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Synthesia prices verified September 14, 2026
Quick answer: Synthesia's free plan can't download videos, Starter is $29/month (or $264/year) for 120 minutes per YEAR, and annual billing is the only route to the included custom avatar
Per the official synthesia.io pricing page checked September 14, 2026, the $0 Basic plan generates up to 10 minutes of video a month but withholds MP4 download and logo removal entirely — a preview, not a product. Starter at $29/month (or $264/year) unlocks downloads and logo removal, yet its 120-minute allowance is per year — roughly 10 minutes a month, the free plan's throughput with an exit door. Creator at $89/month ($804/year) carries 360 minutes a year plus API access; Enterprise holds SCORM, SSO, and unlimited minutes. Minutes never roll over, and a custom personal avatar comes with Starter only on annual billing; Studio Avatars are a $1,000/year add-on. On annual Starter, video runs roughly $2.20 per minute. Batch product-video buyers should price-check Wizstar first — its entry plan renews at $18.05/month, under a limited-time campaign at the time of checking.
Verdict: Synthesia’s free plan cannot be downloaded, and the paid minutes are counted per year
Based on the official synthesia.io pricing page checked on September 14, 2026, Synthesia’s $0 Basic plan will generate up to 10 minutes of avatar video a month from 1,200 credits — and then keep it: MP4 download and logo removal both start at the Starter tier, so nothing made on the free plan ever leaves the platform. The second number buyers misread sits one tier up. Starter costs $29 a month or $264 a year, and its allowance is 120 minutes of video per year — spread evenly, roughly 10 minutes a month, the same throughput the free plan already gives you. What Starter actually sells is the exit door: downloadable files, the Synthesia logo gone, 125+ avatars, and — on annual billing only — one custom personal avatar. Creator at $89/month or $804/year triples the pool to 360 minutes a year and adds API access and interactive video; Enterprise is custom-priced and is where unlimited minutes, SCORM export, and SSO live. Unused minutes do not roll over. If your workload is batch product or marketing video rather than structured training, spend five minutes on Wizstar’s pricing page first — its entry plan renews at $18.05 a month, under a limited-time campaign at the time of checking.
Money disclosure first: Wizstar links here carry an affiliate identifier that can earn us a commission at no extra cost to you; Synthesia is not a partner and pays us nothing. Neither fact bends a figure below, and a full section argues the case for simply buying Synthesia.
Compare Wizstar’s current pricing first →
How this guide was put together
Every Synthesia figure below comes from the official synthesia.io pricing page, checked on September 14, 2026. One quirk of that page deserves a flag: it geo-displays prices in local currency, but Synthesia’s own pricing FAQ states its plans in US dollars, so USD is what we quote. Wizstar figures come from the official wizstar.com pricing page checked the same day, where every price appeared under a limited-time campaign at the time of checking. We have not benchmarked avatar realism or render speed; this is a close reading of published plans plus arithmetic, and anything we calculate rather than quote is labeled roughly. Synthesia’s marketing statements (trusted by 90% of the Fortune 100, 1M+ users, 2,000+ five-star G2 reviews) are Synthesia’s own claims, which we attribute but have not audited. Our standards are described in How We Evaluate Software.
The free plan is a preview, not a product
On paper, Synthesia’s $0 Basic tier looks like one of the more generous free plans in AI video. The page we reviewed lists:
- 1,200 credits a month, good for up to 10 minutes of video — a real monthly production allowance, not a one-off trial.
- 9 AI avatars and 3 personal avatars, with 160+ languages available.
- A limited stock library and AI-chat support only — no human support channel listed.
- No MP4 download and no logo removal — both are listed as starting at Starter.
That fourth line is the entire story. You can script, generate, revise, and watch ten minutes of avatar video every single month — inside Synthesia. The file never becomes yours: it stays on the platform, logo intact, until a paid plan unlocks the download button. So read Basic for what it is: an unusually long test drive that answers the pre-purchase question — does this avatar deliver your script, in your language, convincingly? — while producing nothing you can publish. If a video needs to reach an audience, a client, or an LMS, the free plan cannot ship it, by design.
Synthesia’s paid tiers decoded
Synthesia sells two self-serve paid tiers plus a sales-led Enterprise plan, all subscription-only — the FAQ confirms there is no pay-per-video option. Read the allowance column with care: on paid plans, the unit is minutes per year.
| Plan | Price | Video allowance | What the tier adds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic (Free) | $0 | Up to 10 min/month (1,200 credits) | 9 AI avatars, 3 personal avatars, 160+ languages, limited stock library, AI-chat support; no MP4 download, no logo removal |
| Starter | $29/month, or $264/year | 120 min per year | Video downloads, Synthesia logo removal, 125+ avatars, 1 editor plus 3 guests; one custom personal avatar included with annual billing |
| Creator | $89/month, or $804/year | 360 min per year | 180+ avatars, 5 personal avatars, API access, interactive videos, branded video pages, 1 editor plus 5 guests |
| Enterprise | Contact sales | Unlimited minutes | 240+ avatars, unlimited personal avatars (fair use), SAML/SSO, SCORM export, 1-click translation into 80+ languages, dedicated CSM |
Two clauses worth circling in ink
First: Starter’s custom personal avatar — the feature most solo buyers are actually shopping for — is included only when you bill annually. Pay $29 month to month and the published plan does not include it; commit $264 up front and it does. Second: Studio Avatars, Synthesia’s higher-production avatar format, are not part of any listed tier — they are a separate paid add-on at $1,000 per year. Anyone budgeting for a studio-grade digital presenter should start their arithmetic from that number, not from $29.
The minutes-per-year trap
Here is the misreading this article exists to prevent. Starter’s price is quoted per month — $29/month — and it sits beside an allowance of 120 minutes. The natural assumption is 120 minutes a month. It is 120 minutes a year. Averaged out, that is roughly 10 minutes of video a month — numerically identical to the free plan’s throughput. Starter is not a volume upgrade at all; it is a rights upgrade that lets the same ten-ish monthly minutes leave the building as clean, downloadable, logo-free files. Creator’s 360 minutes a year averages roughly 30 minutes a month, which is where genuine volume begins.
The trap has a second jaw: per Synthesia’s own FAQ, unused video minutes do not roll over. The pool is annual, but a quiet stretch is not savings — capacity you never render is gone at renewal. So budget against real output first: a team publishing four 5-minute training modules a month needs roughly 240 minutes a year — past Starter’s entire pool by early summer, comfortably inside Creator’s. That multiplication decides the tier faster than any feature list.
The limits that trigger each upgrade
The download button pushes you to Starter ($29/month, or $264/year)
This is the least optional upgrade in the lineup. The free plan withholds MP4 export and logo removal entirely, so the moment any video must be published, delivered, or uploaded elsewhere, Starter stops being a choice. Committing annually at $264 both lowers the price and is the only published way Starter includes a custom personal avatar — two reasons pointing at the same toggle.
Minutes, the API, and interactivity push you to Creator ($89/month, or $804/year)
Creator’s case is threefold: the allowance triples to 360 minutes a year, personal avatars grow from one to five, and the tier holds the builder features — API access for programmatic generation, interactive videos, and branded video pages. If your production plan clears 120 minutes a year, or a developer wants to script video creation, Creator is the first tier that can say yes.
SCORM, SSO, and unlimited minutes make Enterprise unavoidable
Neither self-serve tier lists SCORM export, SAML/SSO, or unlimited minutes — those live only on the custom-priced Enterprise plan, alongside unlimited personal avatars under fair use, 1-click translation into 80+ languages, and a dedicated CSM. If training must land in an LMS as a SCORM package, or IT requires single sign-on, no cheaper tier exists; the only question is what sales quotes you.
Real cost per minute, in rough numbers
Because Synthesia meters minutes, cost per finished video minute is computable — a rarity among AI video tools, and worth doing before you buy. Every figure below is derived arithmetic from the official prices, so treat each as roughly right.
| Plan and billing | Yearly outlay | Minutes/year | Roughly, per minute |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter, annual | $264 (quoted) | 120 | Roughly $2.20 |
| Starter, monthly | Roughly $348 ($29 × 12) | 120 | Roughly $2.90 |
| Creator, annual | $804 (quoted) | 360 | Roughly $2.23 |
| Creator, monthly | Roughly $1,068 ($89 × 12) | 360 | Roughly $2.97 |
Three conclusions fall out. First, annual billing is the plan: a year of monthly Starter runs roughly $348 against $264 billed annually — roughly $84 saved, about 24%, roughly $22 a month in effect — and the annual route is also the only one that includes Starter’s custom personal avatar. Second, the tiers cost almost the same per minute on annual billing, so buy Creator for the minutes and the API, not for unit savings. Third, add-ons dominate quietly: a Studio Avatar at $1,000 a year costs nearly four Starter-annual subscriptions by itself. And since unused minutes vanish, roughly $2.20 is a floor — render only 60 of Starter’s 120 minutes and your true rate was roughly $4.40.
When to price-check an alternative first
Synthesia’s pricing rewards one shape of work: planned, presenter-led video in steady annual volume — training, onboarding, internal comms. If your real job is the opposite shape — many short product or marketing videos, generated in batches, across whatever model is best this month — the per-year minute pool is the wrong container, and that is the case for a detour to Wizstar’s pricing page before subscribing.
Per the official wizstar.com pricing page checked September 14, 2026 — where every price was shown under a limited-time campaign at the time of checking — Wizstar’s Starter plan costs $8.99 for a promotional first month (a 72% new-user discount) and renews at $18.05 a month, with 1,310 monthly credits rated for up to 32 videos or 436 images, watermark-free exports, and cancel-anytime terms. Plus runs $36.27 a month under the campaign (list price $69.99) with 2,690 credits for up to 67 videos; Pro is $166.32 (list $359.99) with 13,040 credits for up to 326 videos; Enterprise is sales-led. An annual toggle advertises up to 53% off, with figures we did not capture. The platform bundles 10+ major models, including Seedance 2.5, Kling 3.0, and MiniMax H3, aimed at turning product links, images, and ideas into videos.
Three asymmetries before comparing. Campaign prices can end — the list prices are the anchors, and your checkout total is your real price. The meters differ — Synthesia counts minutes, Wizstar counts credits and videos, with no published conversion, so run one real job on each rather than comparing denominators. And Synthesia’s captured page documents SCORM, SSO, and a personal-avatar pipeline that Wizstar’s does not list. We ran this same decode on Synthesia’s closest rival in HeyGen Pricing Explained, and the avatar-platform head-to-head lives in Synthesia vs HeyGen.
Synthesia is the right buy if…
None of the fine print above makes Synthesia a bad purchase — it makes it a specific one. Skip the detour and go straight to Synthesia if most of these describe you:
- You produce structured, presenter-led video on a plan — training modules, onboarding, policy explainers — and your annual output fits 120 or 360 minutes.
- You can commit annually. The $264 Starter year is cheaper than twelve $29 months and is the published route to a custom personal avatar.
- Localization is a core requirement — 160+ languages are listed from the free tier up, and Enterprise adds 1-click translation into 80+ languages.
- An enterprise track record matters to your stakeholders. Synthesia itself claims 90% of the Fortune 100 as customers, 1M+ users, and 2,000+ five-star G2 reviews — its numbers, but the kind procurement likes to see.
- Your free-plan test already sold you, and the only thing standing between you and publishing is the download button.
Buy Creator over Starter only if you can name the trigger — the minutes, the API, or interactive video — and accept Enterprise only when SCORM or SSO leaves no alternative. And if your videos are products, not presentations, run the cheap experiment first: put one real brief through Wizstar’s entry plan and let cost per finished video decide.
See Wizstar’s current plans and campaign pricing →
Frequently asked questions
Is Synthesia free?
Partly. Synthesia's Basic plan costs $0 and, per the official pricing page checked September 14, 2026, includes 1,200 credits a month — enough for up to 10 minutes of video — with 9 AI avatars, 3 personal avatars, and 160+ languages. The catch is decisive: MP4 download and logo removal both start at the Starter tier, so free-plan videos can only be watched inside Synthesia. It is a genuine way to test avatars on your own script, but it cannot produce a single file you can publish or send.
How much is Synthesia per month?
Per the official pricing page checked September 14, 2026 (which its FAQ prices in USD): Starter is $29/month, or $264/year on annual billing, with 120 minutes of video per year, downloads, and logo removal. Creator is $89/month, or $804/year, with 360 minutes per year, 5 personal avatars, API access, and interactive videos. Enterprise is custom-priced with unlimited minutes, SCORM, and SSO. Watch the units: the paid allowances are minutes per year, not per month — Starter averages roughly 10 minutes of video a month.
Do unused Synthesia minutes roll over?
No. Per Synthesia's own pricing FAQ, unused video minutes do not roll over. The allowance is stated per year — 120 minutes on Starter, 360 on Creator — and whatever you have not rendered when the plan renews is gone. That makes a realistic production forecast the most important pre-purchase step: multiply videos per month by average length by twelve, then pick the tier your total fits. Under-buying forces a mid-year upgrade, but heavy over-buying quietly raises your true cost per minute above the roughly $2.20 the arithmetic suggests.
How much is a custom avatar on Synthesia?
Two different answers, per the pricing page checked September 14, 2026. A custom personal avatar is included with the Starter plan — but only on annual billing at $264/year; the published monthly plan does not include it. Creator lists 5 personal avatars, and Enterprise offers unlimited personal avatars under fair use. Separately, Studio Avatars — Synthesia's higher-production format — are a paid add-on at $1,000 per year on top of any plan. If a studio-grade presenter is the goal, budget from that four-figure number, not from $29 a month.
Is Synthesia cheaper billed annually?
Yes, and unusually, both figures are quoted on the official page rather than derived: Starter is $264/year annually versus $29/month — roughly $348 over a year, so annual billing saves roughly $84, about 24%. Creator is $804/year versus $89/month, roughly $1,068 across twelve months. Annual billing is also the only published way Starter includes a custom personal avatar, which stacks a feature reason on top of the price reason. The main argument for monthly billing is an honest one: you are still not sure you will use it all year.
Is there a cheaper alternative to Synthesia?
For batch product and marketing video, Wizstar's entry pricing is lower: per its official pricing page checked September 14, 2026, Starter costs $8.99 for a promotional first month and renews at $18.05/month with 1,310 credits rated for up to 32 watermark-free videos — against Synthesia Starter at $29/month with roughly 10 minutes of video a month. Two caveats: every Wizstar price appeared under a limited-time campaign at the time of checking, and the platforms meter differently — minutes versus credits — so test one real job on each rather than comparing labels.
All Synthesia prices, allowances, and plan features come from the official synthesia.io pricing page reviewed September 14, 2026; that page geo-displays local currency, but its own FAQ states plans in USD, and USD is what we quote. Paid video allowances are per year (120 minutes on Starter, 360 on Creator), unused minutes do not roll over per the official FAQ, Starter's custom personal avatar is included only with annual billing, and Studio Avatars are a $1,000/year paid add-on. Wizstar figures come from the official wizstar.com pricing page reviewed the same day, where every price was shown under a limited-time campaign at the time of checking (Starter renews at $18.05/month after the $8.99 promotional first month; list prices: $69.99 Plus, $359.99 Pro). Figures such as roughly $348, $1,068, $22/month, and $2.20 per minute are derived arithmetic, labeled as rough. Fortune-100, user-count, and G2 claims are Synthesia's own. Synthesia is not an affiliate partner and pays us nothing; Wizstar links are affiliate links. Reconfirm prices and terms on the official pages before purchase.