By the end of this comparison you will know exactly what each plan buys, why the advertised price tells you almost nothing about how many videos you get, and which of the two is the right purchase for a Hong Kong small business. You will also know when the right answer is to buy neither.
What are you actually deciding between?
Synthesia and HeyGen both turn a typed script into a video of a realistic presenter speaking it. No camera, no studio, no presenter. For a Hong Kong SME that means a property agent can produce a listing walkthrough, a distributor can produce a product explainer, and a shop can produce staff training, all from a laptop.
They are the two most established products in this category, and in 2026 they both moved to credit-based pricing. That single change is why most price comparisons published this year are wrong.
How much does Synthesia cost in 2026?
Synthesia publishes four tiers. Prices below are from Synthesia's own pricing page as at August 2026, converted at approximately HK$7.8 to the US dollar.
Synthesia plans and what they include.
--- Basic: US$0. 10 minutes of video per month. 9 AI avatars. 1 editor seat. 10 minutes of dubbing.
--- Starter: US$29/month billed monthly, or US$18/month billed yearly (about HK$226 or HK$140). 10 minutes of video per month on monthly billing, or 120 minutes per year on annual. 125+ avatars, 3 personal avatars, 1 editor plus 3 guests.
--- Creator: US$89/month billed monthly, or US$64/month billed yearly (about HK$694 or HK$499). 30 minutes per month, or 360 minutes per year. 180+ avatars, 5 personal avatars.
--- Enterprise: quoted. Unlimited minutes, 240+ avatars, SSO.
Read the first two lines again. The free Basic plan includes 10 minutes of video per month. The paid Starter plan, on monthly billing, also includes 10 minutes of video per month.
US$29 a month buys you zero additional video. What it buys is 125 avatars instead of 9, removal of the watermark, the right to download the file, and three guest seats. Those may be worth paying for. They are simply not what most buyers think they are paying for.
How much does HeyGen cost in 2026?
HeyGen moved to credits in June 2026 and publishes the rates. The figures below come from HeyGen's own credit pricing documentation, dated 23 June 2026.
HeyGen plans and what they include.
--- Free: 1 to 3 videos per month depending on your region, up to 1 minute each, 720p share link only. No credits.
--- Creator: US$29/month (about HK$226). 600 credits per month. Videos up to 30 minutes. 1080p export. 5 custom digital twins. Voice cloning. 175+ languages. Watermark removal. No one-time credit top-ups.
--- Pro: from US$49/month for 1,000 credits (about HK$382), scaling in tiers up to 100,000 credits. 4K export.
--- Business: US$149/month for the first seat plus US$20 per additional seat. 1,500 credits shared across the whole workspace. Videos up to 60 minutes. SSO, SCORM export, LMS integration.
Two details on Business that decide the bill. Extra seats do not add credits, so a five-person team on Business shares the same 1,500 credits a solo user would get. Business is also the only tier that can buy top-up credits, at US$0.05 each in blocks of 100 for US$5.
How many videos does a credit actually buy?
This is the question the price tables do not answer, and it is the only one that matters. A credit has no fixed value. What it buys depends entirely on which button you press.
HeyGen's published credit costs per feature.
--- Avatar III: 3 credits per minute.
--- Avatar IV or V, the photorealistic quality most buyers actually want: 20 credits per minute.
--- Custom Expressive Motion: 40 credits per minute.
--- Video translation: 5 credits per minute, or 10 in precision mode, or 2 without lip sync.
--- Video Agent: 30 credits per minute in standard mode, 90 in Seedance mode.
--- One generated video asset: 60 credits for Seedance2 at 720p, 150 at 1080p, 90 for VEO3.
Now apply those rates to the same US$29 Creator plan. Its 600 credits are worth 200 minutes of Avatar III video, 30 minutes of Avatar IV or V, or 15 minutes of Custom Expressive Motion. That is a thirteenfold swing in what the identical subscription delivers, decided by a dropdown most first-time users never think about.
Synthesia's conversion is simpler but has its own trap. Every second of video costs 2 credits, so one minute costs 120 credits. Basic and Starter both allocate 1,200 credits a month, Creator 3,600. However AI dubbing with lip sync costs 240 credits per minute, which is double the cost of generating the original video. For a Hong Kong business planning an English video plus a Cantonese version, the second language costs twice what the first one did.
What does a year actually cost, on the same workload?
Take a realistic Hong Kong scenario: a nine-person property agency in Tsuen Wan wants two listing videos a week, roughly two minutes each. That is about 16 minutes of finished video per month, at the photorealistic quality clients expect.
What that workload costs at list price, per year, at HK$7.8 to the US dollar.
--- Synthesia Starter, annual billing: US$216/year, about HK$1,685. But 120 minutes per year is 10 minutes a month, so the agency runs dry around the 20th of every month.
--- Synthesia Creator, annual billing: US$768/year, about HK$5,990. 360 minutes a year covers 16 minutes a month with room to spare. This works.
--- HeyGen Creator: US$348/year, about HK$2,714. 600 credits a month at 20 credits per Avatar IV minute is 30 minutes. This works, at 45% of the Synthesia cost.
--- HeyGen Pro, 1,000 credits: US$588/year, about HK$4,586. 50 minutes a month, plus 4K export.
The verdict on price is not close for this workload. HeyGen Creator delivers roughly double the usable photorealistic output of Synthesia Creator for less than half the money. That gap only appears once you convert credits into minutes, which is precisely the step the pricing pages leave to you.
Where does each one genuinely win?
An honest comparison has to hand rows away, and this one does. Neither product wins everything, and for some Hong Kong buyers the cheaper option is the wrong purchase.
Synthesia wins on predictability and on training content. Minutes are minutes. A manager who has to budget for a year and explain the number to an owner will find Synthesia's model far easier to forecast than a credit table with six burn rates. It is also the stronger choice for structured training material, where consistency across dozens of modules matters more than visual flair.
Synthesia wins on credit rollover for annual buyers. Annual subscribers accumulate unused credits until renewal. A quiet January genuinely funds a busy October.
HeyGen wins on Cantonese, which for many Hong Kong businesses ends the argument. HeyGen supports 175+ languages and dialects and explicitly lists Chinese (Cantonese, Traditional). Synthesia's library is smaller at roughly 140. If your customers are Cantonese-speaking and your video needs to sound like it was made in Hong Kong rather than dubbed into Hong Kong, test this before anything else.
HeyGen wins on output per dollar and on video length. Videos run to 30 minutes on Creator and 60 on Business, against Synthesia's tighter monthly minute caps at comparable prices.
Neither wins on rollover for monthly buyers. HeyGen rolls unused credits forward one cycle. Synthesia does not roll over at all on monthly billing, and if you upgrade mid-cycle your existing balance is discarded rather than carried.
What are the limits nobody puts on the pricing page?
Both products share category limits that no plan removes. These are the reasons AI video projects stall after month two, and they are worth knowing before you pay.
Limit one: the avatar does not know your business. It reads what you write. If your script contains the wrong price or an outdated specification, you have produced a polished, permanent, sharable version of your mistake.
Limit two: Cantonese output still needs a native ear. Support for a language is not the same as sounding natural in it. Written Chinese read aloud by a synthetic voice can be technically correct and still land as stiff to a Hong Kong viewer. Generate one real minute in Cantonese and play it to a customer-facing colleague before you subscribe.
Limit three: the pricing model can change under you. Both vendors moved from unlimited or minute-based plans to credits during 2026. HeyGen's legacy unlimited plans still exist for existing customers but cannot be rejoined once cancelled. Budget on the plan you can buy today, not the one a review site described last year.
Limit four: custom avatars carry separate costs. HeyGen sells extra video avatar slots at US$29/month or US$300/year. Synthesia's Studio Express-1 avatar is a US$1,000/year add-on available to annual plans only, and can take up to ten days to process.
Limit five: neither replaces the reason to be on camera. A synthetic presenter is excellent for repeatable, factual, translatable content. It is a poor substitute where the point of the video is that a customer sees the actual owner of the actual shop.
Which should you buy, and when should you buy neither?
The decision comes down to three questions, and most Hong Kong SMEs can answer all three in ten minutes.
Buy HeyGen Creator (US$29/month) if you need Cantonese, you want photorealistic avatars, and your volume is under about 30 minutes a month. This covers most Hong Kong retail, property and distribution use cases.
Buy Synthesia Creator (US$64/month annual) if your content is structured training in English, you need predictable minute-based budgeting, and multiple colleagues will be producing videos.
Buy HeyGen Business (US$149/month) only if you genuinely need SSO, SCORM export or LMS integration. Remember that extra seats add no credits, so buying it for team access alone means paying US$20 a head for people drawing on a pool that never grows.
Buy nothing yet if you have not produced a single video. Both products have free tiers, and both free tiers are enough to answer the only question that matters, which is whether your customers respond to a synthetic presenter at all. Generate one Cantonese minute on each, send it to five customers, and let their reaction decide.
Buy nothing at all if what you actually need is a phone, a tripod and twenty minutes. A Hong Kong shop owner filming themselves explaining a product often outperforms a flawless avatar, because the thing being sold is familiarity.
And a note on where UD fits, honestly. UD's AI Staff Solution is not a video generator and is not sold per seat, so if your question is which subscription to buy for making videos, buy one of the two above and stop reading here. UD becomes relevant when the repetitive work around the videos is the real cost: writing and rewriting scripts from a product list every week, keeping the same content synchronised in English and Traditional Chinese across a website and two marketplaces, or handling the enquiries the videos generate. The honest first step is to count those tasks for two weeks, not to book a demo.
Frequently asked questions
Is HeyGen cheaper than Synthesia? For photorealistic avatar video, yes, substantially. HeyGen Creator at US$29/month yields about 30 minutes of Avatar IV or V output, while Synthesia Creator at US$64/month annual yields 30 minutes. Same output, less than half the price.
Do unused credits roll over? On HeyGen, monthly subscribers roll unused credits forward one billing cycle and annual subscribers accumulate them until renewal. On Synthesia, credits reset at the start of each billing period with no accumulation, and an upgrade mid-cycle discards your existing balance.
Can I make Cantonese videos with these tools? HeyGen explicitly supports Chinese (Cantonese, Traditional) among 175+ languages and dialects. Synthesia supports roughly 140 languages. Test the actual output before committing, because supporting a language and sounding natural in it are different things.
Which plan should a one-person business start on? Start on a free tier. HeyGen Free gives 1 to 3 one-minute videos a month; Synthesia Basic gives 10 minutes a month with a watermark and 9 avatars. That is enough to test audience reaction before any spending.
Why did both companies switch to credits in 2026? Credits let one balance cover video generation, translation, image generation and agent features that consume very different amounts of computing power. It is more flexible for the vendor and less predictable for the buyer, which is why converting credits to minutes before you buy is now an essential step.
The one thing to take away
The advertised price of an AI video tool no longer tells you how much video you get. In 2026 both leading vendors sell credits, and a credit is worth 3 minutes or 15 seconds depending on a setting you choose after you have already paid. Before you subscribe to either, convert the credit allowance into minutes at the quality you will actually use, then compare. That single calculation is worth more than every feature table you will read this month.
We understand AI. UD stands with you. Twenty-eight years of working alongside Hong Kong businesses has taught us that the expensive mistakes are rarely made at the point of purchase. They are made when nobody converted the units.
Reviewed by the UD AI team, Hong Kong. Prices verified against vendor documentation on 14 August 2026 and are subject to change.
Not sure which repetitive work is worth automating?
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