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HeyGen vs Sawtly

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 starts at $24, Sawtly at $99. Only HeyGen has a free tier. Only HeyGen ships a public API.

HeyGenAvatar videos and translation with lip-syncSawtlyAI dubbing platform that clones voices and lip-syncs translated audio into 30+ languages from a video file or YouTube link.

Side by side

FactHeyGenSawtly
CategoryAI Avatars & Talking HeadsVideo Dubbing & Translation
Pricing modelFreemiumPaid
Starts at$24 month$99 month
Public APIYesNo
PlatformsWeb, APIWeb
CompanyHeyGen—
Launched2020—
Last verifiedSep 6, 2026Sep 1, 2026

What our research says

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

Sawtly

Sawtly covers the full dubbing pipeline — translation, voice cloning and lip-sync, not just a translated audio track laid over the original video — and accepts a YouTube link directly, which saves a download-and-reupload step. At $99/month for 60 minutes of dubbing, or $2/minute pay-as-you-go, it's positioned well below a human dubbing studio but isn't cheap for occasional or hobbyist use.

Pros

  • Full pipeline of translation, voice cloning, lip-sync and subtitles in one workflow
  • Accepts a YouTube URL directly, not just uploaded files
  • Context-aware translation rather than literal word-for-word conversion, per the vendor

Cons

  • No company name or headquarters location is disclosed on the site
  • $2/credit pay-as-you-go adds up quickly for anything beyond occasional short clips
  • 60 minutes/month on the Standard plan is a hard cap before per-credit overage charges apply

Which one fits

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

Choose Sawtly if you need

  • Content creators and e-learning teams dubbing recurring video output into multiple languages
  • Anyone who wants lip-sync included rather than a flat translated audio track

More comparisons

All HeyGen alternatives →Browse all AI Avatars & Talking Heads →