7 Best HeyGen LiveAvatar Alternatives in 2026 (LITE and FULL Mode)

Start with the mode you pay for. In LITE mode your own agent makes the audio, and LiveAvatar charges 1 credit a minute, $0.079–0.095, to render the face, on a $99 or $475 plan with sessions capped at 20 or 60 minutes. Face-only APIs do that job for less: Talking Avatar Realistic Avatars at $0.02 a minute with no plan, or Simli and Protoface near $0.01 on monthly plans. In FULL mode HeyGen also runs speech recognition, the LLM and the voice, for 2 credits a minute, $0.158–0.19. Anam does the same for less, Beyond Presence's agents can join Zoom, Meet and Teams calls, and Tavus adds camera perception at a higher price. Prices are as of 30 October 2026.

A monthly plan for a face

In LITE mode your agent does the talking and LiveAvatar renders the face for 1 credit a minute, $0.079–0.095. Anything past testing needs Essential at $99 a month, because the Free plan is watermarked, allows one session at a time and stops each one at 2 minutes.

FULL mode doubles the meter

FULL mode spends 2 credits a minute, so HeyGen's speech recognition, LLM and voice cost another $0.079–0.095 on top of the face. As of 30 October 2026, 10,000 FULL minutes a month cost $1,735 on Business: $475 plus 14,000 overage credits at $0.09.

20- and 60-minute session caps

Sessions stop at 20 minutes on Essential and 60 on Business; longer ones need an Enterprise contract. A 45-minute tutoring call or interview forces the $475 plan even at low volume.

Calls end when credits run out

LiveAvatar checks active sessions every minute. Without overage switched on, live sessions end when the balance reaches zero and new ones can't start; with it on, each extra credit costs $0.095 on Essential or $0.09 on Business.

LITE or FULL

If your agent already makes the audio, compare face-only prices. If HeyGen's speech, LLM, voice and contexts answer your users, you need a vendor that runs the conversation, or an agent of your own.

The bill at your volume

Price the cheapest plan that covers your monthly minutes, plus overage. Check the billing unit too: per second, 5-second steps or whole minutes changes what short calls cost.

Concurrency, not only price

LiveAvatar's paid plans don't limit concurrent sessions. Most alternatives cap them by plan, from 1 to 50, so check the plan you'd buy against your busiest hour.

Session length and framing

Match the longest call you run and the frame you show. LiveAvatar offers half-body or full-body framing and 100+ preset avatars; few alternatives match both.

1. 1. Best LITE swap with no monthly planOur product

   Talking Avatar Realistic Avatars

   Photorealistic avatars, ready-made or custom ($199 one time), that speak your voice agent's audio in real time, streamed to your page over WebRTC or into your LiveKit room. It does LiveAvatar LITE's job, the face for an agent you already run (OpenAI Realtime, LiveKit Agents, Pipecat or your own LLM and TTS), with no plan, credit allowance or overage switch to manage.

   Why it fits here

   • $0.02 a minute, billed per second, with no plan, credit allowance or overage switch
   • Takes any agent's audio: OpenAI Realtime, LiveKit Agents, Pipecat or your own LLM and TTS
   • Sessions of up to 3 hours, unlimited at once at no extra cost
   • The avatar starts speaking less than 250 ms after your agent's audio reaches it (measured on our servers, October 2026)
   • No agent yet: Talking Avatar Voice Agents at $0.06 a minute include the AI model, speech recognition and voice

   Pros

   • 10,000 minutes a month cost $200, against $835 on LiveAvatar LITE (Business plus overage)
   • Sessions up to 3 hours, against 20 minutes on Essential and 60 on Business
   • $1 of free credits (50 minutes) to test with your own agent and any library avatar

   Pricing: $0.02/min, billed per second, no subscription or minimum; $1 of free credits (50 minutes); enterprise contracts from $0.005/min. Voice Agents (AI model, speech recognition and voice included, no code): $0.06/min.

   Best for: LITE users who want a quarter of the price, no plan and calls longer than 60 minutes.

   Talking Avatar vs LiveAvatar, in detail →

2. 2. Best FULL swap for less per minute

   Anam

   Photoreal real-time avatars (Cara-4.1 Express, 1152×768) that run the whole persona with Anam's speech recognition, LLM and voice, or render the face from your own agent's audio through audio passthrough, at the same price. Plugins for LiveKit and Pipecat, plus Agora and ElevenLabs Agents. Billed per second for the whole session.

   Pricing: Free (30 min/month, 3-minute calls, not for commercial use); Starter $12 to Professional $999/month; extra minutes $0.16 down to $0.11; Enterprise from $0.04/min.

   Best for: FULL users who want a managed persona for less, with 2-hour calls from Growth ($299) up.

3. 3. Lowest price per minute on a monthly plan

   Simli

   Face-only real-time API (Trinity models): your agent's audio in, a lip-synced video avatar out, through LiveKit Agents, Pipecat or its JavaScript and Python SDKs. Simli Auto runs the conversation if you want. Trinity-2, the default for accounts created since 26 October 2026, renders waist-up with hands, and you set the frame size and the maximum session length.

   Pricing: Free ($10 of credit, then 50 min/month, commercial use allowed); Hobby $10 (1,000 min), Pro $49 (5,500), Scale $249 (27,500); extra minutes $0.01 to $0.009; at least 1 minute per session, then 5-second steps.

   Best for: LITE users with steady volume on LiveKit or Pipecat; unused minutes roll over up to twice the plan.

   Simli vs Talking Avatar →

4. 4. Best for day-long sessions and video calls

   Beyond Presence

   Berlin-based vendor with a face-only Speech-to-Video API for your own agent (LiveKit, Pipecat, ElevenLabs Agents) and managed Conversational Video Agents that can also join Zoom, Meet, Teams and Webex calls (beta). Both stream 1080p on every plan. Speech-to-video sessions run up to 24 hours, ending after an hour without speech.

   Pricing: Free (40 speech-to-video min/month, 3-minute sessions, not for commercial use); Starter €49, Growth €149, Scale €349/month; extra speech-to-video €0.175 down to €0.0875/min, agents twice that; €0.03/min at scale.

   Best for: LITE or FULL users who need calls longer than LiveAvatar's 60 minutes, or an agent that joins Zoom or Teams calls.

5. 5. Best for $0.01 a minute on any agent stack

   Protoface

   A real-time API that renders a photoreal face from your voice agent's audio, with integrations for LiveKit Agents, Pipecat, Agora, Vapi, OpenAI Realtime, ElevenLabs Agents and VideoSDK. Each session rounds up to the next minute and closes after 30 seconds without audio by default.

   Pricing: $0.01/min on every plan: Free (50 min/month, watermark, 2-minute sessions), Starter $20 (500 min, watermark), Launch $99.99 (7,500 min), Scale $299.99 (25,000 min); extra minutes $0.01.

   Best for: LITE users who want similar plug-ins for an eighth of the price and can live with 20- or 60-minute calls.

6. 6. Best for running the avatar on your own hardware

   bitHuman

   Real-time avatars made from one portrait (Essence 2 for photoreal faces) that render on the user's device, on your own servers or in bitHuman's cloud, with SDKs for LiveKit, Pipecat, Swift, Android, Flutter and Python. On your own hardware with current SDKs, only the seconds the character speaks are billed; in its cloud, idle time counts too.

   Pricing: API from Creator at $20/month (2,000 credits); Pro $99, Business $299, Enterprise $999; 2 credits a minute on your hardware (about $0.02 at top-up rates), 4 in its cloud (about $0.04); offline license from $899 per character on Business or Enterprise. Free accounts lost API access on 19 October 2026.

   Best for: Kiosks, mobile apps and on-premise installs where a streamed cloud session doesn't fit.

7. 7. Best if FULL mode isn't enough (costs more)

   Tavus

   Conversational video with photoreal Faces (Phoenix-4.5), its own perception and turn-taking models (Raven-1, Sparrow-2), LLM and voice, at 1080p on every plan. Your own audio works through Echo mode or the LiveKit, Pipecat and Agora integrations. Face Studio, added on 15 October 2026, makes Faces from a video, a photo or a text prompt.

   Pricing: Free (20 min/month); Starter $22 to Business $975/month; overage $0.35 down to $0.26/min from Builder up; 30-second minimum per call, billed from creation even if nobody joins.

   Best for: FULL users who need the avatar to see the user, or SOC 2 and HIPAA with a BAA on Enterprise.

   Tavus vs Talking Avatar →

From LITE mode, only the avatar layer changes: your agent keeps making the audio. From FULL mode, move the conversation first, because HeyGen ran the speech recognition, LLM and voice for you.

1. If you use FULL mode, move your prompt and contexts to your own agent (OpenAI Realtime, LiveKit Agents or Pipecat), or rebuild them in Talking Avatar Voice Agents for $0.06 a minute.
2. If a LiveAvatar connector ran your ElevenLabs, Cartesia, OpenAI or Gemini agent, add a small server that takes the agent's audio, for example a LiveKit Agents or Pipecat worker.
3. Create a Talking Avatar Realistic Avatars account (it comes with $1 of free credits), create an API key and pick an avatar in the dashboard.
4. Start an avatar session from your server and push the agent's audio to it as it streams, over WebRTC to your page or into your LiveKit room; clear it when the user interrupts.
5. Stop creating LiveAvatar session tokens, switch off overage, and cancel or downgrade the plan once your traffic has moved.

• LITE mode today; you want no plan and longer calls: Talking Avatar Realistic Avatars, $0.02 a minute.
• FULL mode for less per minute: Anam, $0.11–0.16 per extra minute with speech and voice.
• The lowest price at steady volume: Simli, about $0.01 a minute on a monthly plan.
• Calls longer than an hour, or an agent in Zoom or Teams calls: Beyond Presence (speech-to-video up to 24 hours).
• Vapi, Agora or ElevenLabs plug-ins at $0.01 a minute: Protoface, on Launch or Scale to drop the watermark.
• Kiosks, mobile apps or your own servers: bitHuman, on-device or self-hosted from $20 a month.
• An avatar that sees the user through the camera: Tavus (Raven-1 perception), at $0.24–0.37 a minute.
• No developers; a web link or embed is enough: Talking Avatar Voice Agents, $0.06 a minute all in.
• Full-body framing and 100+ preset avatars: Stay on LiveAvatar.