HeyGen is an avatar video vendor: you send a script and a chosen presenter, and it returns a finished video. Small AI shops use it for product explainers, course videos and ads. It bills in credits, and credits are the one thing on this page you need to understand. We checked our own account on October 8, 2026, and this guide is built from that check and from HeyGen's published plans.
What HeyGen actually bills you for
HeyGen sells four plans on its pricing page. Free is $0 a month for 3 videos a month of up to 1 minute each. Creator is $29 a month for 600 credits. Pro is $49 a month for 1,000 credits. Business is $149 a month plus $20 per seat for 1,500 credits.
Credits are the unified currency across every feature, and the cost of a video in credits depends on the model, the duration and the complexity, according to the same page. API pricing is not on that page. It lives behind the developer portal at developers.heygen.com, and a Business plan can buy one-time credit packs or enable auto-reload.
That last option is the whole story for cost control. With auto-reload off, the balance is the ceiling. With it on, the ceiling moves every time you hit it.
What happened to us
Nothing, and that is the point. On October 8, 2026, our monitor pulled the account and got a clean answer: billing type wallet, remaining balance $5.20, auto-reload disabled. The legacy quota endpoint reported 312 API credits remaining out of a 992-credit plan allocation, with 3 watermarked studio previews left.
So the HeyGen line on our board is green with a note that reads, in full:
“HeyGen = wallet $5.20, auto-reload off (no leak).”Mepa8 vendor note, October 8, 2026
A monitor that only ever shouts is a monitor you stop reading. Half its value is saying, with numbers, that a vendor is fine. The other half is the same check noticing when someone turns auto-reload on for a rush job and forgets to turn it off.
One thing the check did warn us about: the quota endpoint we used is marked legacy and is scheduled for removal on October 31, 2026. The connector now reads the newer account endpoint instead, so the number keeps arriving after that date.
How Mepa8 watches HeyGen
HeyGen sits in the Watched tier of the Mepa8 catalog. The connector calls one endpoint, GET /v3/users/me, with a read-only key and records three facts: billing type, remaining balance and whether auto-reload is enabled. Each run compares them to the last. Balance under your budget floor is a warning. Auto-reload flipping from off to on is a warning on its own, because it is the moment the cap disappears.
The kill is a documented dashboard step, not an API call, which is what Watched means. Revoke the API key in the HeyGen dashboard. Blast radius: video generation stops, and nothing else in your stack is touched. Restore means issuing a new key and pasting its environment variable name into the vendor card. Two steps, logged, reversible, never automatic.
Set a cap in five minutes
- In HeyGen, confirm auto-reload is off unless you want a moving ceiling. That single toggle is the cap.
- Create an API key for monitoring only and store it as an environment variable, for example
HEYGEN_READ_KEY. - Add HeyGen in Mepa8 with the credential written as
env:HEYGEN_READ_KEY. Names are stored, values never. - Set the budget floor. We use $5 of wallet balance as the warning line and $60 a month as the budget.
- Write the kill recipe on the card: revoke the key, and list the one pipeline that stops.
Questions people ask
Is a HeyGen wallet a real spending cap?
Yes, as long as auto-reload stays off. Our account on October 8, 2026 showed a $5.20 balance and auto-reload disabled, which means no render can spend past $5.20. Turn auto-reload on and the Business plan refills the balance automatically, so the cap is gone.
How many credits does one video cost?
HeyGen does not publish a flat number. Its pricing page says credit cost varies by AI model, duration and complexity, and API pricing is listed separately in the developer portal. The honest answer is to render one test video and read the balance before and after, which is what the Mepa8 connector records.
What does the Watched tier mean for HeyGen?
Mepa8 reads cost and balance by API every run, through the v3 account endpoint, but the kill is a human step: revoke the key in the HeyGen dashboard. The card states the blast radius, video generation only, and the restore step. Full tier vendors like ElevenLabs add an API kill; HeyGen does not expose one we have proven.
Sources
- HeyGen pricing — plans, credits, auto-reload
- HeyGen developer portal — API docs and API pricing
Change log: October 9, 2026 — First published from our own October 2026 accounts.