Synthesia alternative: explainer videos without an avatar

Synthesia and Voom at a glance

Synthesia is built around AI avatars: lifelike presenters who read your script to camera. Its plans include more than 125 stock avatars on Starter and more than 180 on Pro, personal avatars of yourself, more than 140 languages and voices, one-click translation, interactive videos and an AI video agent called Syren that drafts a video from a description. It is widely used for training, onboarding and company communication.

Voom builds a film around the idea instead of a presenter. You describe what to explain and, if it is your product, paste its link. Voom writes the script, draws each step as motion graphics, from product screens to diagrams to simple characters in an illustrated world, records the voice-over, writes an original score and adds sound effects.

Both give you a narrated video from text. One shows a person telling you; the other shows you the thing.

When a presenter helps, and when a picture does

A presenter is right when the message rests on a person: a welcome from a manager, a policy explained by someone accountable, a training scenario. Viewers look at faces, and an avatar gives a script one.

A picture is right when the idea is something to see: money moving between banks, heat moving through a pipe, a CRM sitting under the AI apps you use. A presenter can describe those, but the viewer still has to imagine them. A drawn step that arrives as the voice names it does the imagining for them. The heat pump explainer at the end of this page has no presenter; the idea itself is the subject of every shot.

Synthesia vs Voom compared

Synthesia facts come from its pricing page, read on 23 October 2026. Prices are in US dollars.

	Synthesia	Voom
Who is on screen	An AI avatar presenter	The idea itself: diagrams, product screens, type and simple drawn characters
Starts from	A script or a description to Syren	A prompt, plus your product link
Languages	140+ languages and voices	20 voices, each speaking more than 20 languages
Free plan	10 minutes of video a month, Synthesia watermark	First film free, up to 30 seconds
Entry paid plan	Starter: $18 a month billed yearly	Pro: $29 a month for 560 credits
Cost of a one-minute film	Syren typically uses 1,000 to 2,000 credits	17 credits, about $0.88 on Pro
Best for	Training, onboarding, internal messages with a presenter	Product explainers, launch films, how-it-works topics

Bottom line: if your video needs a face, Synthesia’s avatars are made for it. If it needs the viewer to see how something works, a designed motion graphics film shows it directly.

What Voom adds for product explainers

• Your product, not a stand-in. Paste a link and Voom keeps your real screens and packshots, in your colours and type.
• One picture per step. Each line of the script gets its own shot, arriving as the voice names it.
• Numbers kept true. A film states only figures its sources state, checked against your page and your prompt.
• A score written for the film. Original music and sound effects, mixed under the voice and mastered for you.
• Every size. 16:9, 9:16, 1:1 and 4:5, each composed for its shape, with cheap remakes in another size.

Which one should you choose?

• Training and onboarding with a presenter: Synthesia.
• One video translated into dozens of languages with an avatar: Synthesia.
• An explainer that shows how something works: Voom.
• A launch film or SaaS explainer in your own brand: Voom.
• A known price per film without a monthly minimum of minutes: Voom.

To see an explainer without a presenter, describe your topic to Voom. Your first film is free. For the full range of styles, read types of explainer videos.