HeyGen Pricing (2026): Free, Creator $29, Pro $49, Business $149, and What a Minute of Video Costs

The short answer

As of October 18, 2026, HeyGen costs $0 on Free (3 videos a month, 1 minute each), $29 a month on Creator ($24 billed yearly) for 600 credits, from $49 a month on Pro for 1,000 credits, and $149 a month on Business plus $20 per extra seat for 1,500 shared credits. The plan price is the easy part. What you actually buy is minutes of finished video, and that number swings about 7x depending on which avatar model you pick.

HeyGen publishes its per-minute credit rates in its help center, not on the pricing page. I put the two together below, so you can see what one minute costs and how many minutes each plan really holds before you pick one.

HeyGen's plans side by side

Two lines on that table matter more than they look. Creator and Pro can't buy a top-up. If you run dry on the 20th, you upgrade or you wait. And Business seats don't come with credits. The fifth person you add costs $20 a month and shares the same 1,500.

What one minute of video costs on each model

HeyGen meters most video by the minute of output, at a different rate per model. Here are the published rates, and what a minute costs in dollars on Creator, where a credit works out to about 4.8 cents ($29 / 600). On Pro's $49 tier it's 4.9 cents, nearly the same.

Custom Expressive Motion, the prompt that makes an Avatar IV move more, adds 40 credits a minute on top. HeyGen also says rates can vary by account and region, and the number shown in the app before you generate is the one you pay. Check it once on your own account before you plan a month around this table.

The takeaway: "600 credits" is 150 minutes if you're fine with Avatar III, or 12 minutes if you want the newest model. Decide which model your videos need before you decide which plan.

A worked example: one month of training videos for a 20-person company

Say an operations manager wants to replace "watch me do it on a Zoom call" with short training videos. The plan: 8 videos a month, about 4 minutes each, on Avatar IV made from real video footage of the manager, so it looks like them. Then a Spanish version of each for half the team.

• Making the videos: 8 × 4 minutes = 32 minutes × 31 credits = 992 credits.
• Spanish versions with lip-sync (speed mode): 32 minutes × 6 credits = 192 credits.
• Total: 1,184 credits, before a single retake.

Creator's 600 doesn't come close. Pro's $49 tier (1,000) covers the English versions with 8 credits to spare, which means the first rewritten script pushes you over. Business at 1,500 covers everything with about 316 credits left for retakes, and a second seat for whoever reviews the drafts brings it to $169 a month. Make the avatar from a photo instead (16 a minute) and the 32 English minutes drop to 512 credits, which fits on Creator at $29 if you skip the Spanish versions. The model choice moves this bill more than the plan does.

That training job is the one most owners are really pricing. If you're still deciding what your team should learn first, and in what format, start with AI training for employees.

Is HeyGen free?

Yes, for a test. Free makes 3 videos a month, each up to 1 minute, with 500+ stock avatars and 1 custom video avatar. It doesn't use credits, so you can't spend your way into longer videos on it. Make one real video on Free, then do the per-minute math above on the model you'd actually use.

Credits that roll over, and credits that don't

• Monthly plans: unused credits roll over for one more month, then expire.
• Annual plans: credits keep piling up until your renewal date.
• Cancel: credits left at the end of the period are gone. There's no cashing out.
• Upgrades take effect right away, prorated, and add the new credits immediately. Downgrades wait until the end of the cycle.

So yearly billing on Creator saves $60 a year ($24 vs $29), and it also lets a slow month bank credits for a busy one. If your video output is lumpy, that second part is worth more than the discount.

HeyGen or Runway: a talking person or a generated scene

These two get compared a lot, but they meter different things. HeyGen sells minutes of a person talking to camera. Runway sells seconds of generated footage: product shots, b-roll, scenes nobody filmed. Runway's Gen-4.5 uses 12 credits a second, so one minute is 720 credits. That's a third of the 2,250 credits in Runway's $35 Pro plan, about $11 a minute. One minute of HeyGen's Avatar IV from a photo is about $0.77. If your video is someone explaining something, HeyGen is far cheaper per minute. If it needs scenes you can't film, that's Runway's job, and its seconds-per-plan math is on Runway pricing.

Which plan to buy

• Free to see whether an avatar of you looks good enough to send to customers. That's the real question, not price.
• Creator ($29, or $24 yearly) for one person making up to about 37 minutes a month on Avatar IV photo avatars, or 85 on Avatar III.
• Pro (from $49) for 4K and more credits for one person. Pick the tier by your monthly minutes × the model's rate.
• Business ($149 + $20 a seat) once a second person edits or reviews, or once running out mid-month is a problem: it's the only plan that can buy credits without changing plans.

Video is one channel in a bigger marketing system. How small teams split the work between AI and people across email, social and content is in AI for small business marketing, and the scripts behind these videos usually start in a chat assistant, the setup for that is in ChatGPT for marketing.

The tool is the cheap part of a training library. The expensive part is deciding what goes in it, who records it, and how people actually use it on the job. When a team wants that planned and run, that's the AI training work I do.

Sources

Read on October 18, 2026: HeyGen pricing page (plan prices, credits, video length, export, seats, rollover and upgrade rules, Creator's annual price in the page FAQ, the Pro tier range); HeyGen Help Center, "How to Use Credits on HeyGen" (per-minute and per-generation credit rates, Business top-up price, the note that rates can vary by account) and "HeyGen credit-based pricing plans, subscriptions explained" (Business seats share one credit pool); Runway pricing page (Gen-4.5 at 12 credits a second, Pro at $35 for 2,250 credits). Prices in USD. Per-minute dollar costs, minutes per plan and the worked example are my arithmetic from those published numbers.