV Video Look (31/min) | ~19 min | ~32 min | ~48 min |
| Avatar V (48/min) | ~12 min | ~20 min | ~31 min |
Read the bottom row carefully. If you bought Creator because you watched an Avatar V demo, your 600 credits are about twelve minutes of finished video a month — roughly one two-minute video a week. That is a very different product from the 150 minutes the same plan gives you on the older Avatar III.
Three cost traps in that table
The Photo/Video Look ordering flips between generations. On Avatar III, a Video Look is cheaper than a Photo Look (4 vs 7 credits). On Avatar IV it reverses hard: Video Look costs 31 against Photo Look's 16, nearly double. The generational jump is priced very unevenly as a result — moving a photo-look workflow from Avatar III to Avatar IV multiplies your burn by about 2.3x, but moving a video-look workflow multiplies it by 7.75x.
Custom Expressive Motion costs more than moving up a generation. Expressive Motion is an Avatar IV-only add-on at 40 credits per minute on top of the base rate. Stacked on an Avatar IV Video Look that totals 71 credits per minute — meaningfully more than Avatar V's flat 48, which includes its own full-body performance. If you are reaching for Expressive Motion to get more movement, price Avatar V first.
Business is not the volume plan. Dividing price by credits: annual Creator works out to about $0.040 per credit, monthly Creator $0.048, Pro $0.049, and Business about $0.099. Business costs roughly twice as much per credit as Pro. What the extra buys is seats, SAML/SSO, five custom video avatars and a 60-minute video ceiling — team controls, not cheaper output. A solo operator who needs volume should look at Pro, not Business.
Converted to cost per finished minute, Avatar V runs about $1.92 on annual Creator, $2.35 on Pro and $4.77 on Business. Avatar IV Video Look runs about $1.24, $1.52 and $3.08 respectively.
Avatar V's three-minute ceiling
HeyGen announced Avatar V on 8 April 2026 as its most realistic avatar model, built from a 15-second reference video and designed to capture gestures and upper-body performance rather than just face and lips. The help centre adds a constraint the pricing page does not: Avatar V supports videos up to 3 minutes long.
That matters because your plan advertises 30-minute videos on Creator and Pro and 60 minutes on Business. Those ceilings apply to the platform, not to Avatar V. If your use case is a 12-minute training module, the newest model cannot render it in one piece regardless of which plan you buy. HeyGen publishes vendor benchmark claims for Avatar V — a face-similarity score of 0.840 against Veo 3.1's 0.714, and a lip-sync LSE-C of 8.97 — which are the company's own figures, not independent tests, and CartSignal has not verified them.
The API is a separate, more expensive meter
HeyGen's API pricing page is explicit that this is "standalone from our regular HeyGen plans," so buying Creator, Pro or Business gets you no API access at all. It is pay-as-you-go in dollars rather than credits, with the baseline stated as "1 US dollar = 1 minute of generated avatar video" at 720p or 1080p.
| API generation | API price | Same output from Pro credits |
|---|---|---|
| Standard avatar video | $1.00/min | ~$0.20/min (Avatar III Video Look) |
| Avatar IV, 1080p | $4.00/min | ~$1.52/min |
| Video translation | $2.00/min of source | ~$0.29/min (speed mode) |
| Video Agent | $2.00/min | ~$1.96/min |
The right-hand column is CartSignal's arithmetic at Pro's ~$0.049 per credit, not a HeyGen comparison. The gap varies a lot by job: video translation is about 6.8x more expensive through the API, standard avatar video about 5.1x, Avatar IV about 2.6x — but Video Agent lands at roughly $1.96 per minute from credits against $2.00 on the API, essentially parity. So the API is worth paying for when you need programmatic generation without a human in a seat rather than as a way to cut the bill, and Video Agent is the one workload where the choice costs you nothing either way. Two more details from the same page: pay-as-you-go API credits expire after 12 months, and HeyGen states it stopped offering free API credits in February 2026, so there is no longer a no-cost way to evaluate the endpoints.
The rollover rule
Unused monthly plan credits roll over for one additional billing cycle, giving them up to 60 days before they expire. Annual subscribers get monthly allocations but retain credits across the subscription year, which is the more forgiving arrangement if your output is lumpy.
This is the same one-hop pattern Murf applies to its Voice Generation Time, and it is more generous than Google Flow credits, which expire outright. It is still an allowance rather than a balance: two quiet months and the first month's credits are gone.
What HeyGen actually does
- Avatar-led video from a script. 500+ stock avatars, unlimited photo avatars from Creator up, and custom video avatars (one on Free, five on Business).
- Voice cloning from the Creator plan up, across 175+ languages and dialects.
- Video translation with lip-sync at three quality tiers, including a cheaper no-lip-sync mode for straightforward dubs.
- Video Agent, a prompt-to-video mode with an optional Seedance model at three times the standard credit rate.
- Third-party generative models in-platform — Seedance2 and Veo3 are billed per video from the same credit pool.
- 4K export from Pro, workspace collaboration and SAML/SSO from Business.
Best-fit use cases
- Marketing, sales and founder-update videos where an on-camera presence is wanted but filming is the bottleneck
- Localising an existing video library, where the 4–10 credits per minute translation rates are the cheapest thing on the price list
- Short-form social and product explainers under three minutes, which fits Avatar V's ceiling comfortably
- Programmatic personalised video at scale, if the API's $1–$4 per minute clears your unit economics
- Teams needing SSO and shared workspaces, which is the only real argument for Business over Pro
Limitations to verify
- Avatar V caps at 3-minute videos regardless of your plan's 30- or 60-minute ceiling
- Credits roll over one cycle only, then expire; annual plans hold them across the year
- No subscription includes API access, and free API credits ended in February 2026
- Business costs about twice as much per credit as Pro — confirm you need the seats
- Free-plan output is watermarked and capped at three one-minute videos
- Custom video avatar allowances differ sharply by plan; check before planning a multi-presenter library
- Annual pricing for Pro and Business was not published as a separate figure on the page checked
- Avatar likeness and voice-consent policy should be read directly before cloning anyone but yourself
How it fits against other tools here
The closest head-to-head is Synthesia, and the split is the familiar one: HeyGen is priced and packaged for marketing and creator output, Synthesia for structured corporate training and internal comms. On cost the two are further apart than their similar sticker prices suggest: Synthesia charges a flat 120 credits for any finished minute, so a minute costs it about $2.90 on Starter monthly no matter which avatar you pick, while HeyGen's 4-to-48 spread puts an Avatar III minute near $0.20 and an Avatar V minute near $2.35. HeyGen is roughly fifteen times cheaper at the bottom of its range and slightly cheaper at the top. The HeyGen vs Synthesia comparison works that arithmetic through both price lists, and the wider list is in HeyGen alternatives.
If what you actually want is generative footage rather than a presenter, this is the wrong category — Veo, Kling and Runway are the text-to-video engines, and the Sora alternatives shortlist is the migration guide if OpenAI's September 2026 API removal affected you. For cheap text-to-video with narration attached, Fliki is the budget lane, and Descript is the editor you reach for after generation rather than instead of it.
On the voice side, HeyGen's cloning is bundled rather than best-in-class; ElevenLabs is the reference point if voice realism is the deciding factor. The full roundups are best AI avatar video tools and best AI video tools. If you publish in the EU, the disclosure duties in EU AI Act Article 50 labeling apply to synthetic avatar video regardless of which tool made it.
FAQ
How much does HeyGen cost?
Creator is $29/month or $24/month billed annually with 600 credits, Pro is $49/month with 1,000 credits, and Business starts at $149/month plus $20 per seat with 1,500 credits. A free plan allows three watermarked videos of up to one minute, and Enterprise is custom-priced. API access is a separate purchase that no subscription includes.
How many minutes of video do 600 HeyGen credits make?
Between about 12 and about 150, depending on the avatar model. HeyGen's credit page rates Avatar III Video Look at 4 credits per minute, Avatar III Photo Look at 7, Avatar IV Photo Look at 16, Avatar IV Video Look at 31, and Avatar V at 48. On Creator's 600 credits that is roughly 150 minutes at the cheapest rate and about 12 at the most expensive.
Do HeyGen credits roll over?
Once. Unused monthly plan credits roll over for one additional billing cycle, up to 60 days before expiry. Annual subscribers receive monthly allocations but retain credits across the subscription year. Pay-as-you-go API credits expire after 12 months.
Is the HeyGen API cheaper than a subscription?
No — it runs roughly 2.5x to 7x more per minute. The API lists standard avatar video at $1/minute and Avatar IV at $4/minute of 1080p, against about $0.20 and $1.52 for the same output from Pro credits. The API buys programmatic generation without a seat, not savings. HeyGen also states it stopped offering free API credits in February 2026.
Which HeyGen plan is the best value?
Pro, on credits alone. Price divided by allowance gives about $0.040 per credit on annual Creator, $0.048 monthly Creator, $0.049 on Pro and about $0.099 on Business. Business costs roughly double per credit and buys seats, SSO, five custom video avatars and a 60-minute ceiling instead of cheaper volume.
Has CartSignal tested HeyGen?
No. This is a public-data review built from HeyGen's official pricing page, credit help centre article, API pricing page and Avatar V documentation checked in September 2026. No hands-on render quality, lip-sync or likeness testing is claimed, and vendor benchmark figures are labelled as vendor claims.
Source links
- Official HeyGen pricing page (plan prices, credit allowances, video length caps, seats)
- Official credit consumption rates and rollover rules
- Official HeyGen API pricing
- Official Avatar V help centre article (15-second input, 3-minute output cap)
- Official Avatar V announcement, 8 April 2026 (vendor benchmark claims)
- Official HeyGen homepage