HeyGen vs Synthesia — comparison

HeyGen and Synthesia both render a person who was not in the room. They do not sell the same object. HeyGen was checked on 2026-10-16 as an avatar studio for creators and teams, with lip-sync translation, a public API, and an official remote MCP server. Synthesia was checked on 2026-10-17 as training and enterprise avatar explainers on a credit meter, with a separate learner seat. This page uses those two entries. It does not lay the two marketing homepages side by side, and it does not invent a shared minute rate so that one plan can be called cheaper.

HeyGen Video is the model-side note for HeyGen's talking-presenter engines. There is no Synthesia model page on this site. Studio Express-1, at $1,000 a year on the Synthesia extract, is an add-on name, not a model card. Colossyan is the third training login in the same batch, cited only where its minute meter fills a gap these two pages left open. Creatify is the ad neighbor when the input is a product URL.

Who this is for

Read this if you need a talking presenter and you are choosing between a creator plan and a learning-team plan.

HeyGen fits a solo educator, a founder who wants a likeness, and a marketer localizing one video. The Free plan is a trial of up to 3 videos a month. Creator is the solo card. Business is the team card, and it is where the 2026-10-16 comparison put interactive video, quizzes, SCORM, and LMS exports. HeyGen is the wrong tool when the video should not have a face. That work belongs on Kling, Runway, Higgsfield, or Seedance. It is a weaker default than Creatify when the input is a product URL and the output has to look like a UGC ad.

Synthesia fits a learning team that pays for renders and also pays for the people who watch. Basic, Starter, and Pro price video credits. A learner seat prices the audience, at $29 per learner a month on the monthly context and $25 per learner a month on the yearly context. That shape matches a course more than a Shorts channel posting three times a week. Stock avatar counts, export resolution, maximum duration, and a language count on Synthesia were not observed on the 2026-10-17 pass. Do not borrow HeyGen's 175-language line to fill them.

Colossyan fits a trainer who already has a document or a slide deck. It is not a third HeyGen tier. Starter is framed as free, with value copy of $27 a month and no card, and the extract gives 20 minutes a month of NEO. The $27 line is value copy, not a charge the Colossyan page treats as the invoice.

Dimensions compared

Buyer. HeyGen's public ladder runs from a no-card trial to a solo Creator plan to a Business workspace. Synthesia's public ladder runs from a watermarked Basic allowance to credit steppers, and it adds a per-learner price beside the video plans. Which Synthesia plan requires the learner seat was not observed. HeyGen Business prints $20 per seat on top of $149. That seat is a workspace seat in the HeyGen extract, not a documented "learner who only watches" SKU.
What the credit buys. HeyGen says the number of credits used varies by model, duration, and complexity. Creator showed 600 credits on the plan card. The FAQ stated the dollar price and did not repeat that 600. Synthesia Basic is 500 credits a month and is also described as 10 minutes of video plus 3 survey responses plus 500 credits. This directory does not collapse that sentence into "500 credits equals 10 minutes," and it does not apply the 10-minute phrase to Starter or Pro. A paid Synthesia credit-to-minute rate was not observed. A HeyGen cost per finished minute was not observed as one number, because Avatar IV and Avatar V do not cost the same.
Sticker shape, with dates. HeyGen, 2026-10-16: Free $0, up to 3 videos a month, 1 minute max. Creator $29 a month, or $24 a month if paid annually, with 600 credits on the card and 30-minute videos in the comparison table. Pro starts at $49 a month. The FAQ says tiers run from 1,000 credits at $49 to 100,000 credits at $4,300. Business is $149 a month plus $20 per seat, with 1,500 credits on the card, videos up to 60 minutes, and 4K. Enterprise is contact sales. Synthesia, 2026-10-17: Basic $0 with 500 credits and a watermark. Starter $29 a month for 1,250 credits, or $18 a month billed yearly for 15,000 credits a year. Pro $89 a month for 6,000 credits, or $64 a month billed yearly for 72,000 credits a year. Monthly Pro steps: 12,000 credits at $176, 24,000 at $347, 36,000 at $514, 48,000 at $676. Yearly steps copied: 144,000 credits at $126 and 576,000 at $486. Steps between those two yearly pairs were not observed. Neither yearly line printed a lump-sum annual invoice. Pay the invoice the vendor shows.
Duration, resolution, and languages. HeyGen's comparison table states duration and resolution: Free at 1 minute, Creator up to 30 minutes and up to 1080p, Pro up to 4K, Business up to 60 minutes and 4K. Avatar IV itself is capped at 1 minute on Free and 30 minutes on paid plans, including Enterprise, in that table. Translation moves from 30+ languages on Free to 175 languages and dialects on paid plans. Synthesia's 2026-10-17 extract did not print a duration cap, a resolution, or a language count. Colossyan did print minutes: 20 a month of NEO on the framed-free Starter row, and a FAQ line of 30 minutes a month of NEO on Professional yearly, plus a second bucket that was truncated. Those Colossyan minutes are not Synthesia credits.
Likeness and add-ons. HeyGen lists stock video avatars at 500+ on Free and 700+ on paid plans, photo avatars up to 3 on Free and unlimited on paid plans, and custom video avatars from 1 on Free to 5+ on Business. Voice cloning is 1 clone on Free. The exact paid clone caps behind "expanded" and "maximum" were not observed. Synthesia's Studio Express-1 add-on is $1,000 a year for annual plan users. What it changes in the picture, and the price for a monthly subscriber, were not observed. Colossyan lists 15 custom avatars and 3 voices on the Starter extract, and a custom avatar green-screen add-on at $1,000 a year. The two $1,000 figures are different products. Do not merge them.
API wallet versus website credits. HeyGen documents both, and they are different pools. Developer docs checked 2026-10-16 say enterprise API billing uses credits where 1 credit costs $0.50, with examples such as 0.1 credits per second for Avatar IV photo, digital twin, and studio avatars. The docs' own example equates that with $0.05 per second. A cinematic avatar video is 7 credits per video. Prompt-to-video Video Agent is 0.0667 credits per second. MCP draws the web plan's premium credits. Skills and the direct API draw the API balance. Pay-as-you-go on the developer site starts from $5. That is a wallet minimum, not the enterprise rate. Synthesia markets an API and MCP documentation. The 2026-10-17 extract did not copy a base URL, an auth header, a docs URL, or a rate limit, so the tool entry stores no api_url. Whether a Synthesia API call spends the same credits as the website was not observed. mcp.official is false until a server URL is copied.
Learning objects versus a Short. HeyGen Business and Enterprise are where SCORM and LMS exports were listed. A Short does not need them. Synthesia Basic counts 3 survey responses inside the free allowance description. Paid survey allowances were not observed. Learner seats are Synthesia's extra axis. A 9:16 preset, a safe zone, and an auto-post destination were not observed on the Synthesia pricing extract. HeyGen can render a 1-minute Free video, which is inside a Short's length. Watermark removal and 1080p were not clearly included on HeyGen Free.
Commercial and ad use. HeyGen's tool page says commercial terms on Enterprise are called out separately from self-serve, and it tells you to read the current terms before a custom likeness goes into ads. Synthesia's commercial terms for paid media were not observed on the pricing pass. Creatify is the product organized around a URL and an ad launcher. HeyGen can make a spokesperson ad. Synthesia's observed extras are survey responses, learner seats, and an annual avatar add-on. Those are course objects.

Side-by-side notes

HeyGen, on the page checked 2026-10-16, is an avatar product first. You paste a script, choose a stock avatar, a photo avatar, or a custom video avatar, and render. The developer docs describe Avatar IV as the default v3 engine and Avatar V as a higher-fidelity engine for digital twins. A Video Agent path goes from a prompt to a finished piece. Whether that agent calls Kling, Veo, or Seedance under the hood was not observed. v1 and v2 API endpoints carry a sunset of 2026-10-31 in those docs, with v3 recommended. The official MCP endpoint stored on the tool page is https://mcp.heygen.com/mcp/v1/. OAuth, no API key. A Creator plan or above is recommended in the Claude web guide. Monthly subscribers roll unused credits for one more month. Annual subscribers accumulate credits until renewal. Canceling drops unused credits.

The same HeyGen FAQ is careful about which number lives where. Creator's $29 and $24 prices are FAQ numbers. The 600-credit grant is a card number. Pro's ladder from $49 to $4,300 is an FAQ number. Business at $149 plus $20 per seat, with 1,500 credits, is what the card showed. Anyone comparing "HeyGen credits" to "Synthesia credits" has to say which HeyGen pool. The website plan and the API wallet are independent. An agent on MCP spends the website plan. A script with an API key spends the API balance.

Synthesia, on the page checked 2026-10-17, spends credits to render avatar video. Basic's $0 row is the trial shape: 500 credits, also described as 10 minutes plus 3 survey responses plus those credits, with a watermark. A card requirement on Basic was not observed. Starter's yearly credit pool matches twelve monthly grants: 15,000 divided by 12 is 1,250. Pro's base yearly pool matches the same way: 72,000 divided by 12 is 6,000. That is a credit identity. It is not a minute count. The Pro stepper is not a clean double. Six thousand credits sit at $89 and 12,000 sit at $176. Doubling $89 does not land on $176. On the yearly display, 72,000 credits sit at $64 a month and 144,000 sit at $126. Doubling $64 does not land on $126. Read each pair as its own pair. Enterprise is custom. The custom credit grant was not observed.

Synthesia's learner price is two monthly figures, not a computed annual invoice. How many learners are included before the seat price starts was not observed. Studio Express-1 stays on the annual-plan line at $1,000 a year. A monthly buyer cannot price that add-on from the extract. No third-party video model was named. When a cutaway has to come from a named generator, render it in a tool that prints the model and pay that tool's meter.

Colossyan is the minute-shaped training neighbor, checked the same day as Synthesia. Professional on the yearly view is $59 a month after a stated 34 percent reduction, plus $30 a month per additional member. The monthly Professional sticker was not observed. An extra NEO2 pack is 600 minutes for $1,500 a year on Professional yearly. What NEO2 changes beyond the pack name was not observed. API appears in feature lists without a base URL in the notes used for that entry. MCP was not observed. SCORM is in the job description. Which plan unlocks the SCORM export was not observed.

HeyGen Video, checked 2026-10-16, keeps the presenter engines separate from world models. Native audio is true because the billed output is speaking avatar video. Text-to-video in the world-model sense is false. Photo Avatar and the Avatar III photo-to-video pipeline are a narrow image path, not a free-form image-to-video model that invents a new scene around a product still. Multi-shot is false. A scene cap of up to 50 scenes is an edit structure, not a multi-shot prompt API. Use that page when an integration needs the enterprise per-second rates. Use the tool page when the purchase is Creator or Business.

Verdict

HeyGen is the default on this directory's avatar workflow for a creator who can read a solo card, a translation table, and a documented API. Synthesia is the purchase when the buyer is counting learners as well as renders. Those sentences are about the objects on the two pricing extracts. They are not a lab score of lip sync, and they are not a claim that one minute of HeyGen costs less than one minute of Synthesia. The minute rates that would support that claim were not on the pages.

On 2026-10-16 HeyGen printed the creator path in operational detail. Free is up to 3 videos, each up to 1 minute, with limited trial access to Avatar IV, Video Agent, and lip-sync translation, and no card required. Creator is $29 or $24 on annual billing, with 600 credits on the card, 30-minute videos in the comparison table, and 1080p starting at that tier in the row that showed resolution. Paid plans list 175 languages and dialects. The API and the remote MCP are both official. The trap on that page is the second wallet. MCP spends website credits. The API key spends a balance where the enterprise card defines 1 credit as $0.50 and prices several avatar types at 0.1 credits per second. A team that buys Creator and also buys an API wallet has bought two meters. A team that connects Claude through OAuth and thinks it is spending the $5 pay-as-you-go minimum has misread the FAQ. The $5 figure is the developer-site wallet minimum. It is not the MCP bill.

On 2026-10-17 Synthesia printed a training path that HeyGen's Creator card does not match. The $29 Starter sticker is the same dollar as HeyGen Creator's monthly sticker, and the grants are not the same sentence. HeyGen's card showed 600 credits and a comparison table of minutes, resolution, and languages. Synthesia's Starter showed 1,250 credits a month, or 15,000 a year on the $18 billed-yearly display, without a copied duration, resolution, or language count. Using the shared $29 to declare a winner copies a sticker and drops the meter. Synthesia Pro at $89, or $64 billed yearly, is a credit stepper with published larger steps, which means a bigger lesson month is not automatically an Enterprise call. The learner line at $29 or $25 per person a month can dominate the invoice once a course has an audience. HeyGen's extra person, on the Business card, is $20 a month on top of a $149 base. You can add those HeyGen figures because both were printed. You cannot add a HeyGen seat to a Synthesia learner and call the sum a bundle. The products do not say they are the same seat.

Learning features do overlap in vocabulary and split in evidence. HeyGen lists SCORM and LMS exports on Business and Enterprise. Synthesia's page did not itemize SCORM in the pricing extract used here. It did itemize survey responses on Basic and a learner price. Colossyan's page is the one that leads with a document or a slide and a NEO minute, and it still does not say which plan unlocks SCORM. A learning buyer who needs a minute allowance they can read without a credit conversion should look at Colossyan's 20 minutes and 30 minutes, dated 2026-10-17, and should keep Synthesia when the credit stepper and the learner seat are the contract they actually want. A creator who needs 175 languages, a 1080p line, and an MCP URL they can put in a client should stay on HeyGen. A Shorts test can start on HeyGen Free because the length cap is inside a Short. It should not start on Synthesia Basic under the assumption that 500 credits are three one-minute posts. That conversion was not printed.

Ads are a third door, and neither avatar studio is the default. Creatify, checked 2026-10-16, is built around a product URL, an actor library, and an API rate card that includes a URL-to-video row at 5 credits per 30 seconds on the API meter. HeyGen remains the spokesperson when the asset you are keeping is the face, the translation, or the custom likeness. Synthesia remains the course. After either file exists, captions and the vertical frame are still CapCut. A named voice the avatar extract did not price is still ElevenLabs, and only after the avatar product accepts external audio. HeyGen's comparison table had an audio-input row. Which plans include it was not observed as a clear yes or no. Synthesia's external-audio row was not observed.

The decision rule is the object you can point at on a dated page. Point at translation, duration, resolution, and a stored MCP URL, and the page is HeyGen's, verified 2026-10-16. Point at a learner price, a survey count, and a credit stepper whose yearly base matches twelve monthly grants, and the page is Synthesia's, verified 2026-10-17. Point at a NEO minute on a slide-to-video product, and the page is Colossyan's. Refuse a winner that depends on a credits-per-minute rate none of the three extracts published for the plan you will actually buy.

When to pick each

Pick HeyGen when the buyer is a creator or a small team, the Free trial of 3 videos is enough to judge lip sync, and Creator at $29 or the $24 annual display is the solo budget. Pick it when 175 languages, a documented v3 API, or the remote MCP URL is a requirement. Pick Business at $149 plus $20 per seat when you need the workspace tools and the SCORM line that the 2026-10-16 table placed on that tier. Keep scripts inside the plan's duration cap. A 30-minute Creator render is a long talking video. For Shorts, write the short version first.

Pick Synthesia when the buyer is a training org and the invoice may include learner seats at $29 or $25. Start on Basic only to see the watermarked allowance. Move to Starter or Pro by reading the credit pair you will buy, not by dividing Basic's "10 min" wording into the paid grants. Add Studio Express-1 only on an annual plan, at the $1,000 year the extract tied to annual users. Do not promise a language count, a resolution, or a 9:16 preset from this compare.

Pick Colossyan when the source is a doc or a deck and you want a minute meter that was actually copied: 20 minutes a month of NEO on the framed-free Starter row, or the Professional yearly view at $59 a month plus $30 per extra member. Treat the $27 line as value copy. The monthly Professional list price was not observed.

Pick Creatify when the job is a product-URL ad rather than a lesson or a founder update. Pick CapCut after the avatar file exists. Pick ElevenLabs when the voice is the product and the face is optional.

Related workflows

AI avatar is the home path. HeyGen is the default presenter there. Synthesia enters when the purchase is credits plus learners. Colossyan is the doc-and-slide neighbor. Keep each lesson inside an allowance you have measured in the product. This page cannot turn 600 HeyGen credits, or 1,250 Synthesia credits, into a lesson count.

UGC ads is the wrong default for Synthesia. The published path there is a product-led actor ad, with Creatify as the primary. HeyGen fits when the ad is a spokesperson. It is a weaker picture when the ad must look like an unpaid creator holding the product. Read commercial terms before a custom likeness, or a learner-seat contract, is reused as an ad license. Those terms were not copied into either pricing extract as a paid-media grant.

Voice and publish skips the face. If you already have a voice track, you may only need an avatar as a mouth, and only after the product accepts that audio. If you do not need a mouth, publish the ElevenLabs track under footage from CapCut and buy neither HeyGen nor Synthesia.

Captions and covers is the pass after export. Safe zones were not a row on these avatar pricing extracts. Long-to-short applies when a finished lesson must be mined for clips, in OpusClip or Submagic. Those tools do not replace the avatar render.

FAQ

Are HeyGen credits and Synthesia credits the same unit?

No. They are labels on two vendors' plans, checked on different days. HeyGen Creator showed 600 credits on 2026-10-16, and the FAQ says burn varies by model, duration, and complexity. HeyGen also runs a second wallet for the API, where the enterprise card defines 1 credit as $0.50. Synthesia Starter showed 1,250 credits a month, or 15,000 a year, on 2026-10-17. A paid Synthesia credits-per-minute rate was not observed. Dividing a sticker by a grant does not produce a shared price per minute.

Synthesia Starter is $29. HeyGen Creator is $29. Are they the same plan?

The monthly sticker matches and the cards do not. HeyGen's $29 Creator row, or $24 if paid annually, sits next to a 600-credit card, a 30-minute comparison line, 1080p in that table, and 175 languages on paid plans. Synthesia's $29 Starter row, or $18 a month billed yearly, sits next to 1,250 credits a month or 15,000 credits a year. Resolution, duration, and a language count for that Synthesia row were not observed. The yearly displays are monthly equivalents, not lump-sum invoices this compare is allowed to invent.

Does Synthesia include HeyGen's translation into 175 languages?

Not observed. The 175-language line is on HeyGen's paid plans, checked 2026-10-16. HeyGen Free is 30+ languages. Synthesia's 2026-10-17 pricing extract did not print a language count. Colossyan's extract did not print one either. A multilingual Shorts test that depends on a copied language list starts on HeyGen.

Which one has an MCP URL on this site?

HeyGen. The tool page stores https://mcp.heygen.com/mcp/v1/, verified 2026-10-16, and says MCP spends web-plan credits. Synthesia markets MCP documentation. The server URL was not copied, so mcp.official is false and this page will not guess a host. Colossyan's MCP server was not observed. A marketing sentence is not an address a client can add.

Can I post a YouTube Short from the free plan?

HeyGen's FAQ says you can render up to 3 videos a month, each up to 1 minute, with no card. Watermark removal and 1080p were not clearly on Free. Watch the export. Synthesia Basic is $0 with a watermark, 500 credits, and a description that also says 10 minutes of video plus 3 survey responses. This page does not convert those 500 credits into three Shorts. Colossyan Starter is framed as free, with 20 minutes a month of NEO in the extract, and the $27 figure is value copy rather than a charge.