Best Synthesia.io Alternatives and Competitors

Lisa Tatum
December 31, 2024
synthesia-free-alternative-list
synthesia-free-alternative-list

Video content dominates the digital world, with online views skyrocketing to more than double since 2018. It’s clear — video isn’t just an option anymore. It’s a necessity for businesses looking to captivate their audience.

But here’s the catch: producing high-quality videos is no easy feat. Traditional methods demand time, money, and expertise, leaving many creators stuck.

Enter AI video generation tools. They promise to simplify the process, offering human-like avatars and seamless production. While Synthesia leads the pack, it isn’t perfect — and the market is packed with smarter, more versatile alternatives.

If you’re looking for the best way to create video content in 2025, here are the top AI video-generation software solutions for content creators.

1. HeyGen

HeyGen is an all-in-one AI video platform with the most lifelike avatars on the planet. It makes video creation and translation effortless. Also, you can create emotionally engaging videos 10x faster, without a camera, crew, or script practice. That’s exactly why HeyGen lands as the top pick as a Synthesia alternative.

HeyGen empowers anyone – from individual creators, to Fortune 500 companies — to create, translate, and personalize videos at scale. In addition, HeyGen has AI voices in over 170 languages and dialects to facilitate the user’s activities and over 300+ video templates that can be used to make different videos.

HeyGen offers a vast selection of 250+ unique, human-like avatar actors, each ready to be customized to fit your specific needs. You can tailor every detail, from clothing and backgrounds to voice and diction, ensuring your avatars match your brand and message.

When it comes to avatar quality and simplicity of use without sacrificing ability or features, HeyGen is unmatched. Even better, it’s free to get started! Just create a login, and you’re ready to start generating AI-based videos.

Now you can personalize videos for different audiences or groups to deliver a more engaging and targeted experience at scale. Plus, with the ability to live stream conversational and knowledge-based avatars — HeyGen brings a new level of interactivity to your videos!

HeyGen welcome screen screenshot

What are the key features of HeyGen?

The top features of HeyGen include:

  • High-quality lifelike avatars: Choose from the most realistic avatars available, or create your own instantly. You can also use our high-quality avatars to bring your videos to life.
  • Natural-looking video translation: Localize your content in 170+ languages and dialects with seamless lip-syncing and dubbing technology for authentic, natural results.
  • Unlimited avatars: Under one avatar profile, effortlessly add and swap different looks to match your video’s needs—something Synthesia doesn’t offer.
  • Interactive avatars: Engage viewers with avatars that speak and respond in real-time, creating dynamic, real-time conversations.
  • Avatars with emotion: Our Avatar 3.0 technology enables avatars to naturally convey emotion and body language, adding depth to your storytelling.
  • Photo avatars: Upload any photo and transform it into a talking avatar, or use a simple text prompt to create a completely new avatar without shooting a video.

Add voice to PDFs: Effortlessly enhance your PDFs with voiceover.

What are the benefits of HeyGen?

HeyGen has a wide range of benefits, such as:

  • Create studio-quality videos 10x faster and cheaper
  • Translate videos into 170+ languages with accurate lip-syncing
  • Scale personalized video creation in minutes
  • Engage audiences with real-time interactive avatars
  • Convey emotions and body language through lifelike avatars
  • Convert photos or text into talking avatars with no filming
  • Easily create and share avatar-driven videos with an intuitive platform
  • Reach global audiences with hyper-realistic avatars and videos

What are the downsides of HeyGen?

The potential drawbacks to be mindful of include:

  • The platform is optimized for PC users, while mobile users only have access to a demo page.
  • Generation speed may slow down during peak use times.
  • Pricing information upon login.

Is HeyGen or Synthesia better?

When comparing HeyGen and Synthesia, HeyGen excels with its advanced AI avatars, offering superior realism with lifelike lip-sync, full-body motion, and dynamic emotional responses.

Its all-in-one platform combines video avatars, audio, translation, and personalization, providing unmatched creative flexibility with 600+ avatars in 170+ languages.

In contrast, Synthesia is used in the corporate space. Synthesia’s focuses on SCORM file exports, L&D-specific integrations, and collaborative features like real-time co-editing and commenting.

2. Descript

Descript is an affordable tool that houses all aspects of podcast and audio recording in one software. It’s an excellent tool for recording, editing, and creating audiograms for English-speaking podcasts.

Also, it has a good transcription offer that significantly cuts down the workload of traditional manual speech-to-text methods. Currently, Descript offers a Mac app and human-powered transcription services.

With a single click, Descript records your screen, and the webcam edits mistakes in seconds before publishing them as a link that can be shared immediately. In addition, on Descript, you can access pro-editing features like Multi-track editing, Live collaboration, Auto-captioning, and much more.

Descript screenshot

What are the best features of Descript?

We can summarize Descript’s best features as follows:

  1. Accurate transcription: Descript transcriptions come with automatic speakers and detections and are usually fast and precise. Descript transcribes audio interviews to text.
  2. Integrated one-click publishing: Descript has a convenient cloud-based hosting, making publishing with one click to multiple formats easy.
  3. Removal of filler words: Descript automatically identifies and removes filler and repeated words. This is a game changer for users because it improves recorded audio quality without needing manual editing.
  4. Easy video and audio editing: This tool provides its users with no traditional skills of recording, editing, and publishing videos, audio, and projects, meaning its users can edit, record, or publish without help. This feature saves time and effort by removing the need to re-record audio changes during the editing process.

What are the benefits of using Descript?

The benefits of using Descript are numerous, including:

  • Descript is an efficient tool used to create, edit, and publish scripts and transcripts.
  • It has a User-friendly Interface that makes your content stand out.
  • It allows users to remove filler words and record directly within the app.
  • Descript creates an excellent cataloged library of your content, whether videos, podcasts, etc.
  • It integrates with Zoom and other recording tools.

What are the disadvantages of Descript?

Descript has some limitations, such as:

  • Descript doesn’t have the editing features experts may need.
  • It doesn’t produce a formatted invoice that you can submit for reimbursement.
  • The tool requires a regular update, which may disrupt workflow.

What is the difference between Synthesia and Descript?

Descript and Synthesia cater to different needs within the content creation space:

  • For feature updates and roadmaps, people tend to prefer Synthesia over Descript.
  • Synthesia is more focused on spokesperson video creation compared to Descript.
  • Descript offers integrations with Zoom and other recording tools, which Synthesia lacks.

While Synthesia may appeal to those focused on spokesperson video production, Descript’s integration capabilities make it more suitable for a broader range of content creators.


3. Lumen5

Lumen5 is a platform designed for brands and businesses to produce training or experience to create engaging video content. Lumen5 is a source that drives the marketing team to progress because the resources of this tool are valuable and easy to utilize for increasing business engagement.Lumen5 has an AI that extracts quotes that best represent your article or forthcoming video. This tool also has a new voice-over feature, currently in Beta; selecting it means you will have to record your voice-over in a single take.

Lumen5 screenshot

What are the top features of Lumen5?

The main features of Lumen5 include the following:

  1. Automated workflow: With the RSS feeds, Lumen5 creates videos in minutes with the assistance of AI. Also, you have video templates created automatically every day.
  2. Text to subtitles video: This tool easily transforms articles and blog posts into video content.
  3. Flexible video resolution: You can easily set your video resolution to 480p, 720p, or 1080p. In addition, you can set the aspect ratio in standard 16:9 landscape, 1:1 square format, or 9:16 vertical format for specialized platforms like Instagram and YouTube.
  4. Video optimization: Lumen5 allows you to optimize every video to improve performance and conversion rates. In addition, you can edit your videos with logos and watermarks with it.

What are the benefits Of Lumen5?

Lumen5’s benefits center around the following themes:

  • With the text-to-video feature, Lumen5 easily transforms articles and blog posts into video content, and it is an easy and less expensive tool to use.
  • Lumen5 allows its users to create impactful and engaging videos from their existing videos, meaning they can incorporate video into their marketing.
  • The tool provides its users with a Voice-over with background music.
  • Lumen5 doesn’t require any video editing experience to get started.

What are the disadvantages of Lumen5?

The most common downsides of Lumen5 are:

  • Lumen5 sometimes glitches and doesn’t allow customizations like volume increase and text placement.
  • The tool takes time to render videos.
  • You can only place the highlight on one section of the text, not in two different areas.
  • It only fetches the result in the URL or published content after converting blog posts or articles into videos, meaning you cannot change the content in the blog post or article after converting it into video.
  • It’s missing built-in AI avatars.

What is the difference between Lumen5 and Synthesia?

Understanding the differences between Lumen5 and Synthesia helps users pick the best AI video tool for their needs. Here are the most important ways Lumen5 and Synthesia differ:

  • Synthesia is for AI Avatar videos, while Lumen5 is for AI Text videos.
  • Comparing the quality of ongoing product support, Synthesia is a preferred option over Lumen5.
  • Comparing the feature updates and roadmaps, Synthesia meets the needs of its users more than Lumen5.

4. Animoto

Animoto is a powerful online video maker designed specifically for marketers and content creators. Animoto enables users to effortlessly produce high-quality videos for various purposes such as marketing campaigns, social media content, etc.

Whether you're creating a product demo, a branded video, or an explainer video, Animoto makes it easy to create superior videos that capture your audience's attention. Thanks to its intuitive drag-and-drop interface and extensive library of tools and resources, Animoto is the perfect video-making solution for businesses of all sizes.

Animoto templates page

What are the main features of Animoto?

Animoto is a versatile video creation platform that offers a range of features to help users create compelling and engaging videos. The following features make Animoto an ideal choice:

  • User-friendly: Easy to use and accessible for beginners and professionals.
  • Customizable templates: and text overlays allow users to create unique and engaging videos.
  • Music library: An extensive library of tracks enables users to add background music that complements their video's message and tone.
  • Drag-and-drop interface: Build superior videos without advanced technical skills.
  • Free trial: Explore platform features before committing to a subscription.

What are the benefits of Animoto?

Animoto offers several advantages for users looking for a straightforward video creation tool. Consider the following strengths:

  • Built-in photo and music library for easy content creation
  • Powerful video editing functionality for customizing videos
  • A large selection of diverse templates for various video styles
  • User-friendly interface, making video creation accessible for all skill levels
  • Quick video production that is ideal for social media campaigns

What are the downsides of Animoto?

Despite its benefits, Animoto does have some limitations that may impact certain users, such as:

  • Limitations on creative font options, restricting design flexibility
  • Expensive business plan, which may not be ideal for small businesses
  • Limited video format options, reducing versatility for certain platforms
  • No advanced features for high-end video production
  • Occasional issues with rendering long videos or large files

What is the difference between Animoto and Synthesia?

When comparing Animoto and Synthesia, the differences are clear in terms of free trials, features, and video content. These distinctions highlight the unique strengths of each platform:

  • Free trial: Animoto offers a permanent free trial mode, including an Animoto watermark and all standard features, while Synthesia just offers a free demo.
  • Features: Animoto offers customizable templates, text overlays, music tracks, and other features that make video creation easy, while Synthesia's platform includes features like voiceovers and text-to-speech functions to create immersive videos with its avatars.
  • Video content: Animoto can create a wide range of video content for marketing campaigns, social media, and more, while Synthesia primarily focuses on creating videos that feature its AI-generated avatars.

These differences suggest that Animoto is better suited for users looking for a simple, versatile video creation tool with a focus on marketing content, while Synthesia excels in creating immersive, AI-driven videos with its avatars for more specialized use cases.

5. Colossyan

Colossyan is an innovative AI-powered video creator that specializes in creating human-like avatars to star in videos. As a competitor of Synthesia, the platform is designed for marketers, trainers, and other professionals who want to create engaging video content that stands out.

With Colossyan, users can create high-quality videos with AI-generated actors that can be customized to fit the needs of their project. The platform's intuitive interface allows users to easily create, edit, and publish videos without prior video production experience.

Colossyan homepage screenshot

What does Colossyan do (main features)?

Colossyan offers a range of features to help users create high-quality videos quickly and easily. The following are some of the main features of Colossyan:

  • AI actors: Access to over 30 AI-generated actors customizable for your project
  • Intuitive interface: Easily create, edit, and publish videos without experience
  • Creative freedom: Customize facial expressions, gestures, and clothing for AI actors

Versatile content: Perfect for marketing, training, or explainer videos

What are the benefits of Colossyan?

Colossyan offers a variety of benefits for users looking to create engaging video content with ease. The platform’s user-friendly interface and realistic avatars make it an appealing choice for professionals across industries:

  • Ease of use: Colossyan is praised for its intuitive interface, which makes video creation accessible for users of all skill levels.
  • Realistic avatars: The platform provides lifelike avatars that enhance the overall video experience, helping businesses connect with audiences.
  • Video creation: Colossyan’s streamlined process allows quick video production, saving time for businesses and content creators.

What are the downsides of Colossyan?

Despite its strengths, Colossyan has some limitations that users should consider. These drawbacks, while not overwhelming, may impact those looking for a more flexible or cost-effective solution:

  • Avatar limitations: While Colossyan offers multiple avatars, the selection is still limited compared to some other platforms.
  • Expensive: Colossyan's pricing structure can be costly for small businesses or individual creators.
  • Lack of emotion: Some users have noted that certain avatars lack emotional depth, which can affect the overall video impact.

These limitations suggest that Colossyan might not be the best fit for users who need a larger selection of avatars, a more budget-friendly option, or highly expressive avatars.

What is the difference between Synthesia and Colossyan?

The difference between Synthesia and Colossyan lies in their avatars, customization options, and user base. These aspects highlight the unique strengths and intended uses of each platform:

  • Avatars: Colossyan offers 30+ AI-generated actors to star in videos with different emotions and clothes in over 70 languages, while Synthesia offers 100+ human-like avatars in 70+ languages.
  • Customization options: Colossyan offers a wide range of customization options for its actors, including facial expressions, gestures, and clothing, while Synthesia's avatars can be customized with voiceovers and text-to-speech functions.
  • User base: Colossyan is designed for marketers, trainers, and other professionals who want to create engaging video content, while Synthesia is primarily geared toward creating in-depth videos.

These differences suggest that Colossyan is better suited for users who need highly customizable, emotive avatars for shorter, engaging content. Synthesia is ideal for those creating in-depth, professional videos with human-like avatars.

6. Hour One

Hour One makes creating professional-grade videos using AI-powered virtual human avatars simple. This platform offers businesses tools that help them produce high-quality videos tailored to their brand and audience.

Designed for various industries, Hour One offers customizable avatars, robust multilingual capabilities, and an easy-to-navigate interface. This allows users to create engaging content quickly and efficiently.

Hour One screenshot

What are the key features of Hour One?

Hour One stands out with its powerful features, which make video creation both easy and scalable:

  • Text-to-video wizard: Instantly transforms text content into polished video presentations.
  • Multilingual capabilities: Support for 200 voice accents and over 60 languages.
  • Collaboration tools: Easily collaborate with team members.
  • Voice cloning technology: Ensures consistent and accurate narration through AI-generated voices.
  • Template library: Provides free templates for rapid video production, saving users time.

What are the benefits of Hour One?

Hour One offers a variety of advantages that make it a powerful tool for video production:

  • Efficiency: The text-to-video wizard allows for quick transformation of written content into video form, saving valuable time.
  • Wide language support: Over 200 voice accents in 60+ languages enable global reach for video content.
  • Collaboration-friendly: Team members can collaborate seamlessly, improving productivity and workflow.
  • Customizable avatars: The platform provides flexibility in designing avatars to suit specific branding needs.

What are the downsides of Hour One?

Despite its strong features, Hour One has a few limitations that may affect some users:

  • Video duration limits: Both free and paid plans restrict video length, which may be a drawback for users needing longer videos.
  • Customization constraints: Limited customization options compared to other platforms, which might restrict creative flexibility.
  • Pricing for advanced features: Certain advanced features may be locked behind higher-tier plans, making them less accessible for small businesses on a budget.
  • Learning curve for new users: Some users may find the platform’s full range of features slightly complex when getting started.

How does Hour One compare to Synthesia?

When comparing Hour One to Synthesia, the differences become clear in their features, customization options, and target audience:

  • Avatars: Hour One offers customizable avatars with various emotional expressions, while Synthesia provides a larger selection of avatars with a focus on realism.
  • Multilingual capabilities: Hour One supports over 200 voice accents in 60+ languages, while Synthesia offers multilingual support with an emphasis on accuracy and localization.
  • Target audience: Hour One caters to marketers and businesses looking for easy-to-use video creation tools, while Synthesia is geared toward professionals needing high-quality, human-like avatar videos for complex content.

Hour One focuses more on customizable avatars for businesses, while Synthesia is better suited for creating professional, in-depth videos with human-like avatars for various industries.

How to choose the best AI video generation software

AI video generation tools offer significant efficiency whether you’re a marketing team, learning and development professional, sales team, or individual creator — and the best ones like HeyGen can take your content to the next level.

Look for platforms that allow you to create dynamic videos with avatars, localize content to various languages and regions, personalize videos with custom branding and avatars, and interact seamlessly through real-time collaboration and feedback tools.

These features will ensure you can efficiently produce tailored, professional content that resonates with your audience. This approach also minimizes the time, effort, and expenses traditionally required for video production.

By using text or the HeyGen API, businesses can seamlessly integrate lifelike avatar videos into their digital products, apps, websites, and digital experiences. This is ideal for product demos, sales outreach, customer engagement, employee training, and global marketing campaigns that need localization.

Choosing the best AI video generation software comes down to a few essential criteria:

  • Avatar quality
  • Translations and localization
  • Personalization
  • Customer interaction
  • API support

Many of the top AI video generation software solutions offer free trials of their product. It’s always best to try the software for yourself so you can make an educated decision. What works for someone else might not be the best for you. The only way you can truly find the “best” is to try it for yourself.

Frequently asked questions on Synthesia

What is Synthesia used for?

Synthesia is a web-based platform that creates videos with AI avatars from text input. Synthesia generates videos for onboarding, employee training, customer education, and other content.

Is Synthesia AI free or paid?

Synthesia AI is available with a limited free plan or several paid options. The free plan includes access to the most basic features, with up to 3 minutes of video creation. 

How much does Synthesia.io cost?

Synthesia’s entry-level plan starts at approximately $30 per monthly seat and includes 120 minutes of video per year — which breaks down to about 10 minutes of video per month.

Conclusion

Recording and editing videos is time-consuming, and no one loves to go through a lot of hassle while doing this. Therefore, as a social media user, blogger, or freelancer, you will need these creating and editing tools to generate unique video content and improve your performance.

There are several great AI video generation software options on the market today, and they all offer high-quality features and ease of use. However, the best way to determine if a text-to-video generator is right for your needs is to try it out!

If you want to see for yourself how AI video generation software can help you simplify content creation, try HeyGen for free. You can have high-quality content for your channels without the need for expensive equipment, actors, or editing. Simplify content creation with HeyGen.

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