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Arcads vs HeyGen

Two fact sheets from our own research, side by side — pricing, platforms, API access and status re-checked by us rather than quoted from the vendors. HeyGen publishes a starting price ($24); Arcads does not. Only HeyGen has a free tier. Both ship a public API.

ArcadsGenerates UGC-style video ads from a script using a library of 1,000+ licensed AI actorsHeyGenAvatar videos and translation with lip-sync

Side by side

FactArcadsHeyGen
CategoryAd Creative GenerationAI Avatars & Talking Heads
Pricing modelPaidFreemium
Starts at—$24 month
Public APIYesYes
PlatformsWeb, APIWeb, API
CompanyFRESHR SASHeyGen
Launched—2020
Last verifiedSep 6, 2026Sep 6, 2026

What our research says

Arcads

For paid-social teams that need forty variants of the same hook, Arcads is built for exactly that: a large licensed actor roster, script-to-video in one pass and localisation baked in. The catch is total pricing opacity — nothing on the public site tells you what a video costs until you have an account, and the API needs a sales call.

Pros

  • Over a thousand AI actors plus custom avatar creation
  • Captions, translation and background handling included in the render
  • Workflow canvas designed around team-based variant testing
  • Vendor identity is disclosed plainly: FRESHR SAS, registered in Rouen, France

Cons

  • No published pricing anywhere on the public site
  • API is locked to a customised plan arranged by phone
  • Terms restrict service to professional clients, so consumers are excluded

HeyGen

The strongest avatar fidelity on the market right now, but the credit arithmetic decides whether it is affordable, not the sticker price.

Pros

  • Avatar and lip-sync quality is ahead of most competitors at the price
  • Free plan lets you judge output quality before paying anything
  • Video translation covers a wide language list with synchronised lips
  • Credits roll over for a month rather than expiring at the billing date

Cons

  • Newer avatar models cost roughly seven times the credits of the older ones
  • Free tier is watermarked and capped at three one-minute videos
  • Business tier stacks a $20 per-seat charge on top of a $149 base
  • Custom avatars and the better models are gated behind higher tiers

Which one fits

Choose Arcads if you need

  • Performance marketers testing many creative variants of one script
  • Brands localising the same ad into several languages
  • Agencies that need actor likenesses cleared for commercial ad use

Choose HeyGen if you need

  • Marketing and product teams shipping talking-head video without a studio
  • Localising existing footage into other languages with matched lip movement
  • Creators who want a cloned avatar for repeatable short-form output

More comparisons

All Arcads alternatives →All HeyGen alternatives →Browse all Ad Creative Generation →