InVideo vs Synthesia vs AdsGen: AI video tools compared

Both companies sell you a monthly allowance, and the allowances are measured in units that do not convert. Synthesia counts finished video minutes. Its own FAQ spells out what that buys: a Starter plan is 10 video minutes a month, so "you can generate 10 videos which are 1:00 minutes long, or 1 video which is 10:00 minutes long." You can plan a quarter of content against that before you enter a card.

InVideo counts credits, and a credit is not a fixed unit of output. Its pricing FAQ states that generative models are charged at their original API pricing, that unused credits do not roll over to the next month, and that InVideo reserves the right to update credit costs at any time without prior notice. So the same 75 credits buy wildly different amounts of finished video depending on which model you pick, and the exchange rate can move mid-subscription. The tell is on InVideo's own plan cards: the worked example under every tier is quoted in still image generations rather than in videos. On a video product, that is the most honest thing on the page, and it says the vendor cannot promise a video count either.

Buried in Synthesia's pricing FAQ is a rule most reviews never mention: "We only count new video seconds. Example: If you edit an existing 1-minute video and change 3 seconds of it, we will only charge you for 3 seconds."

That single sentence changes how a small allowance behaves. Ten minutes a month sounds thin until you realize that revising last quarter's onboarding video, swapping a product name, or updating a price costs you seconds rather than a full re-render. For any team maintaining a library of videos rather than shipping new ones every week, Synthesia's effective capacity is far higher than the headline number. The mirror image is also true, and it is why the two tools suit different work: on InVideo, every regeneration spends credits again at full rate, because there is no concept of an unchanged frame you already paid for.

Read both pages carefully and each one has a wrinkle worth knowing before you commit to a year.

InVideo's four tiers are all quoted with the annual toggle already on, so the advertised "$17 a month" is $200 charged up front, and the true month-to-month figure is higher by the 15% discount InVideo itself states (10% on Elite). There is no free plan card, yet the FAQ describes a Free plan you get downgraded to when you cancel, at which point unused paid credits expire. Credits do roll over in one specific case, when you upgrade to a higher plan, which is the opposite of the month-to-month rule and easy to misread.

Synthesia's page contradicts itself on annual totals. Read live on August 15, 2026, the plan cards priced annual Starter at $216 a year and annual Creator at $768, while the FAQ further down the same page states "For Starter plan users, Synthesia costs $29 per month or $264 if you go with an annual plan" and "$89/month or $804/year if you pay annually." That is a $48 gap on one plan and $36 on the other. Neither figure is hidden and we are not suggesting anything underhand, but if you are budgeting from a screenshot, take it from the checkout rather than the marketing page. There is also a metering split worth flagging: on monthly billing the allowance is quoted per month, on annual billing the identical capacity is quoted as 120 or 360 minutes per year.

Pick Synthesia if your output is scripted, informational and repetitive: training modules, product walkthroughs, internal updates, anything that needs to exist in eleven languages and land in an LMS. The forecastable minute meter, the new-seconds-only rule and the enterprise plumbing are all pointed at that job, and nothing else in this comparison does it as well.

Pick InVideo if your output changes shape constantly and you want one bill instead of five. Every paid tier unlocks the same 200+ models, so the $17 plan is a genuine way to test the shelf before scaling. Just budget on your real model mix rather than the headline credit count, and check the per-model rate before signing an annual term.

Pick neither if what you actually need is advertising. Both will render a person talking, which is the surface of a UGC ad, but neither picks the angle, writes the spoken hook or sizes the file for a specific placement. That is the gap AdsGen was built to close: paste a product URL and it chooses the angle, writes the hook, casts a creator who reads as a real person filming on a phone, and returns native 9:16 video with captions already burned in. Fewer models than InVideo and none of Synthesia's enterprise reach, deliberately, in exchange for ads you can upload the same afternoon.