Talking Avatar
Pricing comparison
Real-Time AI Avatar API Pricing in 2026: Every Published Price Compared
By Mukul Munjal, Founder, InterviewFlowAIPricing verified 7 October 2026
Published real-time avatar API prices run from under $0.01 a minute (Spatius, Simli) to $0.50 or more (Azure, D-ID on monthly billing). Face-only APIs, where you bring your own voice agent, mostly cost $0.01–0.22 a minute; managed agents that include speech, LLM and voice cost $0.11–0.56. Talking Avatar Realistic Avatars is $0.02 a minute, billed per second, with no subscription.
How to read these prices
- Prices are as published on each vendor's own pricing page or docs on 7 October 2026. Where a vendor sells monthly plans, we show the effective rate (plan price ÷ included minutes) and the overage rate.
- Face-only and managed prices aren't directly comparable: a managed agent includes speech recognition, an LLM and a voice, which you'd otherwise pay for separately.
- Check the billing unit: Tavus charges a 30-second minimum per conversation, Avatario and Akool bill in 10-second steps, LemonSlice and bitHuman bill idle time, and Anam bills by the second.
- Hedra shut down its real-time avatar on 15 April 2026, and TruGen's site was unreachable when we checked, so neither is listed. Beyond Presence prices are in euros.
Face only: you bring the voice agent
These render the avatar from your agent's audio. You run speech-to-text, the LLM and the voice yourself (or with OpenAI Realtime, LiveKit Agents or Pipecat), so compare them with each other.
| Provider | Published price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Talking Avatar Realistic AvatarsOur product | $0.02/min, billed per second | No subscription or concurrency tiers; sessions up to 3 hours; 832×468 at 25 fps; ready-made photorealistic avatars |
| Spatius | Subscription from $19/month for 2,000 minutes (about $0.0095/min); $0.0056–0.0072/min over plan | Monthly subscription required; renders on the user's device; 2 to 40 concurrent by plan |
| Simli (Trinity)Compare → | About $0.01/min on $10–249/month plans | 1 to 50 concurrent by plan; 50 free minutes a month; resolution not published |
| Protoface | $0.01/min overage; plans $20–300/month | Plans work out to $0.012–0.04/min; 1 to 10 concurrent, uncapped on Scale |
| bitHuman | $0.02/min on your hardware; $0.04/min in its cloud | Runs on the device; billed by the second, idle included; plans from $20/month |
| HeyGen LiveAvatar (LITE)Compare → | $0.079–0.095/min; Enterprise from $0.01 | Plans $99–475/month; unlimited concurrency on paid plans; 1080p |
| Keyframe Labs | $0.10–0.17/min on plans; overage from $0.06 | Plans $50–300/month; 5 to 30 concurrent; 720–1080p |
| Beyond Presence (Speech-to-Video) | €0.0875–0.175/min; Enterprise from €0.03 | Plans €49–349/month; 1080p on every plan |
| Avatario | $0.05/min | Billed in 10-second steps; 720p maximum; LiveKit only |
| Synthesia (Interactive Avatars) | $0.10/min, avatar only | Full stack at $0.20/min announced; free plan's credits cover about 50 minutes |
| LemonSliceCompare → | $0.16–0.22/min on $8–960/month plans | Any image as the avatar; hosted voice +$0.09/min; idle time billed; 3 to 20 concurrent |
Full managed agents: they run the conversation too
These include their own speech recognition, LLM and voice, which is why they cost more per minute. Compare them with a face-only API plus what you'd pay for your own voice stack.
| Provider | Published price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Anam | $0.11–0.16/min overage; Enterprise $0.04 | Billed by the second; 1 to 10 concurrent; can also take your own LLM or TTS |
| HeyGen LiveAvatar (FULL)Compare → | $0.158–0.19/min | 2 credits a minute; HeyGen's speech, LLM and voice included |
| Beyond Presence (Agents) | €0.175–0.35/min | Managed conversational agents; 1080p |
| Akapulu Labs | $0.175–0.195/min on $49–1,050/month plans | Scenarios, RAG and vision built in; 2 to 15 concurrent |
| Akool (Streaming Avatar) | About $0.17–0.35/min at 1080p (credits) | Billed in 10-second steps; 3 to 10 concurrent; up to 4K |
| Runway Characters | $0.20/min plus $0.02 a session | 5-minute session cap; any style from one image; LiveKit face-only mode too |
| Tavus (CVI)Compare → | $0.24–0.37/min; overage $0.26–0.35 | 30-second minimum per call; 1 to 15 concurrent; 1080p |
| D-ID AgentsCompare → | $0.35–0.56/min on $18–198/month plans | Knowledge base, memory and tools; 32 to 400 minutes a month self-serve |
| Microsoft Azure TTS Avatar (real time) | $0.50–0.80/min, plus Azure TTS | Billed by the second; Azure voices only; no free tier |
Enterprise digital human platforms
Sold through sales, usually with setup fees and annual contracts rather than a public per-minute rate.
| Provider | Published price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| UneeQCompare → | Not published; contact sales | Custom CGI digital humans up to 4K; 30-day trial |
| Soul Machines | $12.99–99/month plans; Pro $29,160/year | In receivership since February 2026 |
What 10,000 minutes a month costs
Take 10,000 minutes a month, face only. Talking Avatar Realistic Avatars costs $200. Simli's Scale plan ($249) and Spatius's plans cost about the same or less if you use what they include. HeyGen LiveAvatar LITE comes to about $835 (Business plan plus overage) and LemonSlice to about $1,680 (Ultra plus overage). Among managed agents, which include the voice stack, Anam Professional comes to about $1,219, Tavus Business to about $2,535, and D-ID needs an Enterprise contract at that volume.
Open Source and Realistic Avatars
Two ways to use Talking Avatar
Use Talking Avatar Realistic Avatars for a ready-made photorealistic face, or the free, MIT-licensed open-source SDK to lip sync your own 3D avatars in the browser. Both are driven by your own voice agent: OpenAI Realtime, LiveKit, Pipecat or any TTS.
Talking Avatar Open Source
FreeThe SDK and its 1 MB lip-sync model run entirely in the user's browser and animate any 3D .glb avatar from your agent's audio. No server, no API key, and the audio never leaves the page.
- Free for any use, commercial included (MIT)
- npm install @interviewflowai/talking-avatar
- Source on GitHub
Talking Avatar Realistic Avatars
$0.02 / minReady-made photorealistic avatars that speak your voice agent's audio in real time, with lip sync and natural expressions, at 832×468, 25 fps. Streamed to your page over WebRTC or into your LiveKit room.
- Billed per second, commercial use included
- No subscription, setup fee or minimum
- Sessions up to 3 hours each
- Ready-made avatars; custom avatars not offered
Methodology
How we evaluated this comparison
Pricing and features come from each vendor's own website, documentation or source code, checked in October 2026 and dated on this page. Where a vendor doesn't publish something, we say so rather than guess. We haven't run paid trials of every product. We built Talking Avatar, so we name what each competitor does better and who should choose it instead.
About the author: Mukul Munjal is the founder of InterviewFlowAI, which built Talking Avatar to give its AI interviewers a face. He writes about real-time avatars and lip sync for voice agents.
Frequently asked questions
What is the cheapest real-time avatar API?
At steady volume, Spatius (a subscription from $19 a month for 2,000 minutes) and Simli Trinity (about $0.01 a minute on its plans) publish the lowest rates, but both are monthly subscriptions. Talking Avatar Realistic Avatars is $0.02 a minute with no subscription and no concurrency tiers, which is often cheaper for small or spiky usage.
Why do Tavus, D-ID and Anam cost more?
They're managed agents: the price includes speech recognition, an LLM and a voice, and features like perception, knowledge bases or turn-taking. If you already run a voice agent, a face-only API is the like-for-like comparison.
Which avatar APIs don't cap concurrent sessions?
HeyGen LiveAvatar's paid plans don't charge for extra concurrent sessions, and Talking Avatar Realistic Avatars has no concurrency tiers: the same price per minute at any volume. Most others cap concurrency by plan and raise it on Enterprise.
Is there a free real-time avatar API?
Several have free tiers: Simli (50 minutes a month), Anam (30), Tavus (20) and HeyGen LiveAvatar (10 credits). Talking Avatar's open-source SDK is free for any use (MIT) and renders your own 3D avatar in the browser.
Hear it on your own audio before you decide
The live demo runs the real SDK in your browser: sample voices in 9 languages, your own file or your microphone. Want a photorealistic face? Talking Avatar Realistic Avatars is $0.02 a minute, billed per second, with no subscription.