How much does Synthesia cost per minute of video?
About $1.80 per minute of finished video on the cheapest annual plan. Synthesia meters roughly 2 credits per second from an annual pool: Starter's 14,500 credits a year (vendor says up to 120 minutes) costs $216 billed yearly — $18/month — so about $1.80 a minute; Creator's 44,000 credits (up to 360 minutes) costs $768, about $2.13 a minute. Higher tiers buy more minutes, not much cheaper ones, and re-renders cost their seconds again. Read off synthesia.io/pricing, Jul 25, 2026.
Avatar video is inherently pricier per minute than voice-only tools because you're rendering a synthetic presenter, not just audio — so Synthesia's ~$1.80 a minute on Starter sits an order of magnitude above AI-voice rates, which run $0.14–0.20. Note the direction, too: Creator costs *more* per minute ($2.13), not less, because the credit-to-video rate is fixed and higher tiers buy a bigger pool rather than a discount. Compare against other avatar tools, not voice tools, when budgeting.
Because the meter is per second from an annual pool, the real cost driver is revision: every re-render spends its seconds again. Work it through on Starter, where a credit costs $216 ÷ 14,500 ≈ $0.0149 and a minute of video costs 120 credits. A three-minute module that ships on the first take is 360 credits — about $5.36, or the headline $1.79 a delivered minute. Send it through two review passes and it is 1,080 credits, about $16.09, and the delivered rate is $5.36 a minute. Nothing about the video changed; the reviewers did.
That is the number to budget against, because it also resets what the plan actually holds. Starter's 14,500 credits are billed as 120 minutes, and they are — of rendered video. At three takes per module that is roughly 40 minutes of delivered course content a year, or about thirteen three-minute modules. Teams that lock the script and the on-screen text before the first render, rather than after, get two to three times more finished video out of the same plan. Convert credits to minutes in the Synthesia credits calculator, with the full plan math in the pricing breakdown.
Synthesia's per-minute rate by plan
| Plan | Billed annually | Credits / year | Vendor's stated minutes | ≈ $ per finished minute |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $216 ($18/mo) | 14,500 | up to 120 | ≈ $1.80 |
| Creator | $768 | 44,000 | up to 360 | ≈ $2.13 |
Read off synthesia.io/pricing, Jul 25, 2026. Higher tiers buy a bigger pool, not a cheaper rate — Creator costs more per minute than Starter. Re-renders spend their seconds again.
Sources checked
Official vendor pages used for pricing, rights and feature claims.
- Synthesia pricing - plan tiers, minute caps, custom-avatar add-on and watermark-free export
Sizing a Synthesia plan from that rate
Synthesia meters an annual pool, so the question is whether your yearly minutes fit rather than any single month. Higher tiers buy more minutes rather than much cheaper ones, so the cheapest plan that covers the year is usually the right one.
Keep going
- Synthesia credits calculator — Credits → minutes at 2/second.
- Synthesia pricing (2026) — The annual credit pool decoded.
- Does Synthesia charge per minute or per video? — The per-second meter.