The short answer: strong avatars, metered by credits
HeyGen is an avatar-first AI video platform. You write a script, pick a stock avatar or your own Digital Twin, choose a voice, and HeyGen renders a presenter video, with dubbing, an AI agent and generative video models layered on top. For training, sales and marketing explainers it has one of the deepest avatar toolsets we checked. HeyGen's pricing page lists Creator at $29 a month billed monthly or $24 a month billed yearly, with 600 credits a month for one user.[1] Credits, not the plan price, decide how much video you get, and our HeyGen pricing guide maps every tier against them. By our arithmetic, those 600 credits would buy about 12 minutes of Avatar V, but Creator includes Avatar V only with limited usage.
Buy it if you need a presenter on screen without a camera crew: course modules, onboarding, product walkthroughs, sales videos in several languages. Skip it if you want a timeline editor for footage you shot yourself, if your compliance team requires ISO 27001 or EU data residency, or if you hope to sell what the Free plan produces, since Free output is licensed for personal, non-commercial use only. Teams that live inside Zapier or HubSpot should budget separately too, because those integrations never run on plan credits.
Zapier, Make, n8n, HubSpot and Clay run on a separate prepaid API wallet, not on your plan's credits.
How the studio, avatars and agent fit together
AI Studio is script-first
AI Studio, the core editor, is built around the script rather than a timeline: you set when an element appears by dragging two markers inside the text. Scenes, a Brand System, burned-in captions, a music library and transitions sit around it, and Business adds a built-in screen recorder. Lip sync renders only when you submit, so the editor preview plays the audio over a still avatar, and a submitted video cannot be edited in place; you duplicate it instead. Most layout, caption and timing edits cost no credits. Re-rendering an avatar scene does. A finished script before you press submit is the cheapest habit you can build.
Layout, caption and timing edits in AI Studio cost no credits, but every avatar re-render does. Lip sync only appears after you submit, so check the script and timing first.
Three engines, three very different rates
Every avatar video runs on one of three engines, chosen per video. Avatar III is the cheapest and loops real footage with lip sync. Avatar IV, the default, animates a single photo, including cartoons, pets and angled poses, and accepts motion prompts. Avatar V, launched in April 2026, is the highest-fidelity engine and the default for Digital Twins, but it needs a video look rather than a photo. HeyGen's help center charges per minute of output: Avatar III takes 4 credits with a video look or 7 with a photo look, Avatar IV 16 with a photo look or 31 with a video look, and Avatar V 48 with either.[2] Custom Expressive Motion on Avatar IV adds 40 credits a minute.
Digital Twins, Video Agent and translation
A Digital Twin is your own avatar, trained on Avatar V from about 15 seconds of continuous footage facing the camera plus a consent clip. Given a prompt plus decks, PDFs or images, Video Agent drafts the script, scenes, voice-over and captions as a plan you can approve before anything renders; Autopilot mode skips the approval step and starts generating on its own. Planning is free; rendering costs about 80 credits a minute in Standard mode or 240 in Seedance mode (Pro and above), and HeyGen shows an estimate first. Video Translation dubs into up to 10 target languages per job, with a voice clone and lip sync, at 4, 6 or 10 credits per source minute per language for Audio only, Speed or Precision. Paid plans cover 175+ languages and dialects.
Plans, and what the credits actually buy
Prices shown are what HeyGen lists for visitors in the United States, in US dollars. Your price can differ by country, currency and local taxes such as VAT.
| Plan | Price | Credits | What sets it apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | None; up to 3 watermarked videos a month, 1 minute each | 1 Digital Twin, 1 voice clone, personal non-commercial use only |
| Creator | $29 a month billed monthly, or $24 a month billed yearly ($288 a year) | 600 a month | 1 user, 1080p, 30-minute videos, commercial use, Avatar V with limited usage |
| Pro | From $49 a month billed monthly, or $41 a month billed yearly ($488 a year), for 1,000 credits; up to $4,300 a month billed monthly for 100,000 | 1,000 to 100,000 a month | 1 user, 4K, Proofread, Seedance 2.0 and 2.5 |
| Business | $149 a month billed monthly, or $119 a month billed yearly ($1,428 a year), first seat; extra seats $20 per seat a month | 1,500 a month, shared by the workspace | 60-minute videos, SSO, SCORM export, screen recorder, top-ups at $5 per 100 credits |
| Enterprise | Quote only, annual subscription only | Custom | No video length maximum, SCIM, sub-workspaces |
The table hides the real constraint. By our arithmetic, the Creator allowance covers roughly 19 minutes of Avatar IV with a video look, about 7 minutes of Video Agent in Standard mode, or 100 minutes of Speed translation into one language. The 1,000-credit Pro tier stretches Avatar V to about 20 minutes, and the 1,500 Business credits give a whole team about 31 minutes of Avatar V. Pro is one plan whose tiers share every feature; only the monthly credits change, and you can switch tiers at any time. Business seats add people, not credits. A five-person Business workspace billed monthly costs $229 a month, by our arithmetic, and still shares 1,500 credits.
Running out mid-month has few exits. On the web only Business can buy top-ups, as one-time packs or auto-reload; Creator has to upgrade, and Pro moves to a higher tier. Monthly credits roll over for one extra billing cycle, annual credits accumulate until renewal, and credits on subscriptions billed through Apple or Google expire after 30 days. Cancelling to Free or pausing wipes the whole balance, and a pause resumes billing automatically about 30 days later. Paying monthly for a full year of Creator comes to $348 against $288 billed yearly, so yearly billing saves $60, about 17%, once you know you will stay.
Avatar III with a video look costs 4 credits a minute against 48 for Avatar V. Save Avatar V for the videos where realism matters most.
The limits you meet after signup
Rendering is not instant. Creator and Pro process 3 videos at once, Business 6 and Enterprise 20, while Free gets 1; anything beyond that waits as Pending. HeyGen's help center says the regular queue averages just under 24 hours on weekdays, runs faster at weekends, and is busiest on Monday mornings Eastern time. Plan for it. Length caps sit at 1 minute on Free, 30 minutes on Creator and Pro, 60 on Business and none on Enterprise, and buying more credits never raises them. Video Agent output runs from 15 seconds to 3 minutes, so longer modules still go through AI Studio.
Several gaps are structural. There is no timeline editor and no live preview of the moving avatar. Avatar videos get burned-in captions but no closed captions, output is never HDR, and translation covers spoken audio only, so on-screen text stays in the original language. The plan gates are steep: 4K, Seedance 2.0 and 2.5 and translation Proofread start at Pro; SSO, SCORM export and interactive branching start at Business; SCIM, audit logs and sub-workspaces stay with Enterprise. There is no self-serve trial of a paid plan.
The developer side is billed apart from the plans. The API runs on a separate prepaid wallet, and Zapier, Make, n8n, HubSpot and Clay all draw on those API credits rather than on your plan's. Remote MCP over OAuth is the exception: it renders on plan credits at no extra charge, from tools such as Claude, ChatGPT and Cursor. API versions 1 and 2 retired at the end of October 2026, so older scripts need moving to v3. LiveAvatar, the real-time streaming avatar once called Interactive Avatar, is a separate product at its own address with its own plans and credits; you sign in with your HeyGen account. No HeyGen plan includes it.
A pause (desktop only) drops you to Free, deletes the whole credit balance and resumes billing automatically about 30 days later.
Consent, data training and trust
Every video-based Digital Twin needs an on-camera consent clip recorded by the person shown, reading HeyGen's text and a four-letter code; screen recordings and AI-generated clips fail the check. Uploading a pre-recorded consent video is Enterprise-only, and skipping consent requires Enterprise plus an indemnity agreement. The depicted person can request removal at any time. Two gaps matter. Professional Voice Clone uploads have no consent step, and Photo Avatars get no consent check at all, so responsibility for the person in the photo sits with you. Moderation also bans political content and campaigning outright.
Read the training terms closely. HeyGen's Terms grant it an irrevocable, royalty-free licence to use your content, including to train its AI models.[3] Its Trust page says non-Enterprise data may be used for training with an opt-out, while Enterprise data is excluded by contract. All customer data is stored in the US on AWS, with no EU residency option. HeyGen says it is SOC 2 Type II compliant and meets GDPR and CCPA. HeyGen lists no ISO 27001, does not hold ISO 42001, and makes no HIPAA claim. Our HeyGen safety review walks through the biometric notice and the opt-out path.
How we score HeyGen
Our 3.8/5 weighs each axis on its own evidence, and the scorecard shows the full breakdown, nothing hidden. We read HeyGen's pricing page, help center, Terms, Trust page and developer docs rather than its marketing claims, and where pages disagreed we followed the pricing data and the newer help articles. User sentiment counts as one axis among several, not the whole verdict.
Zapier, Make, n8n, a native HubSpot app, Clay, Slack, Canva, a ChatGPT app and a Claude connector, a Remote MCP server over OAuth on all plans (Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Manus and others), REST API v3 with webhooks, a CLI, open-source HeyGen Skills and HyperFrames, ElevenLabs voice import, and SCORM 1.2/2004 and LMS export on Business. Held back by plan credits that do not pay for HubSpot, Clay, Zapier, Make or n8n (they need an API key and a separately funded prepaid API wallet), API v1/v2 retired at the end of October 2026, a CLI for macOS and Linux only, no native PowerPoint add-in, and LiveAvatar as a separate platform with its own plans and billing.
Avatar-first video in one browser workspace: AI Studio with scenes, Brand System, stylized captions, a built-in Screen Recorder and comments; stock avatars (500+ on Free, 700+ on paid plans), Photo Avatars and Digital Twins from about 15 seconds of footage; video translation with voice clone and lip sync into 175+ languages and dialects on paid plans; apps such as Batch Mode, Video Podcast, AI Clipping and PPT/PDF to Video; 4K export from Pro; videos up to 30 minutes (Creator, Pro) or 60 minutes (Business). Held back by a script-based editor with no timeline, no closed captions for avatar videos, no HDR output, no translation of on-screen text, one character per scene, a submitted video that cannot be edited in place, and iOS and Android apps that cannot do advanced AI Studio edits.
A Free plan with no card (up to 3 watermarked videos a month, each up to 1 minute), and HeyGen's pricing page lists Creator at $29 a month billed monthly or $24 a month billed yearly ($288 a year) for 600 credits a month; Pro from $49 a month billed monthly or $41 a month billed yearly ($488 a year) for 1,000 credits, one plan with credit tiers up to 100,000 credits ($4,300 a month billed monthly); Business $149 a month billed monthly or $119 a month billed yearly ($1,428 a year) for the first seat with 1,500 credits shared by the workspace, plus $20 per extra seat a month; Enterprise by quote. Monthly credits roll over one extra cycle. Held back by credits, not the plan price, deciding output (600 Creator credits buy about 12 minutes of Avatar V at 48 a minute, our arithmetic), no credit packs for Creator or Pro on the web, extra seats that add no credits, balances wiped on cancelling to Free or pausing, a Free plan for non-commercial use only, no paid-plan trial, and refunds case by case.
Runs in the browser with no install, a Video Agent that turns a prompt or a deck into a script, scenes and voice-over to approve before rendering (planning and chat cost nothing), most AI Studio edits free of credits, a credit estimate shown before generating, a Digital Twin ready in about 10 to 20 minutes, and iOS and Android apps. Held back by lip sync that renders only on submission (the preview plays audio, not the moving avatar), timing set by markers in the script, a regular queue HeyGen's help puts at just under 24 hours on weekdays, credit maths that changes by engine and model, a pause that wipes credits and resumes billing automatically, and a mobile app that cannot switch workspaces for Team and Enterprise users.
AI is the product: Avatar III, IV and V engines (Avatar IV animates any single photo, Avatar V gives the highest fidelity), Digital Twins, a Video Agent with a Standard and a Seedance mode, Avatar Shots with up to 3 avatars, HeyGen's own HeyGen Video and HeyGen Voice models, third-party models HeyGen lists (Seedance 2.0 and 2.5, Veo 3.1, Nano Banana and others) in Creative Studio, lip-synced translation with Speed and Precision engines, Voice Mirroring and voice cloning. Held back by everything premium running on credits (Avatar V 48 a minute, Video Agent about 80 a minute or 240 in Seedance mode), Seedance 2 and 2.5 locked to Pro and above, every Creative Studio video model locked on Free, Creative Studio rolling out gradually, and Terms that license user content for training AI models outside Enterprise, with an opt-out.
HeyGen says it is SOC 2 Type II compliant (report on request), with GDPR, CCPA and the EU-US Data Privacy Framework; TLS 1.2+ and AES-256 at rest, an annual third-party pen test, 2FA, SAML/SSO from Business, a status page that showed 99.998% for the app and 99.83% for the API from July to October 2026, consent clips and moderation for custom avatars, and live chat and email support. Held back by all customer data stored in the US (no EU residency), no ISO 27001 listed, no ISO 42001 and no HIPAA claim or BAA, a regular render queue of just under a day on weekdays, moderation holds that support cannot speed up, payments non-refundable except where law requires (HeyGen 'may consider' a refund within 15 days, 14 on the App Store), and priority support only on Enterprise.
A large help center with articles on credits per engine, rollover, cancelling and pausing, refunds, Digital Twins, translation and LiveAvatar, an Academy, developer docs with usage limits, error codes, an MCP guide, llms-full.txt and a changelog, plus the pricing page's embedded plan data, Terms, MSA, DPA, biometric notice and a moderation policy. Held back by the pricing page's own comparison table disagreeing with its plan cards (Pro yearly, Business per seat, 4K on Creator), blog posts with older credit rates and top-up rules, HeyGen comparison pages still showing legacy Team prices and 'SCORM on all plans', language counts that range from 40+ to 177+, Avatar IV-era footage guidance still in help, and per-second API prices for avatars published only in blog posts.
Ratings are high across platforms: G2 4.8 from 1,975 reviews, Capterra 4.7 from 320, Trustpilot 4.2 from 4,940, App Store US 4.78 from 29,854 ratings and Google Play 4.8 from about 74.7K reviews. Trustpilot collects mostly unhappy customers, so it is a map of complaints, not a trend. Gartner (4.3 from 28 reviews) is under the 30-review floor and left out. Axis score 4.8: the mean of each platform's displayed rating with at least 30 reviews, app stores included, weighted by review count (computed 4.77, rounded).
Weighted across the axes above (weights reflect what actually drives the decision in this category). How we score →
Capability carries the score. Three avatar engines, a consent-backed Digital Twin, an agent that plans before it spends, dubbing with lip sync and a working MCP server add up to a broader toolkit than most avatar studios offer. The deductions come from cost clarity and trust. A credit price that swings twelvefold between Avatar III with a video look and Avatar V makes budgeting a per-engine exercise, and HeyGen's own comparison pages still show decommissioned Team prices. The training licence and US-only hosting weigh on regulated buyers.
Read the platforms by who writes on them. G2 and Capterra collect verified business users describing daily work, so they track the product. Trustpilot draws mostly unhappy customers, which makes it a map of complaints rather than a trend, and we draw no conclusion about recent sentiment from it. HeyGen says it serves tens of millions of users and most of the Fortune 100; treat those as vendor claims. For European or ISO-driven buyers, Synthesia holds ISO 27001 and ISO 42001 and stores EU customer data in Ireland, and our HeyGen alternatives guide sets out the rest of the field.
Frequently asked questions
Can I get a refund from HeyGen?+
Payments are generally non-refundable except where the law requires it. HeyGen may consider a request within 15 days for web and Google Play purchases, or 14 days for App Store purchases, case by case; a request may be denied if you used significant credits, App Store refunds go through Apple, and unused months are not refunded.
How do I cancel a HeyGen subscription?+
On the web, go to Settings > Plan & Billing, open the arrow next to the upgrade button and choose Cancel your plan; it takes effect at the end of the billing cycle. Mobile subscriptions are cancelled in the App Store or Google Play, and removing an add-on with the general cancel control can cancel the whole subscription.
Does HeyGen offer a free trial or an education discount?+
There is no self-serve free trial of a paid plan; the Free plan, which needs no card, is the way to try it. HeyGen publishes no student, education or nonprofit discount.
Can I still buy HeyGen's old Unlimited or Team plans?+
No. The older Unlimited-era and Team plans are decommissioned; existing holders keep them while active, and switching to a credit-based plan is permanent. Some of HeyGen's comparison pages still show those old Team prices.
The bottom line
HeyGen earns its score on depth: realistic avatars, a Digital Twin from 15 seconds of footage, an agent that drafts whole videos and translation into 175+ languages. The plan price is only the entry ticket. Budget in credits, pick the engine per video, and expect queue time on weekdays. Choose Creator for a solo presenter producing short videos, Pro when Avatar V minutes or 4K matter, and Business once several people need shared credits, SSO or SCORM. Skip it if you need EU hosting, a timeline editor, or a vendor that never touches your content for training.
- [1] Pricing Plans for Creators and Marketers (2026-10) https://www.heygen.com/pricing
- [2] HeyGen Help: how to use credits on heygen (2026-10) https://help.heygen.com/en/articles/15126059-how-to-use-credits-on-heygen
- [3] Terms and Conditions & Privacy Policy (2026-10) https://www.heygen.com/terms