Is HeyGen free? Yes, but only for a small amount. HeyGen’s Free plan gives up to 3 videos a month (1 to 3 depending on your region). Each can be up to 1 minute long, exports at 720p, and carries a HeyGen watermark you can’t remove. Paid plans start at $24/month billed yearly ($29 monthly) for Creator with 600 credits, and Pro starts at $41/month billed yearly ($49 monthly).

HeyGen is the best-known AI avatar video tool. You type a script, and a digital presenter (a stock avatar or a clone of you) says it with lip sync, in 175+ languages on paid plans. This guide covers what the free plan includes, what the paid plans cost, how far the credits go, and when another tool is the better fit. All figures come from HeyGen’s own pages, checked on 2026-10-29. We also compare HeyGen with Synthesia, Hedra, D-ID and Krea. Krea is our product. It does not make avatar videos, and we say so below.

HeyGen and its alternatives at a glance

Need a cinematic shot, not a presenter?

Krea runs Kling 4.0, Seedance 2.5, Veo 3.1 and MiniMax H3 on your images and prompts, plus lip sync for portraits.

Try the Krea AI video generator

How we checked

Every number below comes from a page we opened on 2026-10-29:

HeyGen: pricing page, the help center articles on credit-based plans and watermark removal, its AI video generator and image to video pages, and its About page.
The alternatives: Synthesia pricing, Hedra pricing, D-ID Studio pricing, and Krea pricing.

We did not run paid quality tests for this post, so it makes no claims about output quality. Where a vendor’s own pages disagree, we say so.

What is HeyGen?

HeyGen is a web app for making AI videos with digital presenters. Its main products are:

AI avatars. A stock presenter (the Free plan lists 500+) or a custom avatar trained on your own footage or photo. HeyGen’s current avatar engines are Avatar III, IV and V.
Video translation. Upload a video and HeyGen dubs it into another language, re-syncing the lips. It covers 175+ languages and dialects on paid plans and 30+ on Free.
Video Agent. You give it a prompt, a script or a document, and it builds a finished video with an avatar, B-roll and captions.
Generative video. HeyGen’s AI video generator page says it “runs Seedance 2.0 for multi-shot B-roll and avatar scenes, Veo 3.1 for image to video, Nano Banana for stills, and Kling, Runway, and Hailuo for photo avatar motion.” The pricing page lists “Access to Seedance 2.5” as a Pro feature, so HeyGen’s own pages disagree on which Seedance version you get.
Talking photos. Upload a portrait and it speaks your script.

The typical buyer is a business: training teams, marketers and sales teams who need a person on screen without filming one. The pricing page says HeyGen serves “100,000+ businesses.”

Who makes HeyGen?

HeyGen’s About page says founder Joshua Xu was an engineer at Snap, building features for Snapchat Ads and the AI camera, before he started HeyGen. It lists offices in Los Angeles (12130 Millennium Drive), San Francisco, Palo Alto and Toronto.

Is HeyGen free? HeyGen pricing in 2026

HeyGen is mostly paid, but the free plan is a real, usable trial. Here are the individual and team plans as published on 2026-10-29:

What do HeyGen credits buy? HeyGen’s help center publishes per-minute rates. Avatar IV costs 16 credits per minute with a photo avatar and 31 with a video avatar. Avatar V costs 48, Video Agent costs 80 (240 in Seedance mode), and video translation costs 6 per minute with lip sync (10 in Precision mode, 4 without lip sync). Generated video assets start at 12 credits per minute and vary by model. For Creator’s 600 credits, that comes to roughly:

about 37 minutes of Avatar IV photo-avatar video,
about 19 minutes of Avatar IV with a video avatar,
about 12 minutes of Avatar V,
about 7 minutes of Video Agent output, or
about 2.5 minutes of Video Agent in Seedance mode.

Fine print:

Monthly subscribers’ unused credits roll over one more month, and annual subscribers’ credits build up until renewal.
If you cancel and drop to Free, unused credits expire.
HeyGen’s help center says free videos “automatically include the HeyGen watermark without the option for removal.”
HeyGen’s API is billed separately, pay-as-you-go, with no subscription.

How can I use HeyGen for free? Sign up for the Free plan, with no credit card. You get 1 to 3 videos a month depending on your region, each up to 1 minute. Use them to test a stock avatar, a custom avatar, and one translation before you pay. Everything you export is 720p with a watermark.

Is HeyGen worth it?

For avatar video, HeyGen is the category leader, and its pricing is clear. Three things to check before you

Work out credits per finished minute. The model and avatar engine you pick change the cost more than the plan does. Avatar V costs three times as much per minute as Avatar IV on a photo avatar, and Seedance-mode Video Agent costs 15 times as much.
Resolution follows the plan. Free exports at 720p, Creator at 1080p, and Pro and above at 4K.
Avatar video isn’t the same as cinematic video. If you need B-roll, product shots or a short film, HeyGen sends that work to partner models (Seedance, Veo, Kling). A tool built around those models gives you more models and more control per shot.

The best HeyGen alternatives

Synthesia: the closest avatar alternative

is HeyGen’s most direct competitor: AI avatars, dubbing and templates, aimed at training and internal comms. Its free Basic plan includes “10 minutes of Studio video creation or dubbing” and 500 credits, but “videos carry a Synthesia watermark,” and downloading starts on Starter. Starter is $19/month ($9 for the first month during the current promotion) with 1,250 credits, which Synthesia puts at about 12 minutes of video. Pro is $89/month with 6,000 credits (about 60 minutes). Synthesia exports Full HD at 1920x1080.

Pick it over HeyGen if you produce training content and want its templates, roleplays and surveys (Starter lists 125+ stock avatars). It stops at downloads, which aren’t available on free.

Hedra: expressive talking characters

makes models that animate a character image to an audio track, with more expressive faces than a typical corporate avatar. Its API is prepaid with “no subscription, no seats, no minimum,” from 2.5¢ per second for avatar and lip sync and from 1.13¢ per second for video generation. Studio plans start “from $20/month.” The Studio plan table didn’t load for us, so we can’t list its tiers. Hedra’s lip sync model is also available inside Krea’s lip sync tool.

Pick it if you want a stylized or cartoon character to talk, or you need lip sync through an API. It stops at translation and corporate avatar libraries.

D-ID: the cheapest talking photos

turns a single photo into a talking head. Its trial is 14 days with 3 minutes and a “full-screen watermark.” Billed yearly, Lite is $4.70/month (10 minutes, watermarked) and Pro is $16/month (15 minutes, commercial use license). We could only load the annual prices.

Pick it if you need a few short talking-photo clips on a small budget. It stops at minutes: 10 to 15 a month on the lower plans.

Krea: when you need a cinematic shot, not a presenter

Krea is our product, so here is the plain version. Krea doesn’t make avatar presenters, doesn’t translate videos, and has no stock avatar library. If that’s the job, use HeyGen or Synthesia.

Krea is built for generating the shot itself. Its AI video generator runs more than 20 video models in one workspace, including:

Kling 4.0, up to 30 seconds at 1080p,
Seedance 2.5, up to 30 seconds, Pro and above,
Veo 3.1, 4 to 8 seconds,
MiniMax H3, 5 to 15 seconds,
Wan 3.0, up to 30 seconds, plus Runway Gen-4.5 and others.

You can start from text or from an image, with start and end frames on most models. See image to video on Krea and our roundup of the best image to video AI tools. For a speaking face, Krea Lipsync animates a portrait to an audio track with VEED Fabric or Hedra. You can upload audio, record it, or generate speech from text in the same tool. You can upscale finished clips to 4K with the video upscaler, and Krea Agent plans multi-shot sequences from one brief.

Pricing, from krea.ai/pricing on 2026-10-29:

Free: $0 with 100 compute units a day, Krea 3 images and Krea Agent. The pricing page marks video access on Free as limited. In practice that means about two 5-second 512p clips a day with LTX-2 19B (34 units each). MiniMax H3 and Hailuo 2.3 Fast are also open to free accounts (H3 only during a MiniMax promotion), but one clip of either costs more than 100 units.
Basic: $5/month billed yearly ($9 monthly), 5,000 units (about 15 Seedance 2.0 Fast videos, per the page), selected video models and lip sync.
Pro: $21/month billed yearly ($35 monthly), 20,000 units and all video models.
Commercial license: included on paid plans.

Pick Krea over HeyGen if you’re making ads, B-roll, music videos or short films and want to choose the model per shot. It stops at avatars, translation and long talking-head videos.

Google Flow: free Veo clips

If you only need a few short generated clips, Google Flow gives everyone 50 credits a day, about five Veo 3.1 Lite clips of up to 8 seconds. It has no avatars or translation.

HeyGen vs Synthesia vs Krea: the comparison

Which should you pick?

You need a presenter to deliver a script, or to translate a video with lip sync → HeyGen. Start on Free, then Creator at $24 to $29.
You make training videos for a company → HeyGen Business or Synthesia. Compare credits per finished minute.
You need a talking cartoon or stylized character → Hedra, directly or through Krea Lipsync.
You need a few talking-photo clips on the smallest budget → D-ID Lite.
You need the shot itself (an ad, B-roll, a product reveal, a music video) → Krea, with Kling 4.0, Seedance 2.5 and Veo 3.1 side by side.
You only want free clips → Google Flow, 50 credits a day.

For more on AI video for ads, see how to make AI ads and UGC ads for free in 2026 and the 5 best AI video models for UGC shorts.

FAQ

Partly. HeyGen's Free plan costs $0 with no credit card and gives 1 to 3 videos a month depending on your region. Each video can be up to 1 minute, exports at 720p and carries a HeyGen watermark that free users can't remove. Paid plans start at $24/month billed yearly ($29 monthly) for Creator, per HeyGen's pricing page on 2026-10-29.

Creator is $29/month, or $24/month billed yearly, with 600 credits. Pro starts at $49/month ($41 billed yearly) with 1,000 credits, and its tiers go up to 100,000 credits for $4,300/month. Business is $149/month plus $20 per seat with 1,500 credits. Enterprise is custom. Prices checked on 2026-10-29.

1 to 3 videos a month, depending on your region, each up to 1 minute long. The Free plan also includes 3 Video Agent videos a month, one custom video avatar, 500+ stock avatars, one voice clone and 30+ languages. Free videos export at 720p with a watermark.

Yes. HeyGen's help center says free user videos automatically include the HeyGen watermark with no option to remove it. Watermark removal starts on the Creator plan.

It depends on the feature. At HeyGen's published rates, 600 credits is about 37 minutes of Avatar IV with a photo avatar (16 credits/min), 19 minutes with a video avatar (31/min), 12 minutes of Avatar V (48/min), 7 minutes of Video Agent (80/min), or 2.5 minutes of Video Agent in Seedance mode (240/min).

For avatar video, Synthesia's free plan includes 10 minutes of video or dubbing, but output is watermarked and downloads need a paid plan. For short generated clips, Google Flow gives 50 credits a day, about five Veo 3.1 Lite clips. For cinematic video and image to video with several models, Krea starts at $5/month billed yearly. Its free plan covers images and about two short LTX-2 video clips a day.

For some jobs. Krea has no AI avatars or video translation, so for presenter videos HeyGen or Synthesia fit better. Krea is the better fit for cinematic shots, ads, B-roll and image to video with Kling 4.0, Seedance 2.5, Veo 3.1 and MiniMax H3. For a talking portrait, its Lipsync tool runs VEED Fabric and Hedra.

HeyGen's About page names founder Joshua Xu, a former Snap engineer who worked on Snapchat Ads and the AI camera, and lists offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Palo Alto and Toronto.

Make the shot, not just the presenter

Kling 4.0, Seedance 2.5, Veo 3.1 and MiniMax H3 in one workspace, with lip sync for portraits. Video from $5 a month billed yearly.

See Krea plans