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Both cover ai video & voice. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
| HeyGen | Runway | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | From $29 | From $15 |
| Pricing model | Free plan, paid tiers | Free plan, paid tiers |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Billing | Monthly or annual | Monthly or annual |
| Free trial | None | None |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Data export | Not stated | Not stated |
| Their cut | Not stated | Not stated |
| Runs on | Not stated | Web |
| Covers | AI Video & Voice, AI Content Tools | AI Video & Voice, Video Editing |
| Works with | Nothing in particular | Nothing in particular |
| Founded | Not listed | Not listed |
| Reader rating | No reviews yet | No reviews yet |
| Live deals | None right now | None right now |
A presenter generated from a script, in 30 languages
HeyGen turns typed text into video of an avatar saying it, including one trained on your own face, which is how a course module or a product update gets recorded with no camera set up. Translating a finished video into other languages is the part most people buy it for. It still looks like what it is, so a video whose whole job is being trusted on camera is the wrong job for it.
Our note
Buy it for the languages rather than the avatar. Redubbing a video that already works is worth real money; generating a presenter for a channel that has none is how a feed starts to feel synthetic.
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Generative video with an editor around it
Runway is where the frontier video models arrive with a timeline attached, so a generated shot can be trimmed, upscaled and cut against footage you filmed. Credits are the unit of everything, and they go faster than the plan names suggest. Read the credit cost per second before picking a tier, because the gap between plans is nothing like the gap between prices.
Our note
Work out how many seconds of your chosen model each plan buys before subscribing, because the answer is usually smaller than the credit numbers suggest. Runway is the right pick when the shot cannot be filmed. For talking-head video from a script, Synthesia and HeyGen cost less and do it better.
Ratings are the average of reviews readers left. The facts are stated by each tool’s own listing and are not verified by CloutStack. How we make money.
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