Synthesia overview: products, pricing, and alternatives

Synthesia is an AI image and video company that lets businesses turn scripts, slides, or documents into professional videos using AI avatars and synthesized voices instead of cameras or actors. Founded in 2017 in London, it is used by over 90% of the Fortune 100 for corporate training and internal communications.

Synthesia at a glance

What is Synthesia?

Synthesia occupies the AI video and synthetic media category, addressing the cost and turnaround time of producing corporate video by replacing film crews and actors with AI avatars and voice synthesis. Its dubbing and translation layer produces the same video in 140+ languages automatically, without a separate localization step. The company was founded in 2017 by Victor Riparbelli, Steffen Tjerrild, and computer vision researchers Matthias Niessner and Lourdes Agapito.

Synthesia products

Synthesia's platform is built around several feature modules rather than separate products:

• AI Avatars: 240+ stock avatars plus custom Personal Avatars and Studio Express options.
• AI Video Generator: converts scripts, slides, or documents into finished videos.
• AI Dubbing / Video Translator: translates and lip syncs videos into 140+ languages on the Enterprise tier.
• AI Voice Generator and Voice Cloning: creates or clones synthesized voices.
• AI Screen Recorder: Chrome extension for capturing screen based video.
• Roleplay Sessions: interactive AI coaching product launched July 22, 2026.
• API: programmatic video generation for developers.

Synthesia pricing

Synthesia offers a free Basic plan, with paid plans starting at $14 a month on the Starter tier billed yearly. Pricing runs on a shared credits system. The free plan caps at 10 minutes of video a month, and Starter caps at 120 minutes a year. Creator costs $59 a month billed yearly for 360 minutes a year. Verify current pricing at synthesia.io/pricing.

Data, privacy, and safety

Synthesia does not use customer inputs or outputs to pre-train its AI models, and any fine-tuning on customer data requires the customer's written instruction. Certifications: SOC 2 Type II; ISO/IEC 27001, 42001, 27701; GDPR compliant. No confirmed data breach was found, though Synthesia's avatars were used without authorization in state-linked disinformation campaigns in 2023 and 2024, a platform misuse issue rather than a breach of Synthesia's own systems.

Who's behind Synthesia and how stable it is

Synthesia is heavily funded and shipping actively, most recently launching Roleplay Sessions on July 22, 2026 and Dubbing 2.0 a week earlier. The company was founded by CEO Victor Riparbelli alongside Steffen Tjerrild, Matthias Niessner, and Lourdes Agapito, and remains an independent, VC-backed company with no controlling parent. It has raised approximately $536M across eight rounds, most recently a $200M Series E on January 26, 2026 at a $4B valuation led by Google Ventures, with NVentures and Accel also participating.

Synthesia strengths and limitations

Strengths

• Avatar and lip-sync quality rated among the strongest in the category by G2 and vidmetoo reviewers, especially the newer Express-2 avatars.
• SOC 2 Type II, ISO 42001, and GDPR compliance cited by reviewers as the deciding factor for regulated finance and healthcare buyers.
• Rated fast to learn by non-video teams across G2, Capterra, and Product Hunt reviews with no editing experience required.
• Ships a 140+ language dubbing and translation workflow on its Enterprise tier.

Limitations

• Rendering reliability is a recurring complaint on Product Hunt and Capterra, with some videos stalling and needing support intervention.
• Content moderation is inconsistently applied; SoftwareAdvice reviewers report approved videos later flagged, and healthcare or biotech users find stock avatars blocked even for factual content.
• Synthesia's avatars were confirmed used without authorization in 2023 to 2024 state-linked propaganda campaigns, a reputational risk worth weighing for brand-safety-sensitive readers.
• Starter and Creator plans cap at 120 and 360 minutes of video a year respectively, well below HeyGen's unlimited-generation credits model.

Synthesia alternatives

HeyGen, Colossyan, and VEED are the closest alternatives to Synthesia. HeyGen uses unlimited-generation credits, Colossyan focuses narrowly on training content with a smaller avatar library, and VEED prioritizes general editing over avatar depth.