HeyGen

There is one thing to count: how many videos with the same presenter you need each month. One trial video comes with the free plan; $29 gets you half an hour of talking-head video.

What people come to HeyGen to do and whether they will get it: the six most common requests in a month.

Who it is for. For people producing many similar videos with one presenter: course lessons, employee instructions, product updates, client messages as video. Record yourself once, then only change the text. For $29 per month, you get about 37 minutes of finished video with a photo avatar, and translating your own video into another language costs from 29 cents per minute.

Who else. For people assembling videos automatically: an agent turns one sentence into a video plan and shows the price in credits before generation, while connectors for n8n, Make, and Zapier use the same subscription credits as the browser button.

Who it is not for. Not for those who want to use it free of charge right away: three one-minute trial videos have a watermark, and the terms allow them for personal use only.

Suitable: section 3 takes you from sign-in to your first video. If you're choosing between it and Synthesia, see the decision guide in section 7.

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Two ways into one product: a script in the editor or one sentence to an agent, resulting in a video with a talking person. Everything is counted in credits per minute of finished video.

Three avatar generations. Avatar III launched in September 2024 and remains the cheapest, at 4 credits per minute from a video avatar. Avatar IV, from May 2025, animates one photo, people, drawn characters, and animals, and adds hand gestures. Avatar V, from April 2026, learns from a short video and keeps a person's appearance as clothing, background, and camera angle change; it works only with video avatars and costs 48 credits per minute.

Your own double. Avatar V requires a fifteen-second webcam recording and the “Clone a Real Person” button in the avatars section. Separately, you record a consent video, and the service compares its facial geometry with the face in the recording: you cannot digitize someone else without their recording, while you can request deletion of your own likeness. One avatar can have up to 500 looks under one consent.

Editor like a document. Script on the left, scene on the right, with every line tied to an avatar and voice. There is Voice Director for intonation, ready-made templates, a brand kit, auto subtitles, and collaboration with other people's cursors. Finished videos on Creator and Pro run up to 30 minutes, on Business up to an hour, and since July 2026 the vendor claims a 30-minute talking head in one pass.

Agent. In Video Agent mode, you write one sentence and the agent builds a plan: script, style, avatar, voice, duration, and an estimate in credits. After confirmation, it assembles the video and provides a scene-by-scene storyboard with an “Edit a copy in AI Studio” button. Since July 2026, the agent has used the open HyperFrames graphics engine, which writes animation in code.

Translation and dubbing. Upload a file or YouTube link, choose up to ten languages per pass and one of two engines, Speed or Precision. The result is dubbing with lip sync in the speaker's own voice plus SRT or VTT subtitles; a glossary keeps terminology consistent, and review mode lets you correct the translation before finalizing. The storefront promises 175+ languages, the help list has 85 base languages, and the rest are regional variants.

Interactive avatar. Real-time conversations with an avatar are hosted on a separate site, liveavatar.com, with its own plans and credits; a HeyGen subscription does not apply. A practitioner wrote in October 2025 that this avatar understands text in any language.

What the vendor itself shows. The header video is cut from the official AI Studio editor trailer on the vendor's site, uploaded Jun 2, 2025: document-style script on the left, scene with an avatar on the right, brand-kit and background selection. The interface has since been rebuilt; the screenshots above were made by the vendor for its help center in July 2026 and show the agent screen instead. We did not run videos through the service ourselves; the mechanics and figures come from the vendor's help center, storefront, and terms.

Step 1. Open app.heygen.com and create an account by email, no card needed. The free plan on the pricing page gives three one-minute clips a month, while the help center says "one to three depending on the region". On top of that you get one avatar of your own and three agent clips a month.

Step 2. Choose an avatar from the library of more than 500 faces, or record yourself for fifteen seconds and separately record consent. Enter the script in the editor's left column, choose a voice and background, then click Generate. The second route: one sentence in Video Agent, a video plan with an estimate, and confirmation.

Step 3. The video goes to moderation: “Pending” usually ends in approval, “Rejected” is issued for prohibited topics and other people's faces, and support cannot speed up review. You can download a 1080p file with Creator; on the free plan, the vendor promises a 720p viewing link. Finished-video translation is in Apps: file or YouTube link, language, engine.

Payment. The site checkout uses Stripe and Chargebee.  

Apps. Android: Google Play shows over one million downloads. The vendor warns that other Android listings are unofficial. There is no desktop app.

Steps verified Sep 6, 2026 against the heygen.com pricing page and help center, the terms of Jul 23, 2026 and the App Store and Google Play listings

There are no arenas or benchmarks for talking heads, so there will be no word “best” here: only vendor figures with dates, two ratings that contradict each other, and demand.

Vendor claims. A press release dated Jun 25, 2026 cites $200 million in annual revenue, doubled in eight months, 30 million users, and 196 countries; the counter on the company page showed around 162.5 million generated videos on 06.09.2026. The company has raised $74 million in total; its latest $500 million valuation was cited in June 2024, with no newer one announced publicly since.

Two ratings. On G2, it is 4.8 from 1,967 reviews; on Trustpilot, 3.7 from 3,221 with 18 % one-star ratings. In February 2026 it was 2.5 from 1,575 there, and you cannot conclude it got better because the share of five-star ratings fell over that period. The vendor pays for its Trustpilot profile and invites reviews itself; G2 collects opinions from business buyers, Trustpilot from people stuck on credits, charges, and support.

HeyGen's position among video tools appears beneath the card title; the full tool ranking is on the main page.

You pay with credits for minutes of finished video: entry is $29 per month for 600 credits, and the pricing page honestly shows the monthly price rather than the annual one.

Credit. This is the service's single currency: on Creator, a credit costs about five cents. One minute of a talking head with an Avatar IV photo avatar costs 16 credits, with a video avatar 31, and on Avatar V 48; one minute of translation costs 4 credits without lip sync, 6 in fast mode, and 10 in precise mode; one minute of agent video costs 40. So Creator's 600 credits become 37 minutes of photo-avatar video, 100 minutes of fast translation, or 12 minutes on Avatar V.

Free. The pricing page promises three one-minute videos per month; the vendor help center says “from one to three depending on region,” the free plan has no credits and includes three agent videos. Finished video is delivered as a 720p viewing link, the HeyGen watermark is removed only with Creator, and the terms allow free results only for personal use and internal evaluation.

Three plans. Creator is $29 per month or $24 with annual billing for 600 credits and videos up to 30 minutes. Pro ranges from $49 for 1,000 credits to $4,300 per month for 100,000, across ten tiers, with 4K export. Business is $149 for 1,500 credits plus $20 per seat, with videos up to one hour and the only option to buy extra credits, at five cents each. Annual billing saves 17 %, and a slot for a second personal avatar costs another $29 per month.

Three wallets. Subscription credits are used by the browser, app, connectors for n8n, Make, and Zapier, and MCP integration. The direct API runs on a separate dollar balance from $5, where one minute of Avatar IV costs $3, four times more than the same minute by subscription. The interactive avatar on liveavatar.com uses its own credits, unaffected by a HeyGen subscription.

Traps. Pausing a subscription burns all remaining credits; the vendor states this directly. On monthly plans, the balance survives one more cycle, while cancellation resets everything. Refunds are discretionary within the first 15 days, through Apple within the first 14, and unavailable if credits have already been spent. Unlimited plans were discontinued May 15, 2026; reviews mentioning “unlimited” describe a plan that no longer exists.

The site checkout uses Stripe and Chargebee; the vendor does not accept cryptocurrency.

Three questions: who owns the finished video, what the service does with your face and voice, and why it has 18 % one-star reviews on Trustpilot.

Who owns the video. On paid plans, it is yours: terms dated Jul 23, 2026 grant all rights to the result, including commercial use. On the free plan, the result is allowed only for personal use and internal evaluation; it cannot be sold or used in advertising. The same terms grant the vendor a perpetual license to your content, including for training its models, and it survives account deletion; opting out of training requires an email to support.

Face and voice. You cannot create a custom avatar without a consent recording: the service compares face geometry in the submitted video with the face in a separate verification recording, and the vendor says “No verification, no avatar.” Avatars of other people and public figures without their consent are prohibited by the moderation policy, and the vendor promises always to honor requests to remove your likeness. It does not sell biometric data, data may be processed in the United States, and the agreement is governed by California law.

Incidents. In March 2024, The Washington Post reported on Pennsylvania student Olga Loiek, whose clone appeared in thousands of videos on Chinese social media; some videos, judging by scammers' correspondence, were made in HeyGen, and the vendor did not respond to the newspaper's inquiry. In October 2024, a deepfake of HeyGen's CEO appeared in a phishing ad: the publication wrote that the clone was assembled on the HeyGen site itself; the vendor replied that the video was not made on its platform, but removed some avatars from the public library as a precaution. No breaches appear in Have I Been Pwned, and no regulatory lawsuits or fines were found as of 06.09.2026.

Why the one-stars. Trustpilot has 3,221 reviews, 18% of them one-star (Sep 6, 2026). Three themes recur: credits are charged differently from the price list, “74 credits each” instead of the promised 60 for a Seedance video (Aug 31, 2026); charges continue after cancellation and for people who thought they were on the free plan (Sep 4, 2026); support sells rather than helps (Sep 1, 2026).

Who is behind the service. A Los Angeles company founded by Joshua Xu and Wayne Liang, who previously worked at Snapchat and Smule. According to SCMP, it was founded in 2020 in Shenzhen as Surreal, moved to Los Angeles and became Movio in 2022; in spring 2023 the site changed its name to HeyGen, though the vendor does not publish this history. It raised $74 million; its latest round, $60 million at a $500 million valuation, was announced in June 2024, and no newer valuation has been publicly stated since. Headcount ranges from 130 to 200 by different estimates.

The difference is not quality, which nobody has independently measured, but what costs you more: a cheap working minute or free trial minutes.

If the character needs to copy a movement from your own video rather than speak a written script, compare HeyGen with Viggle AI.

Synthesia. London corporate video studio with the same $29 monthly entry point, but it gives 10 video minutes a month for that price versus 37 at HeyGen with a photo avatar, making a minute about $2.90. Its free plan does offer 10 minutes a month without a card, though, and it focuses on employee training and internal communications. HeyGen itself chose it as its main competitor: in August 2026, it published «15 Best Synthesia Alternatives» and asks AI assistants to place it alongside Synthesia.

HeyGen. Cheaper to use and broader in entry points: an editor, a one-prompt agent, finished-video translation for 29 cents a minute, and phone apps. The gap depends on the model: a minute costs $0.19 on the older Avatar III, but $2.32 on the flagship Avatar V, nearly as much as Synthesia. The trade-off is the stingiest free plan in the category: three one-minute videos with a watermark and no commercial use.

Who else is nearby. Rask AI only translates and dubs a finished clip, and a minute there costs $2.40 on the monthly plan against $0.29 at HeyGen. D-ID charges $29 a month for 15 minutes of avatar, or $16 with annual billing, Colossyan gives 20 free minutes a month and bets on training courses.

Three names in three years and four pricing-model changes: according to SCMP, the company started as Surreal in Shenzhen and became Movio in Los Angeles, the website turned into HeyGen in spring 2023, and unlimited plans were closed on 15.05.2026.