Talking Avatar
Comparison guide
Simli Pricing in 2026: Trinity Plans vs a Pay-as-You-Go $0.02/min Avatar API
By Mukul Munjal, Founder, InterviewFlowAIPricing verified 7 October 2026
Simli's Trinity model costs about $0.01 a minute on its plans: Hobby at $10/month for 1,000 minutes, Pro at $49 for 5,500 and Scale at $249 for 27,500, with 2, 10 and 50 concurrent sessions and 50 free minutes a month. That's cheaper per minute than Talking Avatar Realistic Avatars at $0.02, which has no monthly plan and no concurrency tiers.
60-second comparison
The decision at a glance
Both render a face from your voice agent's audio. Simli is cheaper per minute when you use the minutes a plan includes. Talking Avatar Realistic Avatars costs $0.02 a minute, billed per second, with no subscription and no concurrency tiers, so it's cheaper for small or spiky usage and simpler at high concurrency.
Choose Talking Avatar if…
- Usage is small or spiky, so a monthly plan would go unused.
- You need more concurrent sessions than a plan allows.
- You want a ready-made photorealistic avatar with no plan to pick.
Choose Simli if…
- Usage is steady and fills a plan, where about $0.01 a minute beats $0.02.
- You want LiveKit's recommended avatar plugin.
- You want Simli Auto to run the whole conversation.
- You want an avatar made from your own photo.
Feature comparison
| Feature | Talking Avatar | Simli |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | $0.02/min, pay as you go; no subscription | Monthly plans: Hobby $10, Pro $49, Scale $249 |
| Effective price | $0.02/min | About $0.009–0.01/min within plan (Trinity); legacy model $0.048–0.05 |
| Free option | Open-source SDK (MIT) for your own 3D avatars | 50 minutes a month |
| Concurrency | No concurrency tiers; same price per minute at any volume | 1, 2, 10 or 50 by plan |
| Resolution | 832×468 (16:9), 25 fps | Not published |
| Avatars | Ready-made photorealistic avatars (custom avatars not offered) | From a photo, ready in a couple of hours |
| Voice stack | Bring your own | Bring your own, or Simli Auto end to end |
| Integrations | Any voice agent's audio | LiveKit (recommended), Pipecat, JS and Python SDKs |
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, whichever fits better than Simli. 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
When each is cheaper
If you use most of a plan's minutes, Simli is cheaper: 5,500 minutes cost $49 on Pro against $110 on Talking Avatar Realistic Avatars. Below a plan's size, paying per minute can cost less: 300 minutes a month are $6 against $10 for Simli Hobby. Simli doesn't say on its pricing page whether minutes beyond a plan are billed at the listed rate, so check before you plan for growth.
Concurrency
Simli's plans cap concurrent sessions at 2 (Hobby), 10 (Pro) and 50 (Scale). If 60 people talk to your agent at once, you're past Scale. Talking Avatar Realistic Avatars has no concurrency tiers: the same $0.02 a minute at any volume.
Quality and latency
Simli publishes a latency claim (under 300 ms) but not an output resolution. Talking Avatar Realistic Avatars streams at 832×468, 25 fps. Both take the audio from your agent; try both on your own voice and network before choosing.
When to choose Simli
Where Simli is the better fit
Choose Simli if your usage is steady and fits a plan: at about $0.01 a minute, Trinity is half the price of Talking Avatar, Simli claims under 300 ms latency, LiveKit recommends it, and it makes avatars from a photo. Simli Auto also runs the whole conversation if you don't have a voice agent.
What Talking Avatar doesn't do
- You bring the conversation: Talking Avatar Realistic Avatars renders the face from your agent's audio, it doesn't include its own LLM or TTS.
- Talking Avatar Realistic Avatars offers ready-made avatars only; custom avatars aren't available.
- The open-source SDK animates 3D .glb avatars with the 15 Oculus viseme morph targets, framed as a close-up.
- The open-source model is trained on English. Other languages keep good timing but use the nearest English mouth shape.
Switching from Simli
Simli takes your agent's audio over LiveKit or WebRTC; keep the agent and change the face.
- Create a Talking Avatar Realistic Avatars account, add credits, create an API key and pick a ready-made avatar.
- Keep your voice agent as it is.
- Send its audio to Talking Avatar instead of a Simli session.
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
How much does Simli cost?
Simli's Trinity plans are Hobby at $10 a month for 1,000 minutes, Pro at $49 for 5,500 and Scale at $249 for 27,500, about $0.01 a minute, plus 50 free minutes a month. Its legacy model costs about $0.05 a minute.
Is Simli cheaper than Talking Avatar?
When you use most of a plan's minutes, yes: about $0.01 a minute against $0.02. For small or irregular usage, or more concurrent sessions than a plan allows, Talking Avatar Realistic Avatars can cost less.
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.