Synthesia Pro yearly, $64/mo: break-even vs Sume is 69.6 minutes

Short answer

Synthesia Pro on yearly billing costs $64 a month, or $768 a year, for about 720 minutes a year according to its pricing page. That is $1.07 per minute if you use it all. The same $768 on Sume Avatar 1.0 buys about 69.6 minutes at standard, 52.2 at plus and 23.3 at max. So Sume costs less only if you would use fewer than those minutes in a year.

How the break-even is worked out

Take $64 x 12 months = $768. Divide by each Sume per-second rate to get seconds, then by 60 for minutes. We show the arithmetic so you can use your own numbers.

What the Synthesia page lists

Yearly billing on the page shows Starter at $18 per month for about 150 minutes a year and Pro at $64 per month for about 720 minutes a year. Monthly billing shows Pro at $89 for about 60 minutes. The yearly rows are priced per month but billed as a year, and the minutes are an annual allowance.

Reading the result

At 720 minutes a year, Synthesia's yearly Pro works out to $768 / 720 = $1.07 per minute. Sume standard is $0.184 x 60 = $11.04 per minute. The ratio is about ten to one in Synthesia's favor if you use the full allowance. That is a real gap, and we do not hide it. A per-second API makes sense when your use is spread thin, tied to events, or driven by code, and not when you produce an hour of video a week.

• Above about 70 minutes a year at standard, the Synthesia Pro yearly plan is cheaper per minute.
• Below that, you pay only for what you render on Sume.
• Unused annual minutes on a plan are paid for either way.

Other things to weigh

Output differs too. Synthesia lists Full HD and a large avatar library, while Sume Avatar 1.0 is 720p with avatars you create from a prompt, a profile or an image. Sume jobs run 4 to 60 seconds each, so a long video is built from several jobs. If your annual need is a few dozen short clips, Sume is a sensible option. If it is hundreds of minutes, run the arithmetic above with your own numbers before you decide.

Annual billing also locks you in for twelve months. A per-second API has no such term, which matters if you are not sure the format will still be in use next quarter. Treat the break-even as a planning number, then add your own retakes: a clip that needs two renders costs twice. Preview stills help with that, since you can reject a composition before paying for the video.