Synthesia sells presenter video by the minute. Verified 2026-08-07: the free Basic plan gives 10 watermarked minutes a month; Starter is $29 monthly or $18/month billed yearly (10 minutes a month, 125+ avatars); Creator is $89 monthly or $64/month billed yearly (30 minutes, 180+ avatars, API access); Enterprise is custom-quoted with unlimited minutes. Minutes reset every billing period and do not roll over, and you cannot top up mid-cycle — you upgrade or you wait. Every paid self-serve tier includes exactly one editor seat, so a three-person team pays three times. That structure fits training and internal comms well. It fits high-iteration DTC ad testing badly, where most of what you generate is meant to be thrown away.
What does Synthesia cost in 2026?
Four tiers: Basic (free), Starter, Creator and Enterprise. Every figure below comes from Synthesia's public pricing page (verified 2026-08-07).
| Plan | Billed monthly | Billed yearly | Video allowance | Seats | Personal avatars | API |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | $0 | $0 | 10 min/month, watermarked | 1 editor | 3 | No |
| Starter | $29/mo | $18/mo | 10 min/month (120 min/year on annual) | 1 editor + 3 guests | 3 | No |
| Creator | $89/mo | $64/mo | 30 min/month (360 min/year on annual) | 1 editor + 5 guests | 5 | Yes |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Unlimited minutes | Custom | Unlimited | Yes |
Stock avatar counts climb with the tier: 9 on Basic, 125+ on Starter, 180+ on Creator, 240+ on Enterprise.
Two details on that page catch people out.
The advertised price is the annual one. Synthesia leads with $18 and $64. Month to month it is $29 and $89 — about 60% more on Starter and about 40% more on Creator. The discount buys a twelve-month commitment.
The annual allowance is a yearly pool, not a monthly one. Starter annual is 120 minutes for the year; Creator annual is 360. Monthly billing meters 10 and 30 minutes per cycle instead.
Basic (free)
Ten minutes a month, watermarked output, one editor, nine stock avatars. This is a standing free tier, not a countdown trial, so you can evaluate the editor properly before paying. The watermark rules out client work and anything you plan to run as an ad.
Starter — $18/mo yearly, $29/mo monthly
Ten minutes a month, 125+ stock avatars, three personal avatars, no watermark, one editor seat plus three guests. No API.
Ten minutes sounds workable until you price your actual assets. If a typical training video or product explainer runs three to five minutes, Starter is a two-video plan.
Creator — $64/mo yearly, $89/mo monthly
Thirty minutes a month, 180+ stock avatars, five personal avatars, one editor plus five guests, plus API access.
This is where most small teams land. API access on a $64/month self-serve tier is the underrated part of the plan — plenty of competitors put automation behind a sales call. If you have seen older write-ups claiming Synthesia's API is Enterprise-only, they are out of date.
Enterprise — custom
Unlimited video minutes, 240+ stock avatars, unlimited personal avatars, custom seat counts, SSO and security review. Pricing is quoted rather than published, so plan for a sales cycle. Synthesia does not publish a starting contract value, so treat any figure you read elsewhere as hearsay.
How does Synthesia count video minutes?
In minutes of finished video, not credits. Each plan carries an allowance that resets at the start of the billing period, and unused minutes do not accumulate. Synthesia's help centre states this plainly: usage resets each billing period with no carry-over.
Run out and there is no top-up. Your options are to upgrade the plan or wait for renewal. On a monthly Creator plan that can mean sitting out two weeks in the middle of a launch with a paid tool you cannot use.
That is a meaningful difference from tools metered in credits, which normally let you buy more mid-month. How credits work in AI video tools covers the mechanics and the expiry traps to check for.
Where does the Synthesia bill actually grow?
One editor seat per subscription
Starter and Creator each include a single editor. Guests can view and comment; they cannot produce video. Two people making videos means two subscriptions. Five people on monthly Creator is roughly $445 a month before anyone has rendered a frame. Real team pricing is an Enterprise conversation.
The annual commitment
The headline rates require a twelve-month commitment. If your volume drops in month four, or the tool turns out to be wrong for the job, you are still paying. Test on monthly billing first and convert to annual once you know your real usage.
Personal avatars need a consent recording
Creating a personal avatar — your face, or a colleague's — requires recording a consent video along with the training footage. Synthesia states the avatar is ready the next day. That is fast, but it is not same-afternoon, and it needs the person on camera to cooperate on your schedule.
Language coverage depends on the tier
Synthesia markets 160+ languages and accents across the platform, but the pricing page lists 70+ languages on Starter and Creator and 140+ on Enterprise. If one specific language is the reason you are buying, confirm it inside the tier you intend to pay for before signing an annual deal.
What is Synthesia genuinely good for?
Be honest about the job before you buy. Synthesia is strong at:
- Onboarding and training video with a consistent on-screen presenter
- Multilingual internal communication and dubbing of existing material
- Policy, compliance and process explainers that need to look professional
- Slide-style content with a talking head
It is weak at:
- Product footage — nothing appears in frame unless you bring it
- Fast-iteration ad creative, where you test ten hooks and keep one
- UGC-style social content that has to read as unpolished
- High-volume short-form, where variant count is the entire point
Why does a minute allowance fight ad testing?
Ad production is iteration. A product ad may go through several rounds before it earns budget, and most of what you generate is discarded deliberately. That is the method working, not waste.
A metered monthly allowance punishes exactly that behaviour. Each discarded variant costs the same allowance as a shipped one. The allowance resets whether you spent it or not. You cannot buy past the cap mid-cycle. And a single editor seat means the queue is a person as well as a number.
There is a demand-side reason to care about variant volume at all. In a merchant test shared on r/ecommerce (July 2026), product pages with 8-10s demo videos converted ~12% higher — one store's test, not an industry study. Short demo clips are cheap to produce and worth testing in quantity; a minute-metered presenter tool is an awkward place to produce them.
HeyGen and Creatify have both pushed into short-form ad work with different metering models. Synthesia alternatives for ad-first video lays out how they compare with pricing checked.
This post is one of four vendor pricing teardowns, each verified against the live pricing page rather than a press release:
- Synthesia pricing 2026 — this post: minutes per month, no rollover, one editor seat
- InVideo pricing 2026 — credit tiers from Plus at $17/mo displayed, billed $200 annually, for 75 credits a month, up to Elite at $900/mo displayed, billed $10,800 annually, for 4,250; InVideo's FAQ confirms unused credits do not roll over
- Creatify pricing 2026 — ad-first metering aimed at variant volume
- HeyGen pricing 2026 — avatar video priced against a monthly video cap
If you want the plans normalised to one number instead of four pricing pages, what a finished video actually costs across AI video tools does that arithmetic.
Synthesia vs v4v: different units for different jobs
Here is the comparison including the part that favours Synthesia.
Per minute of runtime, Synthesia is inexpensive. Creator on annual billing works out around $2.13 per finished minute if you consume the whole allowance every month. v4v prices per clip: roughly $2.44 for an 8-second product video, with credit packs from $7 for 1,000 credits. Per second of footage, v4v is not the cheaper option, and anyone claiming otherwise is comparing the wrong units.
The units differ because the jobs differ. Synthesia sells minutes of presenter video. v4v sells product ads — you paste a product URL and the brief builds itself, then the platform generates the ad from your product page. That URL flow currently outputs 720p in 9:16, which suits paid social feeds and is not a substitute for a hero brand film.
Three structural differences matter more than the per-second arithmetic:
- There is no subscription. v4v sells credit packs starting at $7 for 1,000 credits. No monthly plan, no seat tier, nothing to cancel.
- Credits never expire. Synthesia's minutes reset every cycle whether you used them or not. v4v credits sit there until you spend them, which fits campaign work that arrives in bursts. Why expiring credits cost DTC brands more puts numbers on that pattern.
- No cap and no seat gate. You spend what you spend, when you need it, and nobody waits for a renewal date.
For higher-fidelity work, Gemini Omni in the AI Lab runs 180 credits per 10-second clip (about $1.26), producing 4-10 second clips in 9:16 or 16:9 at up to 4K, with roughly two minutes of render time per 10 seconds. If you would rather not produce anything yourself, the Catalog Pack is $999 done-for-you: 25 approved product-page videos delivered through an approval gallery.
There is no free trial. The cheapest way to test it is the $7 credit pack — about two 8-second videos — and there is no subscription to cancel afterwards. Full detail is in the v4v pricing guide.
Should you buy Synthesia?
If you need presenter-led training, onboarding or internal communication, Synthesia is a sound buy and Creator at $64/month on annual billing is fair for what it delivers. The free tier is generous enough to answer the question before you spend anything.
If you are evaluating it for ad production, price the constraints rather than the plan. Ten or thirty minutes a month, no rollover, no mid-cycle top-up, one editor seat, and a format built around a presenter rather than your product. Those are structural, and no discount changes them.
The underlying decision is not really Synthesia versus anything else — it is whether metered monthly access or pay-per-use fits how your work arrives. Pay-per-use vs subscription works through both sides honestly, including the cases where a subscription genuinely wins.
Paste a product link. The brief builds itself.
Generate product videos, UGC-style ads and hooks in about 5 minutes.
Try v4vFrom $7 · no subscription, ever · credits never expire
FAQs
How much does Synthesia cost per month in 2026?
Verified 2026-08-07: Starter is $29 billed monthly or $18/month billed yearly, and Creator is $89 billed monthly or $64/month billed yearly. The free Basic plan is $0 with watermarked output, and Enterprise is custom-quoted. The advertised headline prices are the annual rates, so month-to-month billing costs about 60% more on Starter and about 40% more on Creator.
Do unused Synthesia minutes roll over?
No. Your allowance resets at the start of each billing period and unused minutes do not accumulate. There is also no mid-cycle top-up — if you hit the cap on Starter or Creator, your only options are upgrading the plan or waiting for renewal. That makes Synthesia awkward for work that arrives in bursts rather than at a steady monthly pace.
Does the Synthesia Creator plan include API access?
Yes. As of 2026-08-07 the pricing page lists API access on Creator, which is $64/month on annual billing or $89 monthly. Starter and the free Basic plan do not include it. Older comparison articles describing Synthesia's API as Enterprise-only are out of date, so check the current pricing page before building an integration budget around a sales call.
How many people can use one Synthesia subscription?
Starter and Creator each include one editor seat. Starter adds three guests and Creator adds five, but guests can view and comment rather than produce video. Two people making videos means two subscriptions. Five people on monthly Creator comes to roughly $445 a month. Multi-seat team pricing requires an Enterprise agreement and a sales conversation.
Is Synthesia's free plan enough to evaluate it?
For evaluating the editor, yes. Basic gives 10 minutes a month, one editor and nine stock avatars, and it is a standing free tier rather than a countdown trial. Output carries a Synthesia watermark, so you cannot use it for client work or anything you plan to run as a paid ad. Removing the watermark requires Starter or above.
Is Synthesia a good fit for product ads?
Rarely. Synthesia is built around a presenter on screen, and nothing appears in frame unless you supply it. Ad testing depends on generating many variants and discarding most of them, which a fixed monthly minute allowance penalises directly. For presenter-led training and internal comms it is a strong tool; for high-volume short-form product creative the metering fights the workflow.