Synthesia Pricing Explained: Free, Starter, Creator & Enterprise

Two Numbers That Look Similar But Aren't

Synthesia's pricing page has two numbers that look similar but mean different things: "video minutes" and "credits." Confuse them, and it's easy to pick a plan that runs out of the wrong allowance a few weeks in.

This breaks down exactly what each Synthesia plan includes, what video minutes and credits actually gate, and which tier fits your team — using the confirmed numbers from Synthesia's own pricing page.

The Four Synthesia Plans

Synthesia runs four tiers. Free costs nothing and includes 9 stock avatars, 1 personal avatar, 10 video minutes a month, 1,200 credits a month and 1 editor seat, with no credit card required.

Starter is $29/month billed monthly or $18/month billed annually, and includes 125+ avatars, 3 personal avatars, 120 video minutes a year, downloadable videos, AI Dubbing across 70+ languages, and no Synthesia branding. Creator is $89/month billed monthly or $64/month billed annually — the most popular tier — and adds API access, interactive videos, multiple avatars per scene, 180+ avatars, 5 personal avatars and 360 video minutes a year. Enterprise is custom-priced and includes 240+ stock avatars, unlimited personal avatars, unlimited video minutes, SSO/SAML, unlimited translation across 80+ languages and SCORM export.

Video Minutes vs. Credits: What's the Difference

Video minutes are the actual output length you can generate in a billing period — 10 minutes a month on Free, scaling up to 120 minutes a year on Starter and 360 a year on Creator. Credits are a separate usage metric spent on generation and certain features, renewing monthly on every plan.

The distinction matters because a team can be well within its credit allowance and still hit its video-minute cap, or the reverse. Watch both numbers in your first month on any plan rather than assuming one tracks the other.

A practical way to think about it: video minutes cap how much finished output you can generate, full stop — hit that limit and you can't render more video until the next cycle, regardless of remaining credits. Credits are consumed by generation itself and by certain features, so a team doing a lot of re-generation and editing iterations before landing on a final video can burn through credits faster than the video-minute count alone would suggest.

Why Starter and Creator Measure Minutes Per Year, Not Per Month

Unlike the Free plan's monthly minute allowance, Starter and Creator allocate video minutes annually — 120 minutes a year on Starter, 360 a year on Creator. That works out to roughly 10 and 30 minutes a month on average, but the annual framing means you can use more in a busy month and less in a slow one, rather than losing unused minutes at the end of every billing cycle the way a strict monthly cap would.

What You Give Up on Free vs. Paid

The Free plan's biggest limitations are the personal-avatar count (1) and downloadable video access — Free doesn't include the ability to download without a watermark or remove Synthesia branding, both of which start on Starter. API access and multiple avatars per scene are gated behind Creator specifically, not available on Starter.

If you're mainly testing whether avatar video quality is good enough for your use case, Free is genuinely enough for that. Once you need to actually publish videos without a watermark or need more than one custom avatar, Starter is the realistic next step.

It's also worth noting what doesn't change between Starter and Creator: both include AI Dubbing across 70+ languages and downloadable video without Synthesia branding. The real gap between those two tiers is API access, multiple avatars per scene, and a meaningfully larger annual video-minute allowance (360 vs. 120) — not translation or export capability.

Which Plan Fits Your Team

A solo user validating the workflow can start on Free and move to Starter once they need downloadable, unbranded video. A team that needs API access — publishing avatar video programmatically, or multiple avatars appearing in one scene — needs Creator specifically, since that's the first tier both features unlock on.

Enterprise makes sense once compliance is the deciding factor: SSO and SAML aren't relevant to a five-person marketing team, but they're often a hard requirement for a company that needs to clear a formal IT security review before rolling out video generation company-wide.

If you're still deciding between Synthesia and a competitor on price, or want to see the training-specific use case this pricing supports, those are both worth reading in full separately.