Synthesia vs Colossyan (2026): Free Plans, SCORM and Real Costs

Choose Colossyan if SCORM export is the deciding line and you want it without an enterprise contract: its Professional plan, at $59 a month on an annual plan, includes 5 streaming SCORM exports a month ^[1]. Choose Synthesia if your training team wants more than presenter video. Its plans add Survey Sessions, dubbing of any existing video and an AI video agent, all drawn from one credit balance, plus Roleplay Sessions, which use no video credits: plays are capped and tracked learner seats are a separate subscription. Synthesia keeps SCORM on Enterprise, which is priced by quote. Its Starter plan costs $19 a month billed monthly or $14 a month billed yearly ($168 a year) ^[2]. Mind the names. Colossyan's Starter is free.

Two free plans, and one name that means different things

Synthesia's free tier is called Basic. Each month it gives 10 minutes of video or dubbing, 3 survey responses and 500 credits, with 9 stock avatars and one editor. Videos carry a Synthesia watermark and are shared by link or embed, because Basic has no MP4 download. Starting from a prompt or an imported script runs through Assistant, which needs a paid plan, so Basic users begin from a template, a blank project, a PowerPoint file or a dub.

Colossyan calls its free plan Starter and describes it as worth $27 a month in value, with its full library of 300+ stock avatars. It includes 20 NEO minutes and half a NEO2 minute a month, with videos up to 20 minutes long, and lists MP4 downloads and watermark removal among what the paid Professional plan adds. Colossyan also advertises a 14-day free trial of AI video in its editor, no credit card required. Synthesia's yearly cards show a button offering to try for free, but Synthesia's pricing FAQ does not describe a trial of a paid plan; the dependable free option is the Basic plan.

Paying: one editor at Synthesia, up to three at Colossyan

Synthesia sells two self-serve plans. Starter is $19 a month billed monthly (the card shows a first-month offer of $9, then $19), or $14 a month billed yearly ($168 a year). Pro is $89 a month billed monthly (a first-month offer of $49, then $89), or $59 a month billed yearly ($708 a year) at its entry credit level. Both are priced per account with one editor: Starter adds 3 guests and Pro 5, and guests only view and comment. Shared editing, workspaces and SSO wait on Enterprise.

Colossyan's Professional plan is $59 a month on an annual plan for one editor, with $30 a month per additional member and up to 3 editors, according to its pricing page. Professional can also be billed monthly, while Enterprise is custom and always billed annually. Read the seat model first. On yearly billing the two mid-tier plans carry the same monthly sticker for one editor, yet a second editor is a $30-a-month add-on at one vendor and an Enterprise conversation at the other. For a three-person L&D team, that can decide the purchase.

Yearly billing, by the numbers

By our arithmetic, Synthesia's yearly billing saves $60 a year on Starter and $360 a year on Pro against the monthly list price. At list price, yearly Starter pays off if you would stay 9 months or more, yearly Pro at 8 months or more; with the first-month offer, a new buyer breaks even only from 10 months on Starter and 9 on Pro. Even counting the first-month offers, a first year on Synthesia's monthly billing costs $218 on Starter and $1,028 on Pro, which is $50 and $320 more than yearly. Payments are non-refundable, so commit to a year only after a pilot; our Synthesia pricing breakdown covers the higher Pro credit levels.

Minutes against credits

Colossyan meters minutes. Professional includes 30 NEO minutes and 10 NEO2 minutes a month, with videos up to 30 minutes long on monthly billing or 50 on yearly, and drafts never count. Synthesia's self-serve plans meter credits on top of the free 10 minutes: about 100 credits per finished minute of avatar video, more if the avatar is on screen throughout, so by our arithmetic, which matches the pricing matrix, Starter adds up to about 12 minutes a month and Pro up to about 60. The same pool pays for dubbing, surveys and the agent. Neither vendor rolls unused allowance over, and deleting a video returns nothing on either side.

SCORM is where the plans split hardest

For an L&D buyer this line matters most. Colossyan Professional includes 5 SCORM exports a month in streaming form, and Colossyan Enterprise adds unlimited streaming and self-contained packages for any SCORM 1.2 or 2004 LMS. Synthesia lists SCORM export on Enterprise only. Its package embeds the hosted Synthesia player rather than a video file, so it stays under 100KB and updates in the LMS when you publish a new version. A fully self-contained offline package is not a standard Synthesia feature.

Below Enterprise, Synthesia's route into an LMS is an embed or a share link, available on every plan. That works for viewing. Tracking is thinner: analytics count only plays through the Synthesia player, and naming individual learners needs SCORM with learner identity or a required SSO sign-in, both Enterprise. Branching arrives on Pro, while quizzes, 1-Click Translation, brand kits and the multilingual player stay Enterprise-only. On Synthesia, per-learner completion in an LMS therefore means an Enterprise contract; Colossyan's pages do not say what its streaming SCORM reports on Professional, so ask before you count on it.

Avatars, consent and the studio add-on

Both vendors sell a studio-recorded custom avatar as an add-on at $1,000 a year. On Synthesia it is a Studio Express-1 avatar for annual-plan users only, filmed by the customer or in partner studios in London and New York; processing can take up to 10 days, and it cannot be refunded once produced. Colossyan films its studio avatars on a green screen, includes instant custom avatars in any active plan and lists 20 custom avatars on Professional. Synthesia's photo-based Personal Avatars come 3 on Starter and 5 on Pro, though their speech-driven motion keeps body language neutral.

Synthesia offers 9 stock avatars on Basic, 125+ on Starter, 180+ on Pro and 240+ on Enterprise, while Colossyan's free plan already carries its full 300+ library. Synthesia creates a personal avatar or voice clone only with a live consent recording from that same person, who must be of legal age; it refuses celebrities, public figures, deceased people and anyone who has not consented, and you cannot create a photo avatar of someone else even with their permission. Colossyan says its stock avatars were made with full consent from real actors.

Moderation is the friction point on Synthesia. Every video passes automated and human review, stock avatars are limited to neutral, factual content, and stock avatars may not appear in paid advertising without Synthesia's written consent. Only paid plans can appeal a rejection. Reviewers on Trustpilot most often complain about rejected videos, support and avatar quality, which fits that pattern: a script on a medical, legal, financial or political topic meets resistance with a stock avatar.

Read the reviews as a complaint map, not a trend line. Synthesia's own comparison page claims Colossyan is often seen as less advanced in voice cloning, avatar realism and enterprise capability. That is the vendor's view. Run one of your real scripts through both free tiers before deciding, since the editor and the avatar quality are what your team will live with.

What Synthesia adds beyond the presenter video

Roleplay Sessions, launched in October 2026, let a learner practice a spoken conversation with an interactive avatar that pushes back, then score it against a skill rubric. Roleplay scenes use no video credits; plays are capped at 10 free a month on Basic, Starter and Pro and 25 a month per organization on Enterprise, and tracked learner seats are a separate subscription at $29 per learner seat a month billed monthly, or $25 billed annually. Survey Sessions, also from October 2026, run spoken interviews of up to 10 questions. AI dubbing works on any uploaded video or YouTube link, into 70+ languages on self-serve plans and 140+ on Enterprise.

Syren, an AI video agent launched in October 2026 and labeled beta, builds a whole video from a brief and your files. Interactive Avatars, available on all plans since October 2026 and labeled beta, can answer visitors on a website, and an MCP connection in public beta since November 2026 lets ChatGPT and Claude draft Synthesia videos. Colossyan's extras are Colossyan Learn, a course tool in all paid plans, and a new AI video generator powered by Cora, as read on its home page in November 2026. For presenter-led LMS modules alone, these weigh less than the SCORM gate; our Synthesia alternatives guide covers other routes.

Data, uptime and the way out

Synthesia says it holds SOC 2 Type II and ISO/IEC 27001, 27701 and 42001 certifications, and it stores customer data in the EU (AWS, Ireland) on every plan. Colossyan is SOC 2 Type II certified and GDPR compliant, hosts on AWS in EU and US regions, and offers EU or US data residency on Enterprise plans . Its security page also commits to a 99.9% uptime SLA. Synthesia's Customer Terms state no uptime percentage and promise commercially reasonable efforts instead. If you need a written availability number, that gap is real.

Exit terms are strict on both sides. Synthesia purchases are non-refundable even if the subscription went unused , plans renew automatically, and the Customer Terms ask for 30 days' notice of non-renewal, so cancel well before renewal. When the paid period ends, the videos in a Synthesia account become inaccessible. Colossyan lets annual subscribers cancel, keeps the plan active to the end of the period and refunds no unused months, but it lets you pause a subscription free for up to 2 months.

The bottom line

Colossyan is the simpler buy for a small L&D team whose deliverable is SCORM in an existing LMS: streaming exports and up to 3 editors, at $30 a month for each added member, sit on its Professional plan, it publishes an uptime SLA, and it advertises a 14-day trial. Synthesia asks you to accept one editor per self-serve account and an Enterprise quote for SCORM, translation and brand kits. In return it offers an EU-hosted platform with Survey Sessions, dubbing of any video and Syren on one credit balance, plus Roleplay Sessions with capped free plays and separately sold learner seats. Choose by your delivery route first, then by the extras.