D-ID Pricing: Studio vs API Plans and Real Cost

D-ID sells two separate products on two separate price lists, and they behave in opposite ways. Studio, the browser app, runs $5.90, $29 and $196 a month for Lite, Pro and Advanced, or $4.70, $16 and $108 on annual billing. The API runs $18, $50 and $198 a month for Build, Launch and Scale, or $14.40, $35 and $138.60 annually. Every plan meters the same way: four credits buy one minute of video, and one credit buys up to 15 seconds. All figures were read live from d-id.com on September 9, 2026.

The number that decides your bill is not on the plan card. It is the per-minute cost you land on after you pick a product, a tier and a billing cycle, and D-ID's two ladders move in opposite directions. On the API, minutes get cheaper as you scale. In Studio, they get more expensive.

How much does D-ID cost?

Studio is the plan most people mean when they ask. There are three paid tiers plus a 14 day trial and a quoted Enterprise tier.

What each tier actually includes is the part worth reading twice, because the allowance and the licence do not move together.

Lite, Pro and Advanced each carry a promotional line reading "Unlimited videos for your first month", footnoted with "Reasonable use limits apply. See Fair-Use Policy." That is a first-month promotion, not a plan feature, and it is fenced by a fair-use policy rather than a stated number.

What is D-ID's API pricing?

The API is priced on its own page with its own tiers and its own annual discount. It also quotes a second allowance for streaming video, which Studio does not.

Build carries 64 credits and up to 16 minutes of video plus 32 minutes of streaming. Launch carries 180 credits, 45 minutes of video and 90 of streaming. Scale carries 800 credits, 200 minutes of video and 400 of streaming. Launch and Scale also expose credit rungs above the base allowance, 360 and 540 on Launch, 1,000 and 1,200 on Scale, so you can size up without moving tier.

Integrating any of this is engineering work rather than a settings change, since you are wiring video generation, storage and a webhook flow into your own stack. Teams without a spare backend developer often bring in an AI developer on contract for the initial build and then maintain it in-house.

How many credits does a D-ID video use?

Four credits per minute, on every tier of both products. One credit buys up to 15 seconds of video, and D-ID rounds each render up to the nearest 15 second interval. A 20 second avatar clip therefore costs two credits, the same as a 30 second one.

The ratio holds everywhere, which is unusual and worth crediting. Studio Lite is 40 credits for 10 minutes, Pro is 60 for 15 and Advanced is 400 for 100. On the API, Build is 64 for 16, Launch is 180 for 45 and Scale is 800 for 200. Every one of those divides to exactly four credits a minute, so unlike most credit systems in this category you can convert a D-ID allowance into minutes without a lookup table.

The rounding is the thing to plan around. If you are producing lots of short clips, budget in 15 second blocks rather than actual seconds, because a 16 second render bills as 30 seconds.

D-ID's per-minute cost rises in Studio and falls on the API

This is the finding that should drive your choice of product, and it is visible only once you divide each plan's price by the minutes it includes.

The API behaves the way you expect a volume product to behave: buying more minutes lowers the price of each one, from $0.90 down to $0.69. Studio does the opposite. Moving from Lite to Pro more than doubles your cost per minute, from $0.47 to $1.07, and Advanced holds roughly flat at $1.08 rather than dropping back down.

There is a reason for it, and it is not arbitrary. Studio Lite is a shop window. It is cheap per minute because it carries a personal use licence and a D-ID watermark, so nobody can put its output in a paid campaign. The moment you need the thing that makes the output usable commercially, you land on Pro and your per-minute cost triples. Paid monthly the effect is sharper still: $0.59 a minute on Lite against $1.93 on Pro.

Can you use D-ID commercially?

Not on the cheapest paid tier of either product. In Studio, the commercial use licence starts at Pro, which is $16 a month billed annually or $29 monthly. Trial and Lite both carry a personal use licence and a watermark. On the API, the split is stated even more plainly: Trial and Build are marked "Personal license" while Launch and Scale are marked "Commercial license".

So if you are generating video for advertising, marketing or anything client-facing, D-ID's real entry price is $16 a month in Studio or $35 a month on the API, both on annual billing, and not the $4.70 or $14.40 the top of the page advertises. Pro and Launch also still apply an AI watermark, distinct from the D-ID branding watermark that Lite and Build carry. Removing branding entirely and adding a custom logo starts at Advanced or Scale.

Do D-ID credits roll over?

No. D-ID's own FAQ states that minutes "do not accumulate, they are renewed every month and unused minutes become void". A quiet month is money you do not get back, and a busy one means buying a credit top-up or moving up a tier.

That interacts badly with the small allowances on the lower tiers. Studio Pro gives you 15 minutes a month, which is 60 credits, which is 60 clips of 15 seconds or fewer. For a talking-head explainer library that is comfortable. For an advertiser testing hooks, where most variations are discarded, 15 minutes goes quickly and nothing carries into next month.

What the next tier up does not give you

Worth checking before you upgrade for a specific feature. D-ID's own comparison grid lists Agent Memory at 1,000 on Trial, Lite, Pro and Advanced alike, with Unlimited reserved for Enterprise. Paying 33 times more to move from Lite to Advanced buys you minutes, avatars, voice clones and branding control, but not a larger agent memory.

The annual discount is also worth dividing rather than reading off the badge. Studio advertises "Save up to 45%", and that is accurate on Pro (44.8%) and Advanced (44.9%) but not on Lite, which saves 20.3%. The API advertises "Save up to 30%", true on Launch and Scale at exactly 30% and overstated on Build at 20%. In both products the entry tier saves you roughly half of what the banner suggests, so if you are starting small, the annual commitment is worth less than it looks.

Is D-ID the right tool for video ads?

D-ID is strong at what it was built for: a presenter, an avatar and a script, delivered through a clean API with streaming support and your own S3 storage. If you are building an interactive agent, a training library, a localized explainer set or an avatar feature inside your own product, it is a sensible buy and the API ladder prices volume fairly.

It is a weaker fit for performance advertising, for reasons that have nothing to do with quality. Ad creative is a volume game where most variations lose, so you want a lot of cheap attempts and a fast path from product to finished ad. With D-ID you supply the script, pick the avatar, generate the clip, then edit, caption and size it for each placement yourself. The 15 minute monthly allowance on Pro is a real constraint on that workflow, and none of it rolls over.

If your job is testing hooks rather than producing presenter video, a tool built around ad output will get you there with less assembly. AdsGen takes a product URL and returns a batch of vertical UGC ads across six angles, with written hooks and burned-in captions already applied, sized for Meta, TikTok, Reels and Shorts. Plans start at $82 a month and are counted in finished ads rather than credits, which is a different unit to the one D-ID sells. We keep a full breakdown of what that costs against the rest of the category in our guide to AI UGC ad generator pricing.

The obvious cross-shop is HeyGen, which competes with D-ID directly on avatar video and prices per credit with its own per-model rate card. Our HeyGen pricing breakdown sets out how those credits convert to minutes. If you are weighing credit-metered creative studios more broadly, the same budgeting problem shows up in a sharper form at Higgsfield, where credits cost a different amount on every model and expire monthly, which we cover in our Higgsfield alternative comparison. For a head-to-head on the avatar tools most often used for paid social, see TopView AI vs Higgsfield.

The short version

D-ID Studio costs $5.90, $29 or $196 a month, or $4.70, $16 and $108 billed annually. The API costs $18, $50 or $198 a month, or $14.40, $35 and $138.60 annually. Four credits buy a minute on every tier, renders round up to 15 second blocks, and unused minutes expire each month. Commercial use starts at Studio Pro or API Launch, so treat $16 and $35 a month as the real entry prices for any work you intend to publish. Checked at source on September 9, 2026, and worth rechecking, because D-ID has changed this page before.