Price terms as published
Each line is the vendor’s own wording, split from the price capture checked on 2026-10-14. Nothing here is rounded, converted or re-worded — the full sentences stay in the review below. Lines that carry only a price continue the plan named on the line above, in the vendor’s own order.
| # | Plan / term | Checked |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | ngram Free 60s one-time | 2026-10-14 |
| 2 | $29–299 per month | 2026-10-14 |
| 3 | Synthesia Free 10 min/mo | 2026-10-14 |
| 4 | $29–89 per month (yearly: $18/$64) | 2026-10-14 |
One-liner: Both tools make a video out of text. ngram turns your source material — a document, URL, screenshots or a screen recording — into an explainer it can rebuild scene by scene on request; Synthesia turns a script into a presenter-led video with a lifelike avatar, in 140+ languages, with the collaboration and compliance furniture enterprises ask for. We re-read both official pricing pages on 2026-10-14.
Side by side (both pricing pages re-read 2026-10-14)
| ngram | Synthesia | |
|---|---|---|
| Core promise | “AI videos for onboarding, training, demos and explainers, from a prompt or a screen recording” | “The complete platform to create, manage, translate and distribute video” — avatar-first |
| Free tier | One-time 600 credits ≈ 60 seconds of premium AI footage, watermarked 720p, no card | Ongoing 500 credits/month ≈ 10 minutes of video creation or dubbing, watermarked, share link only |
| First paid tier | Basic $29/mo ($23.20/mo annually): 3,000 credits ≈ 300s of footage, 720p | Starter $29/mo ($18/mo billed yearly): 1,250 credits ≈ 12 min video + 16 min dubbing, on top of the free 10 min |
| Mid tier | Premium $59/mo ($47.20 annually): 10,000 credits ≈ 1,000s, 1080p, 1 custom voice + 1 custom avatar | Pro $89/mo ($64/mo billed yearly): 6,000 credits ≈ 60 min video + 78 min dubbing, 5 personal avatars, interactive video |
| Top tier | Ultimate $299/mo ($239.20 annually): 50,000 credits ≈ 5,000s, 4K, unlimited collaborators | Enterprise: custom, unlimited video minutes, 240+ stock avatars, SAML/SSO, live team collaboration |
| Seats | 1 workspace user on Free/Basic/Premium; unlimited only on Ultimate | Free–Pro include 3–5 guests; extra learner seats $29 (monthly) |
| Metering unit | 10 credits per second of AI-generated footage; agentic editing 1 credit/second | Credits shared across video, dubbing and surveys — Synthesia states a 1-minute video typically uses 1,000–2,000 credits |
| Editing model | Point at a frame, describe the change, agent re-renders that scene; manual controls for captions/music/cuts | Script-and-template editing on a timeline of scenes and avatars |
| Languages | Translation & localization listed; no number printed on the pricing page | 1-click translations into 140+ languages (Enterprise tier) |
| Ratings | 4.6/5 from 62 reviews (badge on its own page) | “#1 rated AI Video Platform” (claim on its own page) |
Annual discounts differ in shape: ngram applies a flat 20% to every paid tier, while Synthesia’s yearly view turns $29 into $18/month and $89 into $64/month — roughly 38% and 28% off respectively.
The per-minute math neither vendor prints
Neither page gives you a cost per finished minute, so here it is, with the caveat that the two meters are not measuring the same thing.
| Plan | Monthly price | Advertised capacity | Implied cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| ngram Basic | $29 | up to 300s of generated footage (~5 min) | ~$5.80 per generated minute |
| ngram Premium | $59 ($47.20 annual) | up to 1,000s (~16.7 min) | |
| ngram Ultimate | $299 ($239.20 annual) | up to 5,000s (~83 min) | |
| Synthesia Starter | $29 | ~12 min + the free 10 min (~22 min) | ~$1.32 per finished minute |
| Synthesia Pro | $89 ($64 annual) | ~60 min + the free 10 min (~70 min) |
Read that table as a floor, not a forecast. ngram meters AI-generated footage, so a scene you build by hand costs nothing and a revision that re-renders four scenes costs four scenes’ worth of seconds — its own page warns that generation seconds are “not a cap on final video length”. Synthesia meters a finished minute, which is why its per-minute number looks roughly 3× cheaper: an avatar reading a script is a cheaper second of computation than an agent generating and animating visuals. If your video is mostly a person talking, Synthesia’s meter is the better deal. If your video is mostly original visuals that you will need to correct three times before Friday, ngram’s meter is the one that matches the work.
Two more numbers worth carrying into a trial:
- Synthesia’s overflow has a volume ladder. On Pro, extra monthly credits are sold in packs — 12,000 for $176, 24,000 for $347, 36,000 for $514, 48,000 for $676 — with a small per-credit discount at each step. ngram’s overflow is a flat top-up: 1,000 credits for $20 on Basic, $15 on Premium, $10 on Ultimate.
- First-party avatar creation is priced very differently. Synthesia’s Studio Express-1 avatar is a paid add-on at $1,000/year, restricted to annual plan users, and Synthesia says it can take up to 10 days to process. ngram includes one custom voice and one custom avatar in the $59 Premium tier.
What the free tiers actually test
This is the fork most buyers get wrong, because “free” means opposite things here.
Synthesia’s free plan is a monthly allowance you can plan around. 500 credits refresh every month: 10 minutes of video creation or dubbing plus 3 survey responses, with a share link and a watermark. Run one 10-minute video a month and you could stay free forever.
ngram’s free plan is a one-time audition. 600 credits, up to 60 seconds of footage, watermarked 720p, and nothing refreshes. It is enough to see whether the agent respects your source document, and not enough to publish anything on a schedule.
Who should pick which
- Pick ngram if the raw material already exists — a PDF, a product doc, a landing page, a screen recording — and the real work is turning it into something watchable and then keeping it current as the product changes. The point-at-a-frame revision loop and the agentic editing rate (1 credit/second) are the features Synthesia does not sell.
- Pick Synthesia if a human presenter is the format, if you need the same video in a dozen languages, if you need SCORM export, SSO, live collaboration or interactive roleplay/survey sessions, or if a 10-minute monthly free allowance plus a $18/month annual Starter seat is simply cheaper than any ngram tier for your volume.
- Pick neither for a one-off — a single explainer you will never revise is usually cheaper commissioned; these are subscriptions to a workflow, not to a video.
What we deliberately didn’t test
No account on either platform, no rendered video, no side-by-side quality judgement, and no score. Factual fidelity on real source documents, avatar realism, and how quickly an ngram credit balance drains on a realistic script with revisions are all outside what a pricing page can tell you. Every price, allowance and credit rate above was read from the two vendors’ own pages on 2026-10-14; anything reported only by a third party is labelled as such, and the two rating claims are vendor-page badges we did not verify independently.
More comparison reading on this site
- ngram pricing — the standalone breakdown of every ngram tier and credit rate.
- HeyGen pricing — the third avatar-video price list in this category, re-read monthly.
- MoneyPrinterTurbo vs Hypit — the free/open-source end of AI video.
- Narrative Chat — chat-driven editing when the timeline model doesn’t fit.
Sources
- https://www.ngram.com/pricing (all ngram tiers, credit rates, export quality, top-ups, rollover language; read 2026-10-14)
- https://www.ngram.com/ (workflow, source types, integrations; read 2026-10-14)
- https://www.synthesia.io/pricing (all Synthesia tiers in both monthly and yearly view, free-allowance wording, credit-consumption examples, the $1,000/year Studio Express-1 add-on, learner-seat pricing, Enterprise feature list; read 2026-10-14)
- https://www.ngram.com/blog/best-ai-explainer-video-makers-2026 (ngram’s own description of its Free tier as a watermarked 720p export; the same page states it is published by ngram and checks linked pages, so it is vendor material, not a neutral review)
- https://www.producthunt.com/leaderboard/weekly/2026/42 (ngram 2.0 at #2 for the week of 2026-10-12; third-party)