Syren's 2,000 launch credits end Nov 9: what 2 minutes costs on Sume

Synthesia's launch grant of 2,000 Syren credits buys roughly one or two 2-minute videos, and the credits expire on November 9, 2026. On Sume a 2-minute avatar video costs $22.08 on the standard tier, $29.40 on plus and $66.00 on max, with no credit-to-dollar conversion needed.

The Syren numbers come from Synthesia's Syren page and help article, both read 2026-10-11. The page says a two-minute video with up to two rounds of edits typically uses 1,000 to 2,000 credits; the help article says users received 2,000 Syren credits on October 9, expiring November 9, 2026. The pages I read do not state a dollar value per credit, so this post does not invent one.

What the credit numbers add up to

At the stated range, 2,000 credits is between one video (at 2,000 credits each) and two videos (at 1,000 each), and edits are part of that range, so the practical answer depends on how many rounds you request. The credits are time-limited, so they are for evaluation rather than a production budget.

Treat the arithmetic as a range, not a promise. Synthesia says "typically", which means a long script, a heavy brand kit or extra edit rounds could land outside it. The safest plan is to make your first video early in the window and read your remaining balance before you start a second.

What 2 minutes costs on Sume

Sume bills avatar video per second of the planned video, from published rates: $0.184 standard, $0.245 plus and $0.55 max per second, or $0.194, $0.258 and $0.58 per second when you add a product image. A 2-minute video is 120 seconds, which exceeds the 60-second limit of one avatar job, so it runs as two 60-second jobs joined with Timeline 1.0 (a render priced at $0.10 per started output minute, so $0.20 for two minutes).

Comparing like with like

The two bills measure different things. A Syren credit total covers a prompt-to-video session with revisions, motion graphics and music. A Sume avatar total covers a talking presenter rendered from a script you write, with no design layer. If your 2-minute video is a person talking, the Sume number is the whole bill. If it is a designed explainer, the Sume figure covers only the presenter part and you add any cards, captions or music yourself. Inline captions on an avatar job are not a separate billed job, which keeps that one extra off the bill.

Revisions behave differently too. On Sume you can approve first-frame stills before paying for the full render, and the final tier can change after approval without a new preview (Avatar video previews). A changed script needs a new preview, and a full render is billed when it runs. So the cost of iteration is your preview count plus the number of full renders you choose to make.

If you would rather think in per-minute terms, the same rates give $11.04, $14.70 and $33.00 per minute of avatar video without a product image on the standard, plus and max tiers. Those are Sume list rates from its catalog and docs; the totals above are just those numbers multiplied by two.

A simple way to decide before November 9

Spend the free Syren credits on the one video you would have made anyway, and note how many revision rounds it took. Then price the same length on Sume from the table above. If your real workload is dozens of presenter clips from a content calendar, per-second pricing with a known total per script is easier to budget than credits that expire. If it is one polished brand video a quarter, the grant may cover your whole evaluation.

One more check: the timeline half of a Sume job has an unbilled plan endpoint that returns the duration, segment count and estimated cost before any render, so the join step never surprises you (Timeline 1.0).