Synthesia Review (2026)From €12/mo, 10 Video Minutes
By Daan Haket · Tested hands-on · written with an AI assistant · who does what
The minute caps are tight: Starter's 1,250 credits a month is roughly 10 to 12 minutes of finished video, and the meter counts seconds. Throughout this review we weigh it against HeyGen.
teams making talking-head training, explainer and onboarding videos without cameras, actors or editing.
you need lots of video or cinematic, human-shot production — the minute caps and avatar style won't fit.
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A new free Basic account. We made one 29-second video from a blank template with a stock avatar and our own 99-word script, read the credit meter on the Billing page before and after, then changed one word and generated it again. The same day we compared the app's upgrade window with the public pricing page.
- Onboarding knew who we were before we told it. We skipped the company-website question, yet the prompt box was pre-filled with a brief about our own site, with suggestions such as 'Introduce the Tool Finder', and four draft videos about us appeared in the library without being asked for. They used no credits.
- The meter charges by the second. Our 29-second video took the Billing page from 0 to 59 of 1,200 credits, about 2 credits a second, and the app's banner went from '600 seconds' to '571 seconds of video creation time left'. In this account the free month is 10 minutes of finished video. The public pricing page the same day prices video at 100 credits a minute, which would make 59 credits about 35 seconds.
- A small edit did not cost the whole video again. After changing one word and generating again, the meter moved from 59 to 63 credits. The second time, though, the button read 'Generate in 15 minutes' instead of 'Generate' and the job went into a queue. Each version took about eight to nine minutes from the click to a finished video.
Pricing (2026)
✓ Pricing re-verified 1 Oct 2026
| Plan | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Basic | $0 | 500 credits/month; 10 min video or dubbing free; 3 survey responses; watermark; shared by link |
| Starter | $29/month, or $18/month billed yearly | 1,250 credits/month (15,000/year); ~12 min video beyond free allowance |
| Pro | $89/month or $64 billed yearly | 6,000 credits/month (72,000/year), ~60 min; scales to 48,000 credits at $676 |
| Enterprise | quote-only | — |
Summarised from the pricing notes below; the notes carry the conditions.
The public pricing page, read without signing in from a Netherlands connection, now shows dollars and a new credit model: 'Credits are now the shared currency across all AI usage-based features'. Basic is $0 with 500 credits a month plus a free allowance of 10 minutes of video or dubbing and 3 survey responses; free videos carry a Synthesia watermark and are shared by link.
Starter is $29 a month, or $18 a month billed yearly, with 1,250 credits a month (15,000 a year), which the page puts at about 12 minutes of video on top of the free allowance. Pro, which replaces Creator on the plan cards, is $89 a month or $64 billed yearly with 6,000 credits a month (72,000 a year), about 60 minutes, and scales to 48,000 credits a month at $676.
Full pricing notes (2 more paragraphs)
Enterprise is quote-only. The page's calculator prices video at 100 credits a minute, dubbing at 76 and a survey response at 350, with the first 10 minutes of video included on every plan. Inside the app the same day, signed in on Basic, the upgrade window still showed the earlier plans in euros: Starter €19 a month or €12 billed yearly with 15,500 credits a year (up to 120 minutes of video), and Creator €79 or €49 with 72,500 credits a year (up to 360 minutes).
In our own test the meter charged 59 credits for 29 seconds of video. Check which plan your checkout shows before budgeting. A Studio avatar remains a paid add-on.
Plans change — always verify the live price on their site.
Category context: Operations & Workflow. Across the 53 tools in this category that we researched with a public US-dollar price, the median entry price is $29 a month (lowest paid plan as listed, per seat where the vendor prices per seat). Synthesia’s entry price of $29 a month sits roughly at that median. Compare pricing conditions in the Software Cost Atlas →
What the price did
We capture Synthesia’s own pricing page every month and keep the figures, so this is our record of the page — not a forecast, and not someone else’s summary.
Synthesia's page has carried two different ladders all summer. The FAQ block has quoted $29 and $264 a year for Starter and $89 and $804 for Creator across every reading we have, and it still did on 14 September 2026; both readings also carry the $1,000-a-year Studio avatar add-on. The plan cards quoted $29 a month and $18 a month on annual billing for Starter, and $89 and $64 for Creator, when we re-read them on 17 August 2026. On 14 September 2026 those same cards served us euros from a Dutch address and lower numbers with it — €19 and €12 for Starter, €79 and €49 for Creator — while the FAQ below them did not change at all. So the internal contradiction we first documented has widened rather than closed, and the page is geo-priced on top of it. On 1 October 2026 the page had moved to a new credit model: the FAQ no longer quotes $264 or $804, the plan cards (read without signing in, in dollars) list Starter at $29 or $18 with 1,250 credits a month and a Pro plan at $89 or $64 with 6,000 credits a month where Creator used to be, and Basic adds 500 credits to its 10 free minutes. The upgrade window inside the app, the same day, still showed the euro ladder of 14 September: Starter €19 or €12, Creator €79 or €49.
The honest knock
A small edit generated again cost us 4 credits rather than the whole video, but the free plan put that second render in a 15-minute queue. Fantastic for avatar-led training and explainers without a studio, but not for high-volume or cinematic production. And check the plan at checkout: the app and the public pricing page described different plans on the same day.
Watch the video review
The video version of this review, from our YouTube channel.
⚡ Short on time? Watch the 30-second verdict Short.
What Synthesia does
AI avatar video for training, explainers and onboarding: type a script, no camera or actors needed. Re-generating an edit spends the minutes again.
What buyers report about Synthesia
Hands-on: tested 2026-10-01Reported by buyers: G2, SourceForge and practitioner reviews, read August 2026
Themes from the buyer-review sites listed at the foot of this page, read in August 2026. We tested Synthesia ourselves on 2026-10-01, but one test is a narrow sample, so here is what other buyers report. We summarise it here because the complaints are usually the part a vendor page leaves out.
- • Avatars and languages at a quality that makes internal training video practical without a studio — that is the job and it does it.
- • New annual rates from $18/month, and the free plan gives full AI Playground access.
- • The minute allowance is the trap. Basic is 36 minutes a year, Starter 120. A single five-minute training module with dubbing and multiple scenes eats a large share of a month's budget, and corporate buyers report hitting the ceiling in their first session.
- • The plan most people actually need is Pro (Creator in the app's own upgrade window) at $64/month billed yearly ($89 month to month) or Enterprise on a quote — not the tier the pricing page leads with.
- • Reviewers report being misled about credits rolling over, and confusion between annual and monthly billing.
- • The avatars lack warmth. For anything emotional or creative, reviewers say it shows.
- • SourceForge holds a single Synthesia review and it is from April 2023, so treat it as one dated voice rather than a trend. Two of its points are still worth checking against your own use: a cap on video length (the reviewer puts it at 10 minutes per video) and limited control over the speed, pitch and emotion of the generated voice.
When the paid plan is worth it
Free videos keep the Synthesia watermark and are shared by link; downloads and logo removal start on Starter. Which Starter you are offered depends on where you look. The public pricing page (1 October 2026, in dollars) sells Starter at $29 a month or $18 billed yearly for 1,250 credits a month, and Pro at $89 or $64 for 6,000 credits a month, adding five personal avatars, branded video pages and interactive video.
The upgrade window inside the app the same day still sold Starter at €19 or €12 with 15,500 credits a year and Creator at €79 or €49 with 72,500 credits a year. The step to take seriously is not the money but the minutes. The public page puts 1,250 credits at about 12 minutes; at the rate our own account was charged, 59 credits for 29 seconds, it is closer to 10.
A team publishing weekly will cross into Pro on volume long before it needs the features. Work out your minutes first, and confirm the plan on the checkout page itself.
Our monthly capture read this vendor's pricing page in September 2026 and again in October 2026, and the amounts were the same both times, including $18, $29, $64 and $89 from the pricing above. We keep watching — the registry records what moves.
What we found running Synthesia ourselves
The first findings are at the top of this page. The rest:
- An upgrade window ('You only have 600 seconds of video creation time left') opened the moment we clicked Generate, and again on every reload of the video page.
- On Basic the video carries the Synthesia logo. 'Remove watermark' is marked as paid in the Generate window, and the Billing page lists 'Download your videos' as a Starter feature; we did not try to download.
- The app and the public pricing page described different plans on the same day. The app's upgrade window offered Starter at €19 a month or €12 billed yearly with 15,500 credits a year, and Creator at €79 or €49 with 72,500 credits a year. The public pricing page, read without signing in and served in dollars, lists Starter at $29 or $18 with 1,250 credits a month and a Pro plan at $89 or $64 with 6,000 credits a month where Creator used to be; its own comparison table still says 'Free, Starter, and Creator'.
- The AI Assistant page that should have built a video from our prompt stayed on a loading screen for over 90 seconds in our session, so we built the video from a blank template instead.
Mail in the first 14 days
Mail timeline: not measured.
What this test does not show:
- downloading, dubbing, personal avatars, longer videos and the paid plans
Most of our reviews are researched rather than run — how we review explains which is which, and why we do not pretend otherwise.
How to actually use Synthesia
Count seconds before anything else, because that is how the meter charges: in our test a 29-second video cost 59 credits, and the same video generated again after a one-word fix cost 4 more. Work out how many finished minutes you need a month, then read across to a plan on the checkout page itself, since the public pricing page and the app's upgrade window showed different plans on the same day (1 October 2026).
Make your first video on the free plan before you pay, but know what you are testing: the free tier has 9 avatars against 125+ on Starter, and the app lists downloads as a paid feature. Use it to judge whether the avatar and voice quality clears your bar, not to judge the product. Personal avatars are the feature people buy this for and the one with a real limit: 3 on Starter, 5 on Pro (Creator in the app's own upgrade window), unlimited only on Enterprise.
If you plan to put several colleagues on camera, count heads before you pick the tier.
Distilled from Synthesia's pricing page read without signing in on 1 October 2026 (served HTML, in dollars), and the upgrade window, Generate window and Billing page inside a free Basic account the same day.
The natural comparison is HeyGen or D-ID — other AI-avatar video tools. Weigh it against HeyGen on the job you actually need done.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Synthesia cost?
Read on 1 October 2026 on the public pricing page, in dollars: Basic free (10 minutes of video and 500 credits a month), Starter $29 a month or $18 billed yearly, Pro $89 or $64 billed yearly, Enterprise on quote. The upgrade window inside the app showed the older Starter and Creator plans in euros the same day (€19 or €12, and €79 or €49). Take the figure from your checkout, not from either page.
Which plan do I actually need?
Count minutes, not features. The plans are metered in video-minute credits and reviewers consistently report the allowance, not the price, as what forces an upgrade — a single five-minute module reshot a few times with different voices eats a surprising share of a year's allowance. Work out your annual minutes first, then read across to the plan.
What are the alternatives worth looking at?
That is the most-searched thing about Synthesia on our pages, and it depends which half of the job you need. If you need a presenter on screen, the comparison is with other avatar-video tools. If you already have visuals and only need the voice, a text-to-speech tool like Murf covers that half for a fraction of the price — people search for exactly that comparison. Where reviewers say Synthesia is hard to replace is multilingual training video at consistent quality.
What is Syren, and how many credits does it use?
Syren is the AI video agent Synthesia launched in October 2026: you describe the video in a chat prompt, add a doc, deck, image or YouTube link if you have one, and it builds the whole video with motion graphics, voiceover, music and avatars, which you then refine in the chat. It runs on the same credits as the rest of the account. Read on 9 October 2026, the pricing page says a 1-minute Syren video typically uses 1,000 to 2,000 credits, while the FAQ on Synthesia's own Syren page gives that same range for a two-minute video with up to two rounds of edits. On either reading, one Syren video can use most or all of the 1,250 credits a month that Starter includes, so budget for it before you rely on it. Each user gets 2,000 Syren-only launch credits that are valid for one month and marked as limited time; after that, Syren draws on your normal credits. Syren arrived after our 1 October run, so these credit figures are Synthesia's own.
Is this a hands-on review of Synthesia?
Yes. We tested Synthesia ourselves on 2026-10-01; the section above says what we tested, what we found and what we did not test, and where a figure comes from the vendor's own documentation instead. Most of our reviews are researched rather than run; we say which is which. We name what each tool is good and bad at, and we earn a commission only if you sign up, at no cost to you.
- Buyer reviews on G2, SourceForge and practitioner reviews, read August 2026.
- Re-read 1 October 2026.
- Our own hands-on session with Synthesia (2026-10-01), written up in full further down this page.
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