HeyGen vs Arcads

HeyGen vs Arcads: The Short Answer

HeyGen and Arcads don't compete for the same job. HeyGen is a cheap, general-purpose AI avatar platform built for polished, corporate, and localized video. Arcads is a narrower, more expensive tool built specifically for testing high volumes of casual, UGC-style ad variants on paid social. That split holds up against my own testing of HeyGen. The question that matters is which job you're trying to do, not which one is "better." Right now, one of these two companies has stopped telling you what its product costs.

Arcads' Pricing Has Gone Dark

One source, updated May 19, 2026, published a detailed Arcads pricing table it says it "confirmed directly": Starter at $77/mo, Creator at $154/mo, and Pro50 at $385/mo, each described as a discounted rate off a higher list price. Another source, checking barely three months later on August 9, 2026, reports that arcads.ai/pricing returns a 404.

I checked directly on 2026-09-02: it's still a 404. Arcads' site navigation has no "Pricing" link anywhere. The only visible no-subscription offer on the homepage right now is a time-limited promotional banner, "Get 7 days unlimited," tied to a specific model-launch campaign. It routes straight into a gated signup form with no price shown anywhere before you're inside it.

That means every Arcads price circulating right now, including the $110/mo figure in Google's AI Overview, is either outdated or was never independently confirmed in the first place. Treat any specific Arcads dollar figure you read right now, this page included, as unverified until you see it on Arcads' own site yourself.

What HeyGen Actually Costs Per Ad

HeyGen's pricing, by contrast, is fully published, and I've verified it myself: Creator at $29/mo (600 credits), Pro at $49/mo (1,000 credits), Business at $149/mo plus $20/seat (1,500 credits). See the HeyGen Review for the full breakdown.

What that means per ad depends heavily on which avatar engine you use. On the Creator plan's photoreal Avatar IV engine, a 30-second talking ad runs about 10 credits, roughly $0.48. Switch to a product-in-hand ad using HeyGen's AI Product Placement feature, which routes through Veo 3.1 at 30 credits per 8-second scene, and a 30-second, three-scene ad costs closer to $5.80, over ten times more than the same length of straight talking-head video.

HeyGen's "Unlimited" Has an Asterisk

HeyGen's Creator plan advertises unlimited videos up to 30 minutes long. That's technically true, but only on its cheapest engine. Against HeyGen's own published credit rates: Avatar III costs 3 credits per minute, so 600 monthly credits stretch to 200 minutes of video. Avatar IV, the realistic engine most people want for an ad, costs 20 credits per minute, which caps the same 600 credits at only 30 minutes a month. The "unlimited" claim holds in count, not in the quality tier most buyers assume it applies to.

Where Each Tool Actually Wins

• Realism in casual contexts: Arcads' actors show natural gestures, slight posture shifts, and imperfect timing that read as more human in a phone-shot UGC context. HeyGen's studio-polished avatars can feel stiff in that same setting.
• Localization: HeyGen supports 175+ languages with tiered lip-sync precision. Arcads' language support is narrower (reported between 30 and 40+ depending on plan) and less documented.
• Speed and iteration: Arcads is built for generating many variants of one script across different actors quickly, a workflow HeyGen has no dedicated tooling for at all.
• Actor and avatar library depth: Arcads advertises 1,000+ actors built specifically for ad testing. HeyGen's library skews toward corporate and spokesperson styles, with roughly 500-700 stock avatars.
• Built-in editing: HeyGen includes an in-platform editor for text overlays, music, and branding. Arcads' output is a raw clip that typically needs a second pass through an external editor before it's publish-ready.

The Reputation Gap Nobody Explains

HeyGen holds 4.8/5 across roughly 1,941 reviews on G2 and 4.7/5 across 315 on Capterra, but only about 2.5/5 across roughly 2,000 reviews on Trustpilot. That's a two-point spread on comparable review volume, and it's structural rather than mysterious: G2 and Capterra reviews are solicited from active, logged-in users, while Trustpilot is open to anyone, and it's where people go after a bad billing experience. Recent one-star Trustpilot reviews cluster on unexpected charges: a $30 plan billed at $119, charges continuing after cancellation. HeyGen's refund policy states payments are "generally non-refundable," with a discretionary 15-day window that can be denied once a meaningful number of credits has been used.

Neither Is Built for Product-in-Hand Ads

If your ad needs to show an actual product clearly, both tools show real limits. HeyGen's own documentation for its Product Placement feature admits it "works best with small or handheld products like cosmetics, gadgets, or packaged items," and warns that "larger objects like desks or furniture may appear scaled down." Arcads has its own product-showcase and unboxing presets, but one hands-on reviewer reported roughly a 20% failure rate on those presets, with product elements coming out missing or distorted. This looks like a real gap in what avatar-first platforms can currently do with physical products, not a point in either tool's favor. Neither one fails at something the other handles well.

Which One Should You Pick

• Producing spokesperson-style, training, or corporate video, and need serious localization: HeyGen, at a fraction of Arcads' cost.
• Running high-volume UGC ad testing across many faces and hooks on paid social: Arcads, if you can get past the current lack of published pricing.
• Your ads are short, casual, and product-led at modest volume: neither tool prices this case well; budget for iteration on whichever you choose.
• You want to evaluate before paying anything: HeyGen has a genuine free plan (3 videos/mo, 720p, watermarked); Arcads currently has no video free tier.

Where This Fits in the Wider AI Video Toolkit

This page compares HeyGen, reviewed in full elsewhere in the AI Video Tools section, against Arcads, which doesn't yet have its own review on this site. For other tools positioned as HeyGen substitutes, see HeyGen Alternatives. For a wider comparison across the category, see The Best AI Video Generators, Compared.

Frequently asked questions

Does Arcads publish its pricing?

No. I confirmed this directly against arcads.ai on 2026-09-02. The dedicated pricing page returns a 404, and Arcads' site navigation has no pricing link anywhere. The only visible offer is a time-limited promotional signup banner with no price shown before signup.

How much does Arcads cost right now?

Unconfirmed. A source updated in May 2026 reported tiers starting at $77/mo. Another found the pricing page gone by August 2026. When I checked in September 2026, it was still gone. Treat any specific figure you see for Arcads elsewhere as unverified until Arcads' own site shows it again.

Is HeyGen cheaper than Arcads?

Yes, substantially, from what's still confirmable. HeyGen's published pricing puts a 30-second talking ad at well under a dollar on its Creator plan, while sources checking Arcads before its pricing page went dark reported per-video costs in the $7-11+ range.

Which is better for UGC-style ads, HeyGen or Arcads?

Reviewers who tested both directly lean toward Arcads for this specific use case: its actors are built to mimic casual, handheld phone-shot content, and it includes hook and ad-variant tooling HeyGen doesn't have at all. HeyGen's polish tends to read as "produced" in a social feed, which can work against it for this format.