ElevenLabs Dubbing vs Synthesia: Credits or Minutes?

Choose Synthesia when the dub is part of a video-first workflow, lip-sync is billed openly, and a 140+ language list matches your release plan. Choose ElevenLabs when you want the lowest entry price, a credit rate you can compute per minute, and an audio-first tool that does not require you to produce avatar video. The two vendors are close on capability and far apart on how they sell it.

Both appear in our 2026 dubbing ranking, Synthesia third and ElevenLabs fourth. The order follows the published fields, not a claim about which translated track sounds better.

The comparison

The first thing to notice is that neither plan is priced per finished minute in the same way. ElevenLabs gives you a credit pool and a per-minute credit rate. Synthesia gives you a credit pool and an estimated minute count. Both require arithmetic before you can quote a client.

What a credit buys at ElevenLabs

ElevenLabs publishes the most explicit dubbing rate card in this run. Automatic dubbing costs 2,000 credits per minute with a watermark and 3,000 without. Studio modes are priced at 5,000 and 10,000 credits a minute.

That makes the Starter allowance easy to read. Thirty thousand credits is 15 minutes of watermarked automatic dubbing, 10 minutes unwatermarked, 6 minutes at the 5,000 Studio rate, or 3 minutes at 10,000. Those are divisions, not estimates, and they assume the whole allowance goes to dubbing. Any voice generation or other credit spend reduces the total.

The trade-off is that the entry price is low but the pool is shared. A team that also uses ElevenLabs for voice over will burn the same credits twice.

What a minute buys at Synthesia

Synthesia sells dubbing as part of a video studio. Starter lists 1,250 credits and about 16 minutes of dubbing across 70+ languages. Pro lists 6,000 credits and about 78 minutes across 140+ languages. The word “about” is the vendor’s, and it matters: the actual minute count depends on the source video and the features you enable.

Lip-sync is the feature that changes the budget. Synthesia bills it at twice the credits. A 10-minute dub with lip-sync is priced like 20 minutes of the base rate, which is a simple rule but a significant one for a series.

Language coverage

Synthesia’s Pro list of 140+ languages is the second-largest published figure in this run, behind HeyGen’s 175+. ElevenLabs publishes 74. For a release that covers Western Europe and Latin America, both lists are more than enough. For a release that includes smaller language communities, the difference is the whole decision.

A count is not a quality statement. Neither vendor publishes a per-locale quality rating, and neither promises that a specific dialect will sound native. Test the locales that carry the campaign.

Voice preservation is not the same as cloning

ElevenLabs lists Instant and Professional Voice Cloning on its voice plans; Synthesia’s dubbing plan page, in the fields we checked, does not state voice preservation. That does not mean Synthesia cannot keep a presenter’s voice; it means the plan table does not say so.

Even where cloning is listed, preservation is a rights question before it is a technical one. A cloned performance needs the speaker’s consent, and a platform licence does not supply it.

Who should pick which

Synthesia fits:

• teams already producing avatar-led video;
• projects that need lip-sync and a 140+ language list;
• buyers who want a published minute estimate rather than a credit conversion;
• workflows that need a documented dubbing API.

ElevenLabs fits:

• audio-first localization where the video edit already exists;
• teams that want the lowest monthly entry price;
• producers comfortable computing credits per minute;
• projects that need Dubbing Studio modes with a clear rate.

What neither page settles

Neither vendor publishes a human-review step in the plan table, and neither publishes translation accuracy. If the client expects a broadcast standard, ask who reviews the translated script and how a line is re-cut when the timing fails. The answer is not on either pricing page.

The complete 2026 table covers the rest of the field; the methodology explains the scoring.