Synthesia prices in credits, which makes its plans hard to compare at a glance. Do the comparison properly and something strange falls out: the free plan and the $29 plan include exactly the same number of credits. Understanding what that means is most of this decision. Prices verified on 2026-09-09.
What a credit is worth
1,200 credits is roughly 10 minutes of finished video, or about 25 generated assets. Credits are also spent on AI dubbing, so a video you translate into three languages costs considerably more than the same video in one.
The rough conversion to hold in your head: 120 credits per minute of video. Everything below is easier to read with that number.
The free plan, and the thing it will not let you do
The free plan gives 1,200 credits a month — about 10 minutes — with 1 editor and 9 stock avatars, and it asks for no card.
It also watermarks everything and does not allow downloads. You can build the video and watch it. You cannot publish it, put it in an ad, hand it to a client, or upload it anywhere.
So the free plan is an evaluation environment, and a good one: ten minutes a month is enough to learn the tool properly and decide whether the avatars are convincing enough for your use.
What $29 actually buys
Starter is $29 a month, or $18 a month on annual billing ($216 a year). It gives you 1 editor plus 3 guests, 125+ avatars, AI dubbing, logo removal, downloads — and 1,200 credits a month, the same allowance as the free plan.
That is worth stating plainly: the upgrade from free to Starter does not give you more video. It gives you permission to use the video you already make. Downloads and the removal of the watermark are the product at this tier.
That is a perfectly reasonable thing to sell, and it makes the decision unusually clean. If you need finished video you can publish, it is $29 (or $18 annual). If you are still deciding whether AI video works for you, the free plan is not a crippled trial — it is the same output volume, just unusable commercially.
Annual is the best discount in this range: $216 a year against $348 at the monthly rate, a genuine 38% saving, and the annual plan is quoted at 14,500 credits for the year rather than 1,200 a month. Take it only after the free plan has convinced you, but if you are staying, take it.
When to go to Creator
Creator is $89 a month, or $64 on annual ($768 a year). Here the credits genuinely change: 3,600 a month, three times Starter, or about 30 minutes of video. It also adds 180+ avatars, 5 personal avatars, API access, branded pages and interactive video.
Two reasons to be on it, and only two:
- You need more than ten minutes of video a month. At Starter's 1,200 credits you run out around the tenth minute, and there is no partial top-up in the tier structure.
- You want an avatar of a specific person. Personal avatars start at Creator and are not available below it, and for most brands this is the actual reason to upgrade.
If neither is true, $89 buys avatars you will not use.
When a cheaper tool does the job
Synthesia is the most corporate-polished of the AI video tools, which is exactly right for training, onboarding, internal comms and product explainers — and can be exactly wrong for social.
Short social video. HeyGen is more flexible for creative and social formats: HeyGen vs Synthesia.
Turning written content into video. InVideo and Pictory work from a script or an article rather than an avatar-first studio: Synthesia vs InVideo and Pictory vs Synthesia.
Faceless YouTube. The avatar is often the wrong shape entirely for that format — see best AI video tool for faceless YouTube and the how-to guide.
For the full set of ways out, see Synthesia alternatives.
The short version
Count in minutes: 120 credits each. The free plan gives you ten minutes a month, watermarked and undownloadable, which makes it a genuine evaluation rather than a tease. $29 buys downloads and the removal of the logo, not extra video — so upgrade when you need to publish, not when you need more. $89 is the tier where the volume actually triples and where personal avatars begin. And if you are staying past a month, annual is a real 38% cut, unlike almost everything else in this category.
For where Synthesia's free tier sits against every other one we have checked, see the Free Plan Index.