# HeyGen vs Synthesia (2026): Credits, Dubbing, SCORM, Compliance

> HeyGen vs Synthesia compared on credits per minute by engine, dubbing rates, SCORM export, consent and data storage, to pick the right AI video tool.

_Source: https://professionalstoolkit.com/articles/heygen-vs-synthesia — The Professional's Toolkit · updated October 2026_

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**Business vs Enterprise** — Where SCORM export starts: HeyGen Business, against Enterprise only (quote-based) on Synthesia.



- **175+ vs 70+** — Dubbing languages: HeyGen paid plans vs Synthesia Basic, Starter and Pro (140+ on Enterprise)
- **6 vs 80** — Credits per dubbed minute: HeyGen Speed vs Synthesia lip-sync (different credits)
- **US vs Ireland** — Where customer data is stored: HeyGen (all US) vs Synthesia (Ireland, EU)


## The short answer: languages and LMS export, or compliance

HeyGen and Synthesia both sell AI presenter video on credits, but they spend those credits on different things. Pick HeyGen if you need cheap dubbing into many languages or SCORM export without negotiating an enterprise contract. Pick Synthesia if your security review asks for ISO certificates or data stored in Europe, or if you plan to render on HeyGen's Avatar V or Avatar IV with a video look, where Synthesia's entry plan yields more typical minutes. Neither wins on price alone. The deciding question is which engine you will actually render with, because HeyGen's cheapest engine costs a twelfth of its best one per minute.

Compliance is the sharper split. Synthesia lists more certifications and stores customer data in Ireland, while HeyGen keeps everything in the United States and licenses customer content for model training unless you opt out. For a US marketing team that mostly needs volume and languages, that difference rarely blocks a purchase. For a European learning and development department, it often settles the shortlist before anyone books a demo. The sections below cover the cost per minute, translation, training features and trust, in that order.

## What a month of credits buys on each side



> **About these prices:** 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. Check your current price — HeyGen: https://api.colosus.site/go/heygen?to=pricing


| HeyGen plan | Billed monthly | Billed yearly | Credits a month | Longest video | Export |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 | none (up to 3 watermarked videos a month) | 1 minute | watermarked |
| Creator | $29 a month | $24 a month ($288 a year) | 600 | 30 minutes | 1080p |
| Pro, 1,000 credits | $49 a month | $41 a month ($488 a year) | 1,000 | 30 minutes | 4K |
| Pro, 2,000 credits | $99 a month | $82 a month ($988 a year) | 2,000 | 30 minutes | 4K |
| Pro, 3,000 credits | $149 a month | $124 a month ($1,488 a year) | 3,000 | 30 minutes | 4K |
| Business, first seat | $149 a month | $119 a month ($1,428 a year) | 1,500, shared | 60 minutes | 4K |

HeyGen's pricing page lists these prices for one user on Free, Creator and Pro, and for the first seat on Business, where each extra seat costs $20 per seat a month and adds no credits [1]. Credits, not the plan price, decide how much video you get, and our [HeyGen pricing guide](/articles/heygen-pricing) walks through every tier and engine. The platform charges per minute of output by engine and look: Avatar III costs 4 credits with a video look, Avatar IV costs 16 with a photo look and 31 with a video look, and Avatar V costs 48. The Free plan is for personal, non-commercial use only.

Synthesia's pricing page lists Starter at $29 a month billed monthly or $18 a month billed yearly, with 1,250 credits a month, one editor plus three guests and three personal avatars [2]. Synthesia says a typical finished minute uses about 100 credits, more when the avatar stays on screen throughout, and its first 10 minutes each month are included on every plan. By Synthesia's own estimate, Starter therefore lands at about 22 minutes a month. Its free Basic plan gives 10 minutes a month with a watermark, shared by link, since downloads start at Starter.

Now line them up. By our arithmetic, 600 HeyGen Creator credits buy about 12 minutes of Avatar V, which Creator includes only with limited usage, about 19 minutes of Avatar IV with a video look, about 37 with a photo look, or about 150 minutes of Avatar III with a video look. Synthesia's 22 minutes assume a typical minute and count its 10 included ones; full-screen avatar video uses more. So Starter beats Avatar V and video-look Avatar IV, but loses to photo-look Avatar IV and badly to Avatar III. Yearly billing widens the price gap: a year of Synthesia Starter billed yearly comes to $216, which is $72 less than HeyGen Creator's yearly total.


> 💡 **Price by engine, not by plan:** On HeyGen's 1,000-credit Pro tier, credits cover about 20 minutes of Avatar V but about 250 minutes of Avatar III with a video look. Decide the engine before comparing plans.


HeyGen also caps each video by plan: 30 minutes on Creator and Pro, 60 on Business, and no maximum on Enterprise. The cap is not the cost. Every minute still draws credits at the engine's rate, so a long module is where the engine choice bites hardest. Avatar III has no limit on scene length, and a 12-minute module with a video look uses 48 credits by our arithmetic. The same module on Avatar IV with a video look uses 372, well over half of Creator's monthly 600.

## Bigger budgets: Pro levels, seats and running dry

Synthesia's pricing page lists Pro at $89 a month billed monthly or $64 a month billed yearly, with 6,000 credits a month, five personal avatars and one editor plus five guests. Synthesia estimates about 60 extra minutes a month on Pro, on top of the 10 included, and higher Pro levels go up to 48,000 credits a month. Its table shows one editor on every self-serve plan, with custom seat counts only on Enterprise.

Matching that volume on HeyGen depends on the engine, and by our arithmetic the fair target is about 70 minutes (Synthesia's 60 plus its 10 included). Seventy minutes of Avatar V need 3,360 credits, which means the 5,000-credit Pro tier. Seventy minutes of Avatar IV with a video look need 2,170 credits, so the 3,000-credit tier. A year of Synthesia Pro billed yearly comes to $768, below HeyGen's yearly totals for those two tiers ($2,400 and $1,488). **Cheaper looks flip the result.** Seventy minutes of Avatar IV with a photo look need 1,120 credits, which the 1,500-credit Pro tier covers at $738 a year, and Avatar III with a video look fits seventy minutes inside Creator's 600 credits.

Running out works differently too. HeyGen's monthly credits roll over for one extra billing cycle, and annual credits accumulate until renewal. Synthesia's monthly allowances do not roll over, annual plans deliver the year's credits upfront, and separately bought credits last 12 months. When Synthesia credits run out, video creation pauses until renewal unless you buy more or upgrade. HeyGen sells web top-ups only on Business, so a Creator user has to upgrade and a Pro user moves to a higher tier. Both vendors treat payments as generally non-refundable; HeyGen may consider a request within 15 days (14 for App Store purchases), and the [pricing guide](/articles/heygen-pricing) covers its cancellation rules.

## Translation and dubbing: rates per language minute

HeyGen bills translation per minute of source video per target language: 4 credits for Audio only, 6 for Speed and 10 for Precision. One job can target up to 10 languages, and paid plans cover 175+ languages and dialects. Synthesia charges 80 credits a minute for dubbing with lip sync and 40 without, into 70+ output languages on Basic, Starter and Pro and 140+ on Enterprise. The rates are in different currencies, but the gap is still wide.

Take a 10-minute video dubbed into three languages, which is 30 billable minutes. By our arithmetic, HeyGen's Speed engine needs 180 credits and Precision needs 300, both inside Creator's 600. Synthesia's lip-synced dubbing needs 2,400 credits, nearly double Starter's monthly 1,250. Synthesia lists about 26 dubbing minutes a month on Starter once the 10 included minutes are counted, so that job overflows it and needs Pro.

What gets translated also differs. HeyGen translates only spoken audio: on-screen text and burned-in captions stay in the source language. Its Proofread step, which lets you edit translated scripts before rendering, is limited to Pro, Business and Enterprise. Synthesia's 1-Click Translation handles both script and on-screen canvas elements into 140+ languages, but it is an Enterprise feature. Its dubbing transcript review and later retranslations use no extra credits. Our [HeyGen video translation guide](/articles/heygen-video-translation) covers engines, caps and the Proofread workflow step by step.


> 💡 **Count language minutes first:** Both tools bill dubbing per minute per target language. Multiply video length by the number of languages before choosing a plan.


## Training teams: SCORM, interactivity and single sign-on

This is HeyGen's clearest structural advantage. Its SCORM export, in SCORM 1.2 and 2004, sits on Business and Enterprise, with a slider for how much of a video a learner must watch to complete it [3]. An auto-update option keeps the LMS copy in sync when the draft is regenerated and HeyGen hosts the video. Business also carries branching, action buttons and quizzes, SAML single sign-on and 60-minute videos.

Synthesia's own site says only Enterprise users can export SCORM packages, and its SAML single sign-on also sits on Enterprise. Its Pro plan adds interactive videos and branded video pages, so quizzes and branching come earlier there than LMS export does. No public price exists for Synthesia Enterprise, which means a training team that needs SCORM gets a quote rather than a number. By our arithmetic, a five-person workspace on the HeyGen plan that includes SCORM, billed monthly, comes to $229 a month, still sharing 1,500 credits. That budget is easy to forecast. The credits are tight.

## Consent, data location and model training

Both vendors require consent for custom avatars, but the gates differ. HeyGen asks for an on-camera consent clip by the person depicted for every video-based Digital Twin, reading HeyGen's text and a four-letter code; screen recordings and AI clips fail. Uploading a pre-recorded consent video is Enterprise only, and skipping consent needs an Enterprise indemnity agreement. Two gaps matter: Photo Avatars have no consent step, and Professional Voice Clone uploads have none either. Synthesia requires a live on-camera recording for a Personal Avatar that cannot be skipped or uploaded later, the person must match the footage and be at least 18, and only your own voice can be cloned, with verbal consent.

Data handling is where the two diverge most. HeyGen hosts on AWS and stores all customer data in the United States [4]. Its Terms grant HeyGen a licence to use your content, including for training its models; non-Enterprise customers can opt out by contacting HeyGen, and Enterprise data is excluded. HeyGen says it is SOC 2 Type II compliant, lists no ISO 27001 and does not hold ISO 42001. Synthesia says customer data is stored in Ireland, with backups in Frankfurt, lists SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001 and ISO 42001, and says it does not pre-train on customer data. Our [HeyGen safety review](/articles/is-heygen-safe) covers the biometric notice in full.


**What users rate it, by platform**

| Platform | Rating | Reviews | As of |
|---|---|---|---|


_Rendered from our current record; these are other platforms' user scores, separate from our own Toolkit Score._


Read the review platforms as a sentiment check, not a tiebreaker. Trustpilot draws mostly unhappy customers, so treat it as a map of complaints rather than a trend. The documented differences above, from dubbing rates to SCORM and data location, can be checked on each vendor's own pages, so weigh them above any average. A star score cannot tell you whether your LMS will accept the export.


> ⚠ **HeyGen trains unless you opt out:** HeyGen's Terms license your content for model training. Non-Enterprise customers can opt out by contacting HeyGen, Enterprise data is excluded, and face data is used for training only with consent.



## FAQ

**Can I pay per video instead of subscribing?**

Not on Synthesia, which says it runs on monthly and yearly subscriptions only. HeyGen's per-use option is its API, billed from a separate prepaid wallet rather than plan credits.

**How do the AI video agents compare on credits?**

HeyGen's Video Agent uses about 80 credits a minute in Standard mode and about 240 in Seedance mode (Pro and above), with an estimate shown before generating. Synthesia says its Syren agent typically uses 1,000 to 2,000 credits for a one-minute video.

**Which has more stock avatars?**

HeyGen's pricing page lists 500+ stock avatars on Free and 700+ on paid plans. Synthesia lists 9 on Basic, 125+ on Starter, 180+ on Pro and 240+ on Enterprise.

**Do the APIs use the same credits as the plans?**

On Synthesia, API usage draws from the same credit balance as the subscription. On HeyGen, the API and integrations such as Zapier or HubSpot run on separately purchased API credits, while Remote MCP uses plan credits.


## The bottom line

Choose HeyGen when languages and LMS export decide the purchase: translation at 4 to 10 credits a minute per target language into 175+ languages on paid plans, and SCORM on Business rather than Enterprise. Choose Synthesia when certificates, EU data storage and a no-training default matter more, or when you will render on HeyGen's Avatar V or video-look Avatar IV, where Synthesia's entry plan gives more typical minutes. If you are torn, price your real monthly minutes on the engine you will use before comparing sticker prices.



## Sources

[1] Pricing Plans for Creators and Marketers — https://www.heygen.com/pricing (2026-10)
[2] Synthesia Pricing - Compare Free and Paid Plans Video Products Product Overview The all-in-one AI Video Platform AI Avatars Lifelike avatars — https://www.synthesia.io/pricing (2026-10)
[3] HeyGen Help: how to export heygen videos using scorm — https://help.heygen.com/en/articles/10549082-how-to-export-heygen-videos-using-scorm (2026-10)
[4] Security Practices — https://www.heygen.com/security (2026-10)
[5] HeyGen Help Center — https://help.heygen.com/en/
[6] HeyGen Terms of Service — https://www.heygen.com/terms
[7] App Store (US), HeyGen listing — https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ai-avatar-generator-heygen/id6711356409