HeyGen vs Runway: Avatar Videos or Generated Footage for Your Ads

HeyGen now sells a footage model, and Runway's API makes presenters

The usual answer to "HeyGen or Runway?" splits the ad in two. HeyGen is where a talking avatar reads your script, and Runway is where you generate the product footage around it. But each company now covers the other half too.

HeyGen launched HeyGen Video on September 30, 2026, on its API and on partner platforms such as OpenRouter. HeyGen calls it a general-purpose video model, and its developer docs describe it as "built on MiniMax H3 and post-trained by HeyGen." You can give it a prompt on its own, a prompt with an image for the first frame, or a prompt with reference images, videos or audio (at least one reference has to be a picture or a video). It generates the whole scene, sound included.

On Runway's side, the API reference lists a call to "Generate avatar video from audio or text." A preset avatar, or one you create, speaks your script on screen.

So we broke the comparison down by ad job and priced each job on both. We didn't run HeyGen or Runway for this post. Their figures come from their own pricing, help, developer and changelog pages, read on November 12, 2026, in US dollars. The two clips further down come from our own Novoads workspace.

What each plan costs before you make anything

Prices as of November 12, 2026.

Plan	Price	What you get
HeyGen Free	$0	3 watermarked videos a month
HeyGen Creator	$29 a month, or $24 a month billed yearly	600 credits a month
HeyGen Pro	starts at $49 a month	1,000 credits a month on the first tier
HeyGen Business	$149 a month, plus $20 a seat a month	1,500 credits a month
Runway Free	$0	125 credits, one time
Runway Standard	$15 a month, or $12 a month billed yearly	625 credits a month
Runway Pro	$35 a month, or $28 a month billed yearly	2,250 credits a month
Runway Max	$95 a month, or $76 a month billed yearly	9,500 credits a month

Both companies sell a monthly pool of credits, but a credit buys very different amounts on each. HeyGen's Pro plan is a ladder of tiers rather than a single price. Its pricing page says every Pro tier includes the same features and only the monthly credits change. The top tier is $4,300 a month for 100,000 credits. By our math, that's 4.3 cents a credit, compared with 4.9 cents on the first tier.

Our HeyGen pricing guide goes through every HeyGen plan and what a credit buys model by model. Here, all we need from each plan is one number, the price of a credit.

Runway's credits buy fewer seconds than you'd think

Runway's credits cost less apiece, but its models use more of them per second. Its Standard plan card gives you a yardstick, saying 625 credits a month equal 52 seconds of Gen-4.5. The same page says Gen-4.5 uses 12 credits a second.

That yardstick is the most useful way to read any Runway plan, and our Runway review uses it to show where a month on Standard goes. HeyGen's credits work the other way around. Each plan has fewer of them, and the HeyGen models priced here use fewer per second.

The same 10-second Seedance 2.5 clip on both

Prices as of November 12, 2026.

Seedance 2.5 makes for the fairest test, because both companies sell it. The model and the clip stay the same, so the price is the only thing that changes. We priced one 10-second clip at 1080p with no input video. For what Seedance's maker and Runway's API charge for a shorter clip, see our list of Seedance alternatives.

Where the credits come from

HeyGen's pricing page lists Seedance 2.5 among the Pro plan's features, and its B-roll help article, last updated on October 21, 2026, marks the model "Pro only." The same article lists Seedance 2.5 at 18.9 credits a second at 1080p.

Runway's credits page lists the same model at 68 credits a second at 1080p, plus a charge for any input video, which this test doesn't use. Runway's plan cards show Seedance 2.5 on Pro and Max, but its Seedance 2.5 page says the model is available on all paid plans. Either way, Standard's 625 monthly credits can't cover a single 680-credit clip, so we left Standard out of the table.

Where you buy it	Credits for 10 seconds	Dollars a credit	One clip	Whole clips a month
HeyGen Pro, first tier	189	$0.049	about $9.26	5
Runway Pro	680	about $0.0156	about $10.58	3
Runway Max	680	$0.01	$6.80	13
Novoads Plus	120	$0.049	$5.88	8
Novoads Starter	120	$0.075	$9.00	1

The dollar columns are our own math on the monthly list prices, and the last column counts how many whole clips one month's credits buy. This exact clip costs the least on our Plus plan, at $5.88. Runway Max is next at $6.80, cheaper than the $9.00 the same clip costs on our Starter plan. Starter still comes in under both Pro plans, and Runway Pro is the most expensive of the five.

Plan size matters as much as the clip price. Max costs $95 a month, and its low rate only pays off if you actually spend most of its 9,500 credits. If Seedance is the model you'd use most on Runway, we did the per-second math for longer takes in Runway vs Seedance.

HeyGen Video and Runway's Gen-4.5

Each company also sells a video model under its own name, and by our math, their prices for 10 seconds are far apart.

• HeyGen Video at 1080p costs about 32 cents on HeyGen's Creator plan (6.7 credits).
• Gen-4.5 costs $2.88 on Runway Standard (120 credits).
• Gen-4.5 costs about $1.87 on Runway Pro.
• Gen-4.5 costs $1.20 on Runway Max.

They're two different models, so read this as a price gap only. We haven't compared their output. Our HeyGen Video price comes from the rate in HeyGen's B-roll article, 0.67 credits a second at 1080p. Ten seconds is one of the four lengths that article lists for the model.

HeyGen has added to the model since launch.

• At launch, it made clips of 5 to 15 seconds at 480p or 768p.
• In October, HeyGen added 1080p and 2K output, according to its developer changelog.
• Its docs now say text-to-video and image-to-video clips can run up to 30 seconds, while reference-to-video clips still top out at 15.

HeyGen's introduction article for the model announces a 50% launch promotion through November 30, 2026, and gives its prices in dollars a second.

• Text to video at 768p costs $0.018 a second during the promotion.
• From December 1, the article lists $0.03 a second for the same setting.
• It gives no December rate for 1080p or 2K.

The 32 cents above uses the B-roll article's credit rate rather than that dollar table, and the B-roll article says nothing about December. So we can't tell whether the credit rate in HeyGen's app will change when the promotion ends.

A 30-second talking presenter on each

Prices as of November 12, 2026.

HeyGen bills avatars by the minute

HeyGen's credits article lists a rate per minute of video for each avatar engine. The rate depends on the engine and on the look you start from (a photo or a video of the person). A credit on Creator costs about 4.8 cents, so we priced 30 seconds of each on that plan.

Engine and look	Credits a minute	30 seconds on Creator, by our math
Avatar III, video look	4	about 10 cents
Avatar III, photo look	7	about 17 cents
Avatar IV, photo look	16	about 39 cents
Avatar IV, video look	31	about 75 cents
Avatar V, either look	48	about $1.16

HeyGen's pricing page lists Avatar III and Avatar IV on Creator, along with Avatar V "with limited usage."

You don't need a plan to use HeyGen's API. Its API pricing article says you can buy API credits without a Creator, Pro or Business plan, and you pay for the seconds actually generated.

• Avatar III with a digital twin costs $0.60 a minute, about 30 cents for 30 seconds.
• Avatar III with a photo avatar costs $0.99 a minute, about 50 cents.
• Avatar IV with a photo avatar costs $2.31 a minute, about $1.16.

For script-led UGC ads, HeyGen's UGC video generator page offers "1,100+ AI UGC Video presenters," by HeyGen's own count. The same page suggests swapping presenters, backgrounds, hooks and calls to action to A/B test your creative across platforms.

Runway bills avatar video by the second and by the character

Runway documents its avatar video in its API reference, and you pay for it with API credits at $0.01 each. Its API pricing guide lists two charges.

• 1 credit for every 3 seconds of video
• 1 credit for every 50 characters of a text script, rounded up, for the speech

A 30-second clip is 10 credits of video. We assumed a 400-character script, which adds 8 credits. That brings the whole clip to about 18 cents. If you compare the two APIs, that's under HeyGen's lowest avatar price, about 30 cents for an Avatar III digital twin.

The call takes a face and a script.

• The face is one of nine preset avatars (one of them an influencer) or an avatar you create from a reference image and a voice.
• The script can run up to 5,000 characters, or you can send audio instead.

Runway's credits page also lists Runway Characters, which Runway describes as real-time conversational AI avatars. They're for a different job than a scripted ad.

Our talking actor costs the most for this job

Novoads has a talking actor too, and for a 30-second presenter it's by far the most expensive of the three. At 720p, the default, we charge 200 credits for each started minute, so any clip up to a minute long costs the same. That's $9.80 on Plus and $15 on Starter. At 480p, it's 100 credits a started minute.

What you're paying for is a different kind of presenter. You pick a UGC-style actor and a voice, give it your script, and the clip comes back with the voice and the lip-sync already in place.

The strip below is from a run in our workspace on November 10, 2026. It's an eight-second vertical clip at 720p. It was still billed as one started minute, 200 credits.

Made in Novoads with Talking actor · an eight-second vertical talking clip at 720p reading a short script about a slow morning and a warm cup of coffee · 200 credits · rendered 2026-11-10

Which ad job goes to which tool

A presenter reading your script

We'd make a script-led UGC ad in HeyGen. It has three avatar engines on Creator, more than a thousand presenters by its own count, and a UGC page built around swapping presenters and hooks to test different versions. If you like HeyGen's avatars but not its pricing, we compared other avatar tools in our HeyGen alternatives list.

Runway's avatar video makes more sense when the presenter is one call inside your own software. It fits when a preset avatar, or one built from a single image, is good enough and the price per clip matters more than the casting.

Product footage and ad tests

For generated product footage, we'd lean toward Runway. Its credits page lists Gen-4.5 and Aleph 2.0, which Runway describes as video editing and stylization, so you can restyle a shot you already have instead of remaking it. There's also a promotion on Runway's pricing page, 25% off Kling 4.0 generations until November 30.

Runway's changelog entry for Runway Ads is dated October 27, 2026. Runway says the tool reads your best performers on Meta, Google and TikTok, generates variants for every placement and publishes the ones you approve. The changelog says it's included with every paid plan.

If you're looking at footage tools beyond these two, our Runway alternatives post prices six of them per second.

HeyGen's answer for footage is HeyGen Video, which comes to about 32 cents for 10 seconds on Creator by our math. In our reading, that makes it a cheap way to fill the b-roll between avatar scenes.

Footage and a presenter in one project

HeyGen keeps both in one place. Its credits article says credits work as a single balance across supported video generation and asset creation features. It lists HeyGen Video, Seedance, Veo and Wan among the video models you can choose from.

Runway's UGC ads page describes another way to put a person on screen. It says you can describe the person you want on camera and Runway generates them, so the person comes from your prompt as part of a generated clip. If a multi-model studio is the kind of tool you want, we compared Runway with another one in Runway vs Higgsfield.

Where we'd send each job

• A presenter reading your script goes to HeyGen, and so does a project that mixes avatar scenes with b-roll on one credit balance.
• Generated product footage you'll restyle or recut goes to Runway.
• Seedance 2.5 work goes to Runway Max, if you'll spend most of its monthly credits.
• Ad variants for each placement go to Runway Ads, if you want Runway to build them from your best performers.
• A presenter that's one call inside your own software goes to Runway's API, as long as a preset face will do.

How Novoads handles both halves of the ad

Novoads is our tool, so weigh this section with that in mind. It lets you make the presenter and the footage on one plan. You get seven video models (Seedance 2.5, Seedance 2.0, Seedance 2.0 Mini, Kling 3.0, Google Veo 3.1, Omni Flash and Wan 3.0), the talking actor from the section above, and captions, which you add as one more step on a finished video.

Our connector for Claude does the same jobs from a chat, making videos, talking actors and captions. As of today, it also has four ad recipes.

• The 3D animated storyboard ad
• The Claymation storyboard ad
• Clone a video ad for your product
• Weekly ads

The same model, from our own workspace

The strip below is a Seedance 2.5 run from our workspace on September 21, 2026. It's a five-second vertical clip at 1080p, made from a one-line prompt. It cost 60 credits, half the price of the 10-second clip in the table. The render took 8 minutes 38 seconds.

Made in Novoads with Seedance 2.5 · a five-second vertical clip at 1080p of a woman in a bright kitchen holding a small glass serum bottle toward the camera and smiling, from a one-line prompt · 60 credits · rendered 2026-09-21

What our plans cost

• Starter costs $15 a month for 200 credits.
• Plus is $49 a month for 1,000 credits.
• Ultra starts at $129 a month for 3,000 credits.

Every plan is paid from the first month, and you'll find all of them on our pricing page.

If HeyGen is the tool you're weighing us against, our comparison of Novoads and HeyGen puts the two side by side. Our Novoads vs HeyGen post compares handheld UGC ads with a polished AI spokesperson.

What to price before you subscribe

HeyGen Video's launch promotion and Runway's Kling 4.0 offer both end on November 30, 2026, so price any December work at the standard rates.

Before you subscribe to either, count how many seconds of presenter and how many seconds of generated footage your next batch of ads needs. Then price each half on whichever plan sells it for less.