Synthesia vs D-ID Pricing and Cost per Minute for Teams

Synthesia is now the cheaper avatar platform per finished minute, and D-ID is the cheaper ticket in. Synthesia Starter costs $18 a month billed yearly ($216 a year) and, with the 10 video minutes every plan includes, buys about 270 minutes a year, roughly $0.80 a minute. D-ID Studio Pro, its first plan licensed for business use, costs $191 a year for 15 minutes a month, about $1.06 a minute. D-ID wins back the lead through its API, at about $0.78 a commercial minute on Launch and $0.69 on Scale.

Synthesia figures come from synthesia.io/pricing and its pricing FAQ, D-ID figures from the Studio and API pricing pages on d-id.com with the annual toggle selected. Both were read in October 2026 and all prices are in US dollars. Cost per minute is our arithmetic from those pages, because neither vendor publishes it.

Synthesia vs D-ID pricing plan by plan

Synthesia reshaped its plans in 2026. The middle tier is now called Pro instead of Creator, video is billed at 100 credits a minute, and every plan, paid or free, includes 10 minutes of video a month before credits are touched. D-ID still sells plain video minutes, the same minute whichever avatar you pick.

Two things stand out. Synthesia has no personal use tier: once you pay, you can publish. D-ID splits its cheap plans into personal and commercial, so a business that buys Lite to save money is buying the wrong plan. The real starting price for a company on D-ID is Studio Pro.

How much does Synthesia cost per minute compared with D-ID?

Between $0.80 and $1.29 per finished minute on Synthesia's self serve plans, and between $1.06 and about $1.96 on D-ID Studio. Synthesia's included 10 minutes a month do most of the work at the low end, which is why Starter billed yearly is the cheapest minute either company sells without a sales call.

One caveat on the Synthesia side. If your team never uses the free 10 minutes because one person burns through them on drafts, count only the credits: Starter monthly then works out near $2.32 a minute and Pro monthly near $1.48. Synthesia sells extra credit bundles too, for example 12,000 credits a month for $176 on Pro, about $1.47 a minute. For the full Synthesia plan math, see our Synthesia pricing breakdown; for every D-ID tier, see D-ID pricing per minute.

The billing rules that change the real bill

D-ID rounds every clip up to 15 seconds

A 20 second intro bills as 30 seconds on D-ID. A sales team sending hundreds of short personalized clips can lose a third of its allowance to rounding, so size the plan on rounded lengths. Synthesia charges per generated second.

Synthesia charges edits only for what changes

Synthesia says credits are used when something is generated, never while you edit or preview, and that editing three seconds of a finished video and regenerating charges three seconds. For training content that gets revised every quarter, that rule is worth more than any headline price.

Neither one rolls minutes over

D-ID minutes renew monthly and do not carry over. Synthesia's monthly allowances reset each billing period too, but on annual plans the whole year of credits is available up front, and credits you buy separately stay valid for 12 months. Lumpy production schedules fit Synthesia's annual plans better.

D-ID Studio and API share one balance

D-ID confirms that Studio and the API draw on the same minutes, so a developer test run can drain the marketing team's month. Synthesia also says API usage draws from the same credit balance as the subscription. In both cases, give the API its own workspace or plan if two teams share an account.

Seats work differently

Synthesia's self serve plans have one editor with 3 or 5 guests who can review and comment. D-ID lists team collaboration under Enterprise. A team of three editors on either platform ends up buying three plans or talking to sales.

Is Synthesia better than D-ID?

For training, onboarding and internal communications, yes. Synthesia has the full browser editor, guests for review, cheaper minutes on annual billing, edit billing that only charges what changed and SCORM on Enterprise. D-ID is the better fit when the job is a photo that needs to talk, a short spokesperson clip for one person on a tight budget, or personalized video generated by code.

Which is better for sales videos, Synthesia or D-ID?

D-ID, if the videos are personalized and generated in bulk. Its API renders a commercial minute for about $0.78 on Launch and $0.69 on Scale, and a 20 second clip with the prospect's name and company is exactly what it was built for. Teams that drop those clips into a cold email sequence usually pair the API with a tool that can send personalized cold emails at scale, so each prospect gets the clip made for them. Synthesia suits sales enablement content instead: product walkthroughs and objection handling videos the whole team reuses.

Does Synthesia or D-ID have a free plan?

Synthesia does. Basic is $0 a month with 10 minutes of video, 500 credits and 9 avatars, with Synthesia's logo on every video. D-ID offers a 14 day trial with 3 minutes in total and a full screen watermark. Neither is meant for publishing, so judge both on the paid plan you would run every month.

Which one should you buy?

Still deciding between more than two avatar vendors? Our HeyGen vs Synthesia comparison and HeyGen vs D-ID pricing use the same cost per minute method, and DeepBrain AI vs HeyGen covers the one platform that does not meter avatar minutes at all.

When neither avatar platform is the answer

Plenty of buyers pricing Synthesia and D-ID do not need a presenter reading a script. They need a product shot, a location or a vertical ad opener, and an avatar platform will not film any of that. VideoMake renders original 4, 8 or 12 second clips from a prompt or a still image in 9:16 or 16:9, plus 4 or 8 second lip synced presenter hooks, on plans from $49 a month. At about $1 per second of 720p video it costs far more than an avatar minute, so it is the wrong tool for a ten minute lesson and the right one for the shots that lesson cuts away to. You can describe the scene in the panel at the top of this page and see the clip.