Alternatives
Synthesia alternatives, grouped by why you are leaving
There are four reasons people look for a Synthesia alternative and they lead to four different products — one of which is not an avatar tool at all. Every price below is from the vendor’s own pricing page, and one section argues for staying.
Published 10 September 2026 · 8 min read · prices read from each vendor’s own page on 10 September 2026
The short version
- Same thing, cheaper: HeyGen. $29/month for Creator with the watermark removed, against Synthesia’s $29 Starter — closer on features than on price, and the closest like-for-like swap.
- Workplace training: Colossyan. Built for L&D, does SCORM export, and its Starter tier is free with 20 minutes a month.
- You never actually needed a presenter: leave the category. An animated explainer draws the subject instead of filming a synthetic person describing it. This is the most common reason and the one nobody in the avatar market will tell you.
- You want it free: there is no free Synthesia. Every free tier here is watermarked, capped, or both — the section below says exactly how.
What Synthesia costs, so the comparison has a floor
| Plan | Monthly | Billed yearly | Included |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | Free | Free | 1,200 credits/month — about 10 minutes of video |
| Starter | $29 | $18 | 14,500 credits/year — 120 minutes of video |
| Creator | $89 | $64 | 44,000 credits/year — 360 minutes of video |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Unlimited video and dubbing minutes |
Worth noting before comparing anything: Synthesia prices in minutes per year. The Starter plan’s 120 minutes is a generous allowance for a training library and an irrelevant one if you make four marketing videos a year, where you are paying $216 annually for about six minutes of output.
If you want a cheaper avatar
Two products are the real options here, and both were read on 10 September 2026.
| Tool | Entry paid plan | Free tier | Best at |
|---|---|---|---|
| HeyGen | $29/mo Creator ($24 yearly) — 600 credits, 1080p, no watermark | 3 videos/month, 1 min each, watermarked | The like-for-like swap. Pro at $49 adds 4K; Business is $149/mo plus $20 a seat. |
| Colossyan | $59/mo Professional, or $30/mo per seat billed yearly | Starter, free — 20 min/month, 15 custom avatars | Workplace learning. SCORM export, interactive video, auto translation. |
| Synthesia | $29/mo Starter ($18 yearly) | 1,200 credits/mo, ~10 min | Dubbing and scale. The one everything else is measured against. |
The honest summary of that table is that switching between avatar tools saves tens of dollars a month and changes very little else. If price is genuinely the problem, the saving is real but small. If the videos are the problem, the next section is the one that matters.
If you do not need an avatar at all
This is the reason most people are searching, and it is usually discovered rather than decided: you make three or four avatar videos, they are competent, nobody watches them to the end, and the reason is that a person reading a script at the camera is not what the subject needed.
Avatars are strongest when the form of the message is a person addressing you — a compliance briefing, a welcome from the head of department, a policy update, a language lesson. They are weakest when the message is about a thing: a product, a process, a comparison, a set of numbers. There, the screen should be showing the thing, and an avatar is occupying the frame that should have contained it.
| If the video is… | The right form is | Because |
|---|---|---|
| Compliance or HR training | Avatar | Authority reads as a person. Synthesia and Colossyan are both built for exactly this. |
| Multilingual internal video | Avatar | Dubbing with matched lip movement is Synthesia’s strongest feature and hard to replace. |
| Product or feature explanation | Animation | The viewer needs to see the product, not a presenter describing it. |
| Anything with numbers in it | Animation | A chart on screen is the point. A person saying “revenue grew 40%” is not a chart. |
| Marketing explainers at volume | Animation, per video | Where we sit: €3 a finished video, no plan, so twenty videos is a decision about twenty videos and not about a tier. |
For the wider field of non-avatar tools — stock-footage assemblers, drag-and-drop studios, generators — the eleven-way comparison is on its own page: explainer video software compared.
If you want a free Synthesia alternative
The direct answer is that one does not exist, and it is worth being precise about what the free tiers actually give you, because “free plan” is doing a lot of work in this market.
- Synthesia Basic: free, 1,200 credits a month — around 10 minutes of video.
- HeyGen Free: three videos a month, one minute each, watermarked.
- Colossyan Starter: free, 20 minutes a month — the most generous of the three, and aimed at course creation.
When to stay on Synthesia
A page like this is supposed to end with “switch to us”. Here is the part that does not.
- You publish the same video in eight languages. Synthesia’s dubbing, with the presenter’s mouth matching the new language, is the feature the rest of the market has not caught. Starter includes 580 minutes of it a year.
- Your videos are training, and a person should deliver them. An animated explainer is the wrong form for a policy briefing.
- You produce more than about ten minutes a month. At that volume the subscription is doing its job, and per-video pricing stops being the cheaper answer.
- You have already built templates and a brand avatar in it. That is real sunk work and a $29 monthly saving does not outweigh rebuilding it.
Where ExplainVids fits, and where it does not
We are not an avatar tool and we are not trying to become one. There is no synthetic presenter, no lip sync and no dubbing. What there is: you type what the video should explain — or paste a URL and we read the page — and about two minutes later there is a narrated film with motion graphics, real voice, burned-in captions, vertical or widescreen, for €3 with no subscription.
Pick us over Synthesia when
- The subject is a product, a process, a comparison or a set of numbers — something to be drawn rather than described.
- You need a handful of videos a year and a $216 annual plan for six minutes of output is the wrong shape.
- You want to try one thing without a subscription decision attached to it.
Stay on Synthesia when
- A person on screen is the point, or the video must exist in several languages with matched lips.
- You are producing training at volume. That is their product and they are good at it.
If you are on Synthesia and the videos feel competent but flat, the cheapest way to test whether the avatar was the problem is to make the same script as an animated film and watch both. Three euros, about two minutes.
Make one and seeQuestions
What is the best Synthesia alternative?
It depends on why you are leaving. If you want the same thing cheaper, HeyGen is the closest match at $29 a month for the Creator plan with the watermark removed. If your videos are workplace training, Colossyan is built for that and has a genuinely usable free tier. If what you actually needed was the idea drawn rather than a person reading it, an avatar tool is the wrong category entirely and an animated explainer generator is the alternative — that is where we sit, at €3 per finished video with no subscription.
Is there a free alternative to Synthesia?
There are free tiers, and none of them are a free Synthesia. Synthesia's own free plan gives 1,200 credits a month, about 10 minutes of video. HeyGen's free tier is 3 videos a month, up to 1 minute each, watermarked. Colossyan's Starter tier is free with 20 minutes a month. Free in this category consistently means watermarked, capped in length, or capped in count — usually two of the three. If the video is going on a homepage, none of them apply.
How much does Synthesia cost?
Synthesia's Starter plan is $29 a month billed monthly, or $18 a month billed yearly, and covers 120 minutes of video a year. Creator is $89 a month, or $64 billed yearly, for 360 minutes a year. There is a free Basic tier at 1,200 credits a month — roughly 10 minutes — and Enterprise is custom-priced with unlimited minutes. Prices read from synthesia.io/pricing on 10 September 2026.
What is the difference between Synthesia and an animated explainer tool?
Synthesia puts a synthetic presenter on screen reading your script, so the picture is a person talking. An animated explainer draws the subject instead — charts, diagrams, maps, the product being used, motion cut to the words. Avatars suit training, compliance and internal communication, where a person addressing you is the right form. Animation suits marketing and product explanation, where what matters is the thing being described rather than who describes it.
Can I switch from Synthesia without a subscription?
Only by leaving the avatar category. Every serious avatar tool is a monthly or annual plan, so a switch between them is a switch of subscriptions. Paying per finished video exists on the animation side — ExplainVids is €3 a video with no plan — which is why per-video pricing usually appears in this search alongside the avatar tools rather than among them.
Is Synthesia worth it?
For workplace training, onboarding and multilingual internal video at volume, it is a strong product and the dubbing is the part competitors find hardest to match. For a marketing video where nobody needed a presenter, you are paying for an avatar you did not want and getting a video that looks like every other avatar video. That mismatch, rather than the price, is the usual reason people search for alternatives.
How these prices were checked
Every figure was read off the vendor’s own pricing page on 10 September 2026 — synthesia.io/pricing, heygen.com/pricing and colossyan.com/pricing — not from a review site or a listicle. Credit allowances are quoted as each vendor states them, which is why some are per month and some per year: that is how they publish them, and converting between the two invites an error that would misrepresent a competitor.
These plans change often. If you are reading well after 10 September 2026, check the one you are about to buy.
Related: explainer video software compared for the wider field, and what an explainer video costs if you are weighing software against hiring people.