Easier to evaluate for freeEditorial callBoth are real free tiers. Synthesia's is denominated in output minutes, which is the unit the person approving the project already thinks in, so a free-tier result is easier to act on.
Ten minutes, refillingOur pick on this row
Three clips, one minute each
Breadth of language supportEditorial callHeyGen markets translation and lip sync across languages as a headline capability rather than a feature. We have not measured output quality in either, so this is a read of what each vendor builds toward, not a test result.
Strong
Pushed harder in the productOur pick on this row
Rows marked Editorial call are our judgment, not a published fact. Every other row carries two sourced values, listed in full below.
Choose Synthesia if
You need to produce a finished module and show it to whoever signs it off. Ten minutes of video a month is an evaluation budget you can plan around, and it is denominated in the same unit your stakeholder thinks in.
Choose HeyGen if
You are judging whether AI avatars are good enough at all. Three one-minute clips answers that question quickly, and HeyGen pushes harder on translation and lip sync across languages.
Both of these turn a script into a video of a presenter who does not exist. They overlap enough that most teams will only buy one.
Rows marked Editorial call are our judgment and carry the reasoning. The fact row carries two published figures with the pages they came from, and you can check both in under a minute.
We have not compared output quality. Doing that honestly would mean generating the same script through both and having somebody who is not us judge the result, and we have not done it. What we can compare is what each vendor lets you produce before paying, which is the thing that decides which one you try first.
Neither entry price appears in the table. Synthesia's Starter figure is on its profile; HeyGen's pricing page localised when we read it and we would rather you read the current figure on their page than take a converted one from us.
Where these numbers came from
Every figure above is the vendor's own published number. Each row names the document it was read from and the day a human opened it.
Source ledger: every claim on this page with its document and the date it was checked