Test results#
| API (model) | Price per minute, 720p | Lip sync (SyncNet, higher = better) | Time to a 20 s video | What moves | Output |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stork Standard (FlashHead Lite) | $0.20 | 6.85 | 96 s | Head, face, eyes | 982x720 |
| Stork Pro (FlashHead Pro) | $0.40 | 6.55 | 143 s | Head, face, eyes | 982x720 |
| Kling AI Avatar v2 Standard (fal) | $3.37 | 6.35 | 412 s | Head, face, small hand movements | 1120x816, 30 fps |
| OmniHuman 1.5 (fal, 720p) | $9.60 | 6.87 | 336 s | Head, shoulders, body, hands | 1120x832 |
| VEED Fabric 1.0 (fal, 720p) | $9.00 | 8.11 | 135 s | Head, body, expressive hand gestures | 1120x832 |
How to read the lip-sync column: SyncNet's confidence score (LSE-C) measures how well mouth movement matches the audio. In our calibration on singing and speech, 5.4 to 7.8 is good and under 1.5 is broken. All five are good; VEED Fabric scored highest. All five also kept the audio offset within 2 frames.
What you are paying for#
- Lip sync is solved at every price. None of the five drifted out of sync over 20 seconds, and the cheapest scored within 0.1 of OmniHuman.
- Body motion is the expensive part. A head-only model like Stork's animates the face region and keeps the shoulders and hands frozen. Diffusion models such as OmniHuman, Fabric and Kling regenerate the whole frame, so the person can gesture, at 15 to 50 times the price.
- Speed does not follow price. The cheapest model was the fastest, and Kling, mid-priced, was the slowest at almost 7 minutes for 20 seconds of video.
- Length limits differ a lot. OmniHuman 1.5 on fal is capped at 60 s per call at 720p, Alibaba's wan2.2-s2v at under 20 s, Kling at 300 s, Hedra and WaveSpeed's InfiniteTalk at 10 minutes, WaveSpeed's FlashHead at 30 minutes. Stork has no length limit.
- The same open model is sold at very different prices. SoulX-FlashHead, the model behind Stork, costs $0.30 per minute on fal (text in, 512x512 head out, its own voices only), $0.90 to $1.80 per minute on WaveSpeed (your photo and audio) and $0.20 per minute at 720p on Stork (your photo and audio, pasted back into the full photo).
Which one to use#
- Long narration, faceless YouTube channels, course lessons, news recaps, dubbed versions of one presenter: a head-only model is enough and the price difference compounds. A 10-minute video costs about $2 on Stork Standard against about $33.70 on Kling and $96 on OmniHuman 1.5.
- Short ads, hooks, UGC-style clips where the presenter should feel alive: VEED Fabric or OmniHuman. The hand gestures are worth paying for in a 15-second ad.
- A middle ground: Kling AI Avatar v2 moves a little more than a head-only model at about a third of OmniHuman's price.
- Real-time conversation (agents, kiosks): none of these. Rendered APIs take minutes; live avatars are a separate product category priced per session minute.
Every API price we checked, cheapest first#
Every row below was read on the provider's own pricing page or docs on November 13, 2026, and converted to dollars per minute of finished video. "Estimate" means the per-minute figure is our math from a plan's published credits.
| Provider and model | Resolution | Per minute | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stork Standard (API) | 480p / 720p / 1080p | $0.10 / $0.20 / $0.25 | Any length, per started 10 s, no watermark, prepaid credits |
| Stork Pro (API) | 480p / 720p / 1080p | $0.30 / $0.40 / $0.60 | Larger FlashHead model |
| fal FlashHead (same open model as Stork) | 512x512 head | $0.30 | Text input only, read by built-in ElevenLabs voices; no own audio |
| A2E photo to avatar to lip sync | up to 2K | $0.30 to $0.59 (estimate) | Needs an avatar built first; Pro plan |
| D-ID API (annual plans) | not stated | $0.69 to $0.78 (estimate) | Subscription; Launch plan carries an AI watermark |
| WaveSpeed InfiniteTalk-Fast | not stated | $0.90 | $0.015/s, up to 10 min |
| WaveSpeed SoulX-FlashHead | 480p / 720p | $0.90 / $1.80 | Photo + audio, up to 30 min, 3 s minimum |
| HeyGen API Avatar III photo avatar | 720p/1080p | $0.99 | Plus $1.32 to create each photo avatar |
| Replicate wan-2.2-s2v | not stated | $1.20 | $0.02/s |
| Magic Hour talking photo (prompted) | 480p/720p | $1.20 to $1.90 (estimate) | Plan needed, 60 s max |
| Replicate p-video-avatar | 720p | $1.50 | $0.025/s |
| Hedra Character-3 | 540p / 720p / 1080p | $1.50 / $3.00 / $3.75 | Up to 10 min |
| A2E Talking Photo V1 | up to 2K | $1.80 to $3.56 (estimate) | 6 credits per second |
| HeyGen API Avatar IV photo avatar | 720p/1080p | $2.31 | No subscription |
| Kling AI Avatar standard (direct, fal, Replicate, WaveSpeed) | 720p | $3.36 to $3.37 | Direct API needs a prepaid package |
| Akool talking photo | 720p | $3.48 to $4.08 (estimate) | Annual plan |
| BytePlus OmniHuman 2.0 | 720p | $4.20 | $0.07/s, 30 to 300 s |
| Alibaba wan2.2-s2v | 480p / 720p | $4.30 / $7.74 | Beijing region only, audio under 20 s |
| fal HeyGen Avatar 4 | 720p | $6.00 | $0.10/s |
| fal OmniHuman v2 | not stated | $6.30 | $0.105/s |
| Kling AI Avatar v2 Pro (fal) | 1080p | $6.90 | $0.115/s |
| BytePlus OmniHuman 1.5 | not stated | $7.20 | $0.12/s |
| Runware OmniHuman 1.5 | not stated | $7.92 | $0.132/s |
| fal Creatify Aurora | 480p / 720p | $4.20 / $8.40 | Rounded up to whole seconds |
| fal VEED Fabric 1.0 | 480p / 720p | $4.80 / $9.00 | Fast variant $6.00 / $12.00 |
| fal OmniHuman 1.5 | 720p / 1080p | $9.60 | 60 s max at 720p, 30 s at 1080p |
| fal LongCat Avatar | 480p / 720p | $9.00 / $18.00 | About 51 s max |
Prices we could not verify#
- VisionStory's API rate. Its app pricing works out to roughly $0.65 to $0.78 per minute at 720p, but the API is priced separately and not published.
- Vidnoz's API rate for talking photos (its pages disagree on credits per minute), HeyGen's newest Avatar 6 photo-plus-audio price, D-ID's monthly prices and resolution, and the minimum prepaid package for Kling's direct API.
- RunPod's InfiniteTalk endpoint charges a flat $0.25 to $0.50 per video, but its maximum audio length isn't documented, so it can't be converted to a per-minute price.
- Tavus, Synthesia, MiniMax and Pollo publish no price for a single photo plus your own audio.
Worth a look
Stork Talking Photo
Turn any photo into a talking video with your own voice. Any length, no watermark, from $0.10 a minute. Free to try.
Try Stork Talking PhotoEnjoying this? Get one like it in your inbox each morning.
one email a day · unsubscribe in two clicks · no third-party tracking
Hidden costs to check before you pick#
- Setup fees per face. HeyGen charges $1.32 to create each photo avatar before the per-minute rate applies; A2E's cheapest route also needs an avatar built first.
- Minimums and subscriptions. Kling's direct API is sold as prepaid resource packages, D-ID and Akool are sold as plans, and HeyGen stopped giving free API credits in February 2026. fal, Replicate, WaveSpeed and Stork bill per use.
- Rounding. Most per-second APIs round up to whole seconds; Stork rounds up to the next 10 seconds with a 5-cent minimum per video, D-ID to 15 seconds.
- Length caps mean stitching. A 10-minute video on a 60-second-capped API is ten calls plus your own stitching, and the face can drift between segments.
How we tested#
- Inputs: one photo of a presenter at a news desk (an AI-generated person, 1440x1056) and 20.06 seconds of English narration made with the open Kokoro-82M voice model.huggingface.co
- APIs: Kling AI Avatar v2 Standard, OmniHuman 1.5 at 720p and VEED Fabric 1.0 at 720p, all through fal's queue API with default settings, plus Stork Standard and Pro at 720p. One run each. Hedra and HeyGen weren't tested because we had no API access.fal.ai
- Scoring: lip sync with SyncNet (confidence and audio offset), render time from submit to downloadable file, and four stills per video for the motion comparison above.github.com
- Cost of the test: about $7.30 on fal, and a few cents of GPU for Stork's runs.
Try the cheapest option without code in the free AI Talking Photo tool (one minute, with a small logo), or read the API docs. For apps that turn photos into talking videos for consumers, see our best AI talking photo apps guide.
Frequently asked questions#
What is the cheapest talking head API?#
Among prices published on providers' own pages on November 13, 2026, Stork's Talking Photo API was the cheapest API that takes your own photo and audio, at $0.10 per minute (480p) and $0.20 per minute (720p), with no length limit. fal sells the same open FlashHead model at $0.30 per minute, but only with text read by its built-in voices and a 512x512 output. Alibaba's LivePortrait API, about $0.17 per minute, was retired on October 10, 2026. Other verified pay-per-use APIs start at $0.90 per minute (WaveSpeed FlashHead at 480p and InfiniteTalk-Fast) and $0.99 (HeyGen Avatar III).
How much does OmniHuman cost per minute?#
OmniHuman 1.5 costs $9.60 per minute on fal and Replicate ($0.16 per second), $7.92 on Runware and $7.20 direct from BytePlus. OmniHuman 2.0 costs $4.20 per minute on BytePlus and $6.30 on fal. Prices read on November 13, 2026.
How much does the Kling AI Avatar API cost?#
Kling AI Avatar standard (720p) costs about $3.36 to $3.37 per minute of video ($0.056 per second) on Kling's own API, fal, Replicate and WaveSpeed. The Pro mode (1080p) costs $6.60 to $6.90 per minute. Kling's direct API is sold as prepaid packages.
Do cheap talking head APIs have worse lip sync?#
Not in our test. On the same photo and 20-second clip, all five APIs we tested scored in SyncNet's good range: Stork Standard 6.85, Stork Pro 6.55, Kling AI Avatar v2 6.35, OmniHuman 1.5 6.87 and VEED Fabric 8.11. The difference was body motion: the cheaper models move only the head and face, while OmniHuman and VEED Fabric move the body and hands.
Which talking head API is best for long YouTube videos?#
For long narration where a presenter mainly talks to camera, a head-only model is usually enough, and length limits matter more than motion. OmniHuman 1.5 on fal is capped at 60 seconds per call, Kling at 300 seconds and Hedra at 10 minutes. Stork's API has no length limit and costs about $2 for 10 minutes at 720p.
Is there a free talking head API?#
Not a free API in our check. HeyGen stopped giving free API credits in February 2026. Stork's Talking Photo tool lets signed-in users make two free one-minute videos a day with a small logo, and its API is pay-as-you-go from $10 of credits.