Synthesia's 60 free Interactive Avatar minutes: what they cover

Synthesia's October 1, 2026 plan article says every plan, including the free Basic plan, now includes 60 minutes of Interactive Avatar, granted once at signup rather than monthly. That is enough to test live conversation with an avatar before paying for anything, including the Interactive Avatar API that Synthesia describes as bring-your-own-LLM and speech-to-text.

Sume has no live avatar, so there is no equivalent allowance to match. What Sume offers for the same evaluation is cheap rendered clips: you can hear a script in a chosen avatar for a few dollars. The sections below say which question each free allowance answers.

What the 60 minutes are and are not

The plan article lists the 60 minutes next to the monthly 500 credits, 10 video minutes and 3 survey responses, and describes it as one-time at signup. It does not say whether the minutes expire, whether they cover Sessions or only the API, or what a minute costs afterward. The Interactive Avatar API post says enterprise customers have access now and that a Synthesia-hosted LLM, speech and avatar pipeline was due October 1. Check the in-app wording for which products draw from the 60 minutes.

A fair test for the 60 minutes

Use them to answer questions a recording cannot: does the avatar handle interruptions, does the latency feel natural in your language, does the tone suit a support or sales scenario. The Sessions launch post cites 140+ languages and 230+ avatars, so test the language your customers speak, not English only.

Do not use them to estimate production cost. The minutes are free, but the paid price of live minutes is not published in the pages I read, so a trial tells you about quality, not budget.

The Sume equivalent: judge the face and voice with a clip

On Sume, you can judge the avatar itself with a short render. A 10-second line at Avatar 1.0 Standard is $1.84, Plus $2.45, Max $5.50, and the avatar creation is a flat $0.95. A first-frame preview, documented at /models/avatar-video-previews, shows the composition before you pay for the full render.

That tests how the character looks and sounds, not how it converses. If conversation is the requirement, take the free live minutes. If a recorded presenter is the requirement, the live minutes tell you nothing about it.

Decision

Take the Synthesia allowance if you are deciding whether a live avatar is worth building. Spend a few dollars on Sume if you already know the content is scripted and you are choosing a face, tone and aspect ratio. Many teams need both: live for intake and rendered for the explainers around it.