What Synthesia Actually Costs in 2026
Minutes became credits. Here is the conversion nobody puts on the pricing page.
What you are actually buying
A shared credit currency consumed by video generation, dubbing and other AI features alike.
Do the maths
- =The published rate is 2 credits per second of video, which is 120 credits per minute.
- =At that rate a 3-minute video is 360 credits and a 10-minute video is 1,200, before any dubbing.
- =Dubbing draws on the same pool, so the same video in a second language costs again.
Worked from rates the vendor publishes. We do not estimate your usage, because we cannot know it, and a made-up average is worse than no number.
Where the bill surprises people
- !Your plan is quoted in credits, not minutes, so comparing it to the old minute allowance requires doing the conversion yourself.
- !A regenerated take costs the same as the first one. Iteration is billed, not free.
- !Video length caps force awkward splitting on longer material, which is a workflow cost rather than a billing one.
- !The avatars read as stiff outside explainer content, so the cheapest plan is wasted if the use case was never a fit.
Worth it if
You are corporate L&D producing training in many languages, where the alternative is a studio, a presenter and a reshoot every time policy changes.
Not worth it if
You are a solo creator. It is priced for a training department and the credit maths will not work in your favour.
Do the conversion before you buy
Synthesia moved its self-serve plans from minute allowances to a shared credit currency. The published rate is 2 credits per second, which is 120 credits per minute.
That single line is the whole reason this page exists. A plan quoted in credits is not comparable to the minute allowance it replaced until you divide by 120, and almost nobody does. Work out how many minutes of finished video your plan actually buys, then decide whether it is worth the money.
Iteration is the hidden cost
Credits are spent on generation, not on output you liked. Regenerating a take because the pacing was wrong costs the same as the first attempt. Dubbing into another language draws from the same pool again.
So the real question is not how many minutes of video you need, it is how many minutes of video you will generate to get there. For explainer content where the script is settled, that ratio is close to one. For anything where you are still finding the tone, it is not.
Where it genuinely earns the money
If you produce training in forty languages, the alternative is a studio, a presenter, and re-shooting the lot every time a policy changes. Against that, this is cheap, and the roughly 2,800 G2 reviewers saying so are mostly in exactly that situation.
Also worth knowing before you licence your own face to it: a Guardian investigation documented Synthesia's avatar technology being used for deepfake propaganda using paid models' likenesses without their agreement. The company has tightened controls since. Read how that is governed before you become an avatar.
What we would do
- •Corporate training at scale: buy it, and size the plan on generated minutes rather than finished minutes.
- •One-off marketing video: hire a person. The credit maths does not favour occasional use.
- •Multilingual dubbing of existing footage: check the credit cost of the dub against the cost of the original generation. They are the same pool.
What changed, with sources
- 2026-09-17pricing
Synthesia has converted its self-serve plans (Basic, Starter, Creator) from minute-based allowances to a shared credit currency consumed by video generation, dubbing and other AI features, at 2 credits per second of video (120 credits per minute).
Synthesia Knowledge Base - 2024-10-16conduct
Guardian investigation documented that Synthesia's avatar technology was used to produce deepfake propaganda videos for authoritarian regimes using paid models' likenesses without their agreement.
The Guardian
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Starting price checked against Synthesia's own pricing page on 2026-09-17 (source). Vendors change plans often, so confirm before you buy. Scores are our own editorial verdicts in cyders out of 5. How we score.
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