The Synthesia Alternative for Translating Real Video
Synthesia builds a presenter. Dubly translates the one you already have — their own voice, lip-synced, processed in Germany, never used to train anything.
Book a demoInstant results
Synthesia generates a presenter who does not exist. It is an avatar and training-video platform; dubbing is a side product. Dubly does only dubbing. Pick Synthesia for avatars — script-to-video, a permanent free tier, and 30 dubbed minutes a month on their biggest published plan. Pick Dubly for the result: 96.4 against 68.3 in an independent lip sync benchmark, processed in Germany, a written no-training promise, and a named person, not an AI reply. From €69 a month — and our price list runs to 400 minutes, theirs stops at 30.
An avatar platform that also dubs
What it does well, and where it stops.
Built for script-to-video, with dubbing alongside
Synthesia's core product is the AI avatar. You write a script, pick a presenter, and a talking-head video comes out in minutes. Around it sits a training stack: brand kits, SAML/SSO, SCORM export and a multilingual player for the LMS. We build none of that.
Since Dubbing 2.0 on 15 July 2026 it dubs real footage too, and properly: upload a file up to 5 GB, and it detects several speakers, clones each voice and can lip-sync the result. Anyone still telling you Synthesia cannot translate existing video is quoting a 2024 review.
Their compliance pack is fuller than ours in places: customer data in the EU, in data centres in Ireland, on every plan, plus a pre-signed DPA and a named data protection officer. Ireland is the EU, and that is compliant. Ours is narrower and, for a works council, more useful: processing in Germany, under German law. What that means in practice.
- Built for
- AI avatars, script-to-video, dubbing
- Languages
- 70+ languages & dialects
- Plans
- Starter: €26/mo · caps at 10 min · Creator: €79/mo · caps at 30 min
- Free tier
- Basic: 1,200 credits a month — 10 dubbed minutes, 5 with lip sync. Watermarked, no MP4 download.
- Data processing
- European Union — data centres in Ireland
Where the two tools actually differ
Three rows go to Synthesia. The rows a purchase turns on are further down.
Dubly.AI
Translate one video free
SynthesiaWhat a real month costs on each
Dubly bills credits: one minute of dubbing is one credit, lip sync two. Synthesia bills two credits per second of video — 120 for a dubbed minute, 240 with lip sync — out of one pool it shares with avatar videos, and unused credits reset every month. Both columns below are net list prices for the same month, brought down to the same unit. The same 25 minutes lip-synced are 50 credits, €169 a month. Our prices are on the pricing page.
Five product videos of five minutes — 25 dubbed minutes a month (50 credits with lip sync)
- Monthly plan
- €89/mo€69/mo on the annual plan
- Creator
- €79/moincludes 30 minutes of dubbing a month
Creator is the most expensive plan Synthesia publishes, and for this month it is also the cheaper one: ten euros a month under our column, for 3,600 credits — 30 dubbed minutes, or 15 with lip sync. Per minute that is below our rate, and it buys the whole avatar platform besides. It just stops. The credits are shared with every avatar video you make, unused ones reset at the start of each billing period, and there is no way to buy more mid-cycle — their own help centre says to upgrade or wait. Above Creator there is only an Enterprise quote, billed annually.
What the lower price does not include
- A written, unconditional promise that your footage never trains a model
- Video processed in Germany, under German law — not just somewhere in the EU
- A named contact on every plan — a person, not an AI reply
- A second editor: every plan you can buy has exactly one
- Purchase orders, payment terms and vendor onboarding, handled individually
- Editing the translated transcript, or a glossary for your product names — both Enterprise rows at Synthesia
- Lip sync that scores 96.4 against 68.3 on the same footage — and costs 2 credits a minute here, 2× credits there
Up to thirty minutes a month, Synthesia is the cheaper minute. Past thirty there is no Synthesia price at all. The two columns above are ten euros a month apart, and we are not going to argue that away — it holds exactly as far as their plan does. From the thirty-first minute there is nothing left to buy: no top-up mid-cycle, one editor on every published plan, credits shared with your avatar videos, and an Enterprise quote above that. Our published list runs to 400 minutes a month, thirteen times theirs, and the price of every step stays on the page. That is what the difference buys, next to Germany, an unconditional no-training promise, a named contact, and 96.4 against 68.3.
Four clips where lip sync gets hard
Synthesia dubs real footage too, and since July 2026 well enough to take seriously. So the question is not whether they can — it is how the two look on the same material. Method on the lip sync page.
The translation comes back finished — and you can still change every line of it
Text, voice, timing and lip movement already work together when the video comes back. For the moments where that is not quite enough, the visual editor lays the translation out as a timeline: every spoken line is its own block, and you hear each change before it reaches the finished video.
The visual editor: the translated video as a timeline. Every spoken line is a block you can move, stretch, split or re-voice — with lip movement on its own track underneath.
Put a line exactly where it belongs
Drag a block until the sentence lands on the cut, or only starts once something appears on screen. Nothing snaps into place; only the neighbouring lines limit you.
Set the speaking pace
Pull a block by its edge, or set the pace with a slider. It only goes as far as the voice still sounds natural, and shows you how long the line runs as you drag.
Split, add, leave out
Divide a long block in two. Write a new line into a gap and have Dubly speak it in the same cloned voice. Or drop a passage the target market has no use for.
Lip movement per moment, not per video
A second track shows where lip movement applies. Switch it on where someone is speaking on camera, and leave it off over product shots and slides.
Rewrite one line and hear it back
Change the source text, the translation, the pace or the voice for a single line, regenerate it and listen right away — nothing else in the video moves.
Nothing ships until you approve it
Your finished video stays untouched while you work. Every step can be undone, and the bar at the bottom leaves two ways out: re-render, or discard.
When a single moment is off, the usual fix is to change the text and render the whole video again. Here you change the moment — its position, its pace, its voice, its lip movement — and the rest of the translation stays exactly as it was.
Four things Synthesia cannot give you
We are not neutral. Synthesia makes avatars; we dub video. Here is what that difference is worth.
One editor, on every plan you can buy
Basic, Starter and Creator each give you one editor. Guests comment; they do not edit, and no price for a second editor is published anywhere — the only way past it is an Enterprise conversation. Dubly caps users on no plan.
Lip sync doubles the bill
Two credits a second, so 120 for a dubbed minute and 240 with lip sync — their own pricing table says so. Creator's 30 minutes a month is really 15 lip-synced minutes. Unused credits reset each month. Dubly charges one credit a minute, two with lip sync.
Above thirty minutes a month there is no published price
Self-serve stops at Creator. Credits cannot be topped up mid-cycle — their help centre says upgrade or wait — and above Creator there is only an Enterprise quote, billed annually. Our list runs unbroken to 400 minutes a month, thirteen times as far, and every step of it is on the pricing page in euros, with the documentation your security review asks for.
What you can buy is the small version of the dubbing
Their dubbing page markets 140+ languages. Their own pricing table gives Basic, Starter and Creator 70+ — the 140+ list is Enterprise. The same gate runs through the feature list: editing the original or translated transcript and a glossary for your product names are Enterprise rows, and their Dubbing 2.0 post says it plainly — enterprise plans unlock the frictionless editing workflow. On the plan you would actually buy, one wrong product name means running the video again. Every Dubly plan gets the whole product — 40+ target languages from 100+ source languages, and an editor where you change a single line and hear it back.
Four things you get here and nowhere else
96.4 lip sync score
Against 68.3 for Synthesia — 1,000 test clips on the same footage, in an independent benchmark rather than our own scoring.
Processed in Germany
A German company, German servers, no transfer to a third country. Our infrastructure has passed a TÜV SÜD penetration test.
A person, not an AI reply
A named contact on every plan, from the first euro — plus purchase orders, payment terms and vendor onboarding.
Never trains a model
In writing, without conditions, on every plan: your footage is processed and returned, and never becomes training data.
Switching, without the part everyone dreads
No migration project. Just a person who makes sure the first ten videos come out right.
A named person, not a ticket queue
One contact who stays with you through the changeover and knows your material.
A test run on your own footage
Upload a video you already dubbed elsewhere and compare. That decides it, not us.
Support for larger volumes
Back catalogues, bulk processing and API access — plus help planning it if you are mid-contract elsewhere.
Procurement on your terms
Purchase orders, payment terms, vendor forms — and a switcher offer if you are carrying an unused plan elsewhere.
There is nothing to migrate. Videos are processed fresh either way: no import, no library to move, the same source files. At Synthesia there is no unused credit to carry either — it resets every month.
So which one should you buy?
Synthesia is the better choice if you…
- Want AI avatars, or video generated from a script rather than a camera
- Live in an LMS: SCORM export and a multilingual player are theirs, not ours
- Need more dubbing languages than our 40+ — 70+ on the plans you can buy, 140+ on Enterprise
- Want a permanent free tier: Synthesia has one, ours is one test video
- Dub ten minutes a month or less — below that volume their list price wins, and their free tier covers it
Dubly is the better choice if you…
- Have real footage of real people who should keep their own voice
- Want the best lip sync here: 96.4 against 68.3 on the same footage
- Want it in writing, without conditions, that your footage never trains a model
- Have to say where the video is processed — ours stays in Germany
- Need a second editor, more than thirty minutes a month, or a person instead of an AI reply
New Com Academy took twelve hours of training video into English without a reshoot
“Thanks to Dubly.AI, we were able to internationalize our Academy without reshooting a single minute. Even complex technical terminology was translated with precision — and we saved over 85% in costs. For us, it was a game changer in making our core product globally scalable.”
Michael KibeleCEO, New Com Academy- Hours of training video internationalized
- 12+
- Hours of training video internationalized
- Lower cost than a re-production
- >85%
- Lower cost than a re-production
- Lip-synced localized content
- 100%
- Lip-synced localized content
Book a demoInstant results
Questions people ask before switching
Including the ones where the answer is not in our favour.
Synthesia generates a presenter who does not exist. Dubly translates the person you filmed. Since Dubbing 2.0 in July 2026 Synthesia dubs uploaded footage too, so the question is what each tool is built around. If the face on screen is your brand, an avatar is not a substitute.
Dubly: 96.4 against Synthesia's 68.3 in an independent lip sync benchmark across 1,000 test clips on the same footage. One caveat, from us rather than found by you: we measured before Synthesia shipped Dubbing 2.0 in July 2026. We are re-running it. Until then, judge the four clips above.
Yes. Voice cloning carries the speaker's own timbre and pace into the new language, so your CEO sounds like your CEO in Spanish. Synthesia clones voices too. The difference shows the moment that voice has to match a moving face.
Yes, in one pass. Dubly separates the speakers itself and gives each their own cloned voice and their own sync. Synthesia detects several speakers as well. The third clip on this page is two people in one take — watch the mouths.
Got any questions left?
We’d be happy to give you a personal demo of Dubly.AI and discuss your specific use cases.
Last checked: 02 September 2026
The figures for Synthesia come from their own public pricing, product and policy pages. Ours come from the price list on our pricing page, and the lip sync score from an independent benchmark across 1,000 test clips.