HeyGen for UGC ads

What does HeyGen make for ads?

HeyGen turns a script into a video read by an avatar. It can be a stock avatar, a photo you animate or a digital twin filmed from a real person. Creator includes one digital twin and voice cloning. It exports at 1080p, and Pro and Business at 4K (plans article).

The vendor’s UGC ads page lists “more than 1,100 avatars” and pitches them for “user-style testimonial videos without relying on real customers or creators”. On our reading, section 2 of the terms, quoted below, bars presenting such a video as entirely human generated.

HeyGen’s UGC Video Ads page sizes each placement. It lists 9:16 at 1080x1920 for TikTok and Instagram Reels or Stories, and 1:1 at 1080x1080 for feeds. YouTube gets 16:9 at 1920x1080, and other placements “Custom dimensions”.

Credits also buy Video Agent, which builds a whole video from a prompt, at 40 credits a minute in Standard mode. A Veo 3 clip costs 90 credits and a Seedance 2.0 clip 60 at 720p, whatever the length (credits article).

A 30-second HeyGen ad costs 2 to 24 credits by avatar model

HeyGen bills avatar video per minute by avatar model and Look, the photo or video the avatar is animated from (credits article). Avatar V costs twelve times Avatar III with a Video Look, so the plan price alone says little about the cost of an ad.

Each row is Creator’s $29 a month divided by its 600 credits, times the credits for 30 seconds, at prices read on 24 September 2026 (pricing page). Terms s.7(c) make you pay “all taxes … applicable to your transactions”; the pricing page does not say whether its prices include them.

Custom Expressive Motion lets you prompt the avatar’s movement. It works on Avatar IV only and adds 40 credits a minute; HeyGen’s own example charges 20 for a 30-second scene (credits article). With it, a 30-second Avatar IV Video Look ad uses 35.5 credits, $1.72 on Creator if every credit is used: more than Avatar V.

Beyond that example, HeyGen publishes no rounding rule for part minutes. If a 30-second Avatar III Video Look video billed as a whole minute, it would cost $0.19 on Creator, double the table’s figure.

Creator cannot buy extra credits: the help centre’s answer is to upgrade to Pro, at $49 a month for 1,000 credits (credits article). Pro sells no credit packs either, only higher tiers (plans article); Business sells top-ups. Monthly credits roll over one extra cycle, “up to 60 days”, and are lost if you cancel to Free.

HeyGen pricing sets 15 and 30-second ads on every plan side by side; the price tracker sets HeyGen beside other tools.

HeyGen video translate: 6 to 10 credits a minute with lip sync

Paid plans translate a finished video into “175+ languages and dialects”, where the Free plan lists “30+ languages” (plans article). Pro and Business add “Edit & proofread translation script”; Creator’s list does not include it.

Lip-synced translation costs 6 credits a minute in Speed mode and 10 in Precision mode, or 4 without lip sync (credits article).

Billed pro rata, one 30-second ad in one new language uses 3 credits in Speed mode: $0.15 on Creator if every credit is used.

What HeyGen’s terms allow in paid ads

On Creator, Pro and Business, section 3 of the terms says HeyGen “does not restrict your ability to use User Output for your own purposes (including for commercial purposes), except in the case of termination as specified below”.

Section 5 names that case. If HeyGen ends your account for a breach, “you must cease use of and delete any Outputs”. On our reading, that reaches ads already running.

HeyGen’s UGC Video Ads page says “Create once, use forever” and “Run ads globally, indefinitely”. It does not mention section 5. For a custom avatar, moderation policy 2.1, quoted below, sets a second limit.

The free plan gets a licence “solely for personal, non-commercial, and internal evaluation purposes”. Section 4 goes on:

User Output generated under a Free Plan may not be sold, sublicensed, redistributed, monetized, or used in connection with commercial activities, advertising, client work, revenue-generating product or any other services.

In the AI commercial use matrix, HeyGen’s Free plan reads barred for paid ads, and Creator, Pro and Business read allowed with conditions.

Section 2 bars you from using output “in a misleading way, including, without limitation, representing that the User Output is entirely human generated”. And “if you distribute your User Output to others, to the extent required by applicable law, you must proactively disclose that such User Output was created using artificial intelligence technologies”.

Where the law asks for a label: AI UGC legal rules and Meta’s AI disclosure.

Among the uses section 2 bars:

Access any portion of the services for benchmarking, comparative or competitive purposes

So no HeyGen output will run on our bench unless HeyGen agrees in writing, and this page stays a reading of documents.

The moderation policy (3.1) forbids “Promotion of goods and services related to commercial sex( Prostitution), Weapons/ ammunition, alcohol, online gambling, trade of endangered species, body parts and fluids, hazmat goods”. It also bars political content, and its changes take effect “immediately upon being posted” (5).

A digital twin of a staff member or a hired actor carries a duty: “You are responsible for honoring any request by or on behalf of an Actor to remove content depicting the Actor wherever you have published such depictions” (2.1). No notice period is set. On our reading, one request can pull every live ad using that face.

Section 3 also grants HeyGen “a license to access, use, host, cache, store, reproduce, transmit, display, publish, distribute, and modify Your Content to operate, improve, promote and provide the Services and to develop new services and products, including to train or otherwise improve or modify our artificial intelligence and machine learning models”.

That licence is “royalty-free, transferable, sublicensable, worldwide and irrevocable”.

Is HeyGen legit and safe?

HeyGen is a venture-funded US company; cancelling refunds nothing already paid, and BBB rates it F.

The terms name the company HeyGen Technology, Inc., and apply California law (s.17). Disputes go to arbitration unless you opt out in writing within 30 days of first accessing the services (s.17). Wikipedia, citing Bloomberg, reports a round of $60,000,000 led by Benchmark in June 2024, valuing HeyGen at $500,000,000.

Subscriptions renew automatically, cancelling mid-period refunds nothing (s.7(a)), and “Payments are non-refundable, except where required by law” (s.7(d)). If HeyGen ends the terms for its own convenience, it refunds “any prepaid, unearned fees” (s.5).

Review sites disagree: Capterra showed 4.7 and Trustpilot 3.9, both on a five-point scale, and the BBB an F. We could not load G2 or Gartner Peer Insights on 26 September 2026.

Trustpilot says HeyGen invites its customers to review, and Capterra says reviews are “moderated by our Reviews Verification team”. The BBB counts complaints and reviews sent to it; we did not read the complaints one by one.

On 24 September 2026 we also read the 20 most recent Trustpilot reviews, all posted on 22 and 23 September 2026; 17 carry Trustpilot’s “Invited” label.

Review 15 reports a charge of $422.27 after using a free account. Review 16 says a legacy plan was billed credits for Avatar III, which the help centre says stays free on legacy plans.

Twenty reviews posted within 22 hours are too few to show a trend.

Pros and cons on paper

How Synthesia, Creatify and Arcads differ from HeyGen

Synthesia bars its stock avatars from “promoted”, “boosted”, or “paid” advertising on social media “absent written express consent from Synthesia” (Acceptable Use Policy, 23 February 2024). None of the HeyGen pages we read limits stock avatars that way. Synthesia’s plan minutes are “calculated in seconds” (pricing page), where HeyGen publishes no rounding rule. More in the Synthesia profile.

HeyGen vs Synthesia for ads compares the two on stock avatars in paid social ads, and on what happens to your videos when you cancel.

On Starter at $39 a month, a 30-second Creatify ad costs $3.90 if every credit is used (pricing page, 24 September 2026). That is more than three times HeyGen’s Avatar V row. Creatify bills avatar video at 5 credits per 15 seconds, rounded up (help centre). See the Creatify profile.

Arcads bills 800 credits a minute per actor, and “Length is always rounded up”: its one example bills 1 minute 45 seconds as 2 minutes (help centre). With no price list, its cost per ad cannot sit beside the table above. Arcads alternatives compares avatar tools, HeyGen included, on length rounding and 30-second cost.

• AI UGC and avatars

  Synthesia

  Presenter-style avatar videos and dubbing in 160+ languages, built mainly for training and corporate video.

  From $29 a month · checked 24 Sep 2026

  Best for Explainer, onboarding and product-education videos and their localisation. For paid social, only with a personal avatar of someone who has consented.

• AI UGC and avatars

  Creatify

  Avatar and product video ads from a URL or script, with batch variants, an ad launcher and a competitor ad tracker.

  From $39 a month · checked 24 Sep 2026

  Best for E-commerce teams making URL-to-video ads in volume who want an ad launcher for Meta, TikTok and AppLovin in the same tool.

• AI UGC and avatars

  Arcads

  Script-to-video ads read by 1,000+ AI actors, plus Kling, Veo and Seedance clips in the same app.

  No price list published

  Best for Talking-actor ads close to a whole minute long, if billing rounds up to the minute as the help centre’s one example suggests.

HeyGen alternatives compares avatar tools that could replace HeyGen on cost per 30-second ad and paid-social rights.

Free AI UGC generators compares which other free plans allow ads; AI UGC tools lists every avatar tool in the database.