I used HeyGen to build the international side of my business. I recommended them publicly, and I did a paid collaboration with them because I believed in the product. Today my previous HeyGen review is unlisted, and I don't recommend them any more.

This is my own experience as a HeyGen customer of roughly two years, running a network of localised YouTube channels. Every figure below comes from HeyGen's own written responses to me or from my own account. Where I give an opinion, I say so. All prices are in US dollars.

01The short version

The reason isn't the product. It's that what I'm told I'm paying for and what I actually get have turned out to be different things, repeatedly, over about eleven months.

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02What I use it for

I run 16 localised YouTube channels with over 280,000 subscribers and a team behind them. Audio dubbing into nine languages isn't an occasional extra for me, it's a production input. My translation library on the platform holds well over a hundred dubbed product reviews. In the last 90 days my account shows more than 1,300 translations and close to 74 hours of audio.

03What happened, in order

October 2025 — the $49 Unlimited plan is capped at two hours a month

I had been on the Unlimited plan at $49 a month, using it for dubbing. Without notice, that became a monthly cap. HeyGen's support confirmed it to me in writing:

"We recently introduced a 2-hour monthly limit for video translation… if you're translating a lot each day, you are able to either purchase an extra GenCredits packs ($15 for 60 minutes of translation) or wait until the limit resets."— HeyGen support, 14 October 2025

I found out when my work stopped. There was no email and no warning that I could act on beforehand.

December 2025 — I test the credits with my real workload

Credits were the alternative on offer, so I tested them properly. I bought the plan, bought the booster pack on top, and ran my actual localisation workload through it. Both were gone within hours, and I had completed roughly 2% of the work I needed done.

I then asked whether a larger plan would improve the economics, which is what most people would assume. The answer was clear, and I appreciated the honesty of it:

"Moving to an Enterprise package wouldn't reduce your per-minute translation cost compared to GenCredits. In practice, it's usually the same or slightly more expensive on a per-video-minute basis… there isn't anything to be done right now regarding partnerships and / or bulk discount for large translation projects such as this."— HeyGen, 15–16 December 2025

That is the single most useful thing anyone at HeyGen has told me, and it's the thing their pricing page won't tell you: at genuine multi-language volume, the per-minute cost doesn't improve, no matter which door you go through.

August 2026 — a login prompt, and unlimited audio dubbing disappears

On Sunday 9 August 2026 I logged in to run dubbing, as I do routinely. Before I could reach the product, a prompt appeared telling me I was being moved to a new plan, that my existing services and inclusions would remain the same, and that the new plan was an improvement. I clicked through it to get to my work. Unlimited audio dubbing was gone immediately.

Their agent confirmed in the chat that I had previously been on the Team Unlimited plan with audio dubbing included at no credit cost, that I was now on the credit-based Pro plan where the same function costs 2 credits per minute, and that the legacy plan was no longer available with no way to switch back.

In my view, a material downgrade to a paying customer's entitlements should be delivered in a form you can read, compare and decline. Not as a prompt standing between you and your work, telling you nothing is changing while everything changes.

August–September 2026 — formal complaint, and reinstatement

I lodged a formal complaint raising misleading and deceptive conduct under sections 18 and 29 of the Australian Consumer Law, copied to the Queensland Office of Fair Trading, and I reported the matter to the ACCC. HeyGen subsequently confirmed I was grandfathered back onto the legacy unlimited plan.

September 2026 — "Unlimited" turns out to mean 1,000 minutes, then 60 a day

My account says "Audio only — Unlimited". In September, running translations, I was met with this message:

"You have used your monthly audio-only Video Translation allowance. Audio-only translation is rate limited for the rest of the billing cycle. Please try again in 24 hours."— HeyGen platform message, September 2026

When I asked, HeyGen confirmed in writing that a 1,000-minute monthly allowance now applies to audio-only Video Translation because it was placing load on their systems, and that once that allowance is reached the service is limited to 60 minutes a day for the remainder of the month.

I understand that a platform has to manage load. That's their business. My issue is that the word Unlimited is still sitting on my account while the platform tells me I'm rate limited, and that I found out the same way I found out in October 2025: when the work stopped.

04What this actually costs a business

The monthly price is the smallest part of it. Three changes to what I'm paying for in eleven months meant:

• production stopped each time while we worked out what we still had;
• my team sitting idle, and then rebuilding the workflow around the new rules;
• my own time going into complaints, escalations and a consumer law process instead of the business;
• and a nine-language localisation pipeline that I can no longer schedule with confidence.

In practice, 60 minutes a day doesn't cover a single day of my output. I can't run nine languages on that.

05Support

When my dubbing disappeared, the first request I received was for video IDs and screen recordings — it had been logged as a technical fault. Nothing was broken; my plan had been changed. It was then referred to finance with a stated response window of 48–72 business hours, which on their business days runs to around two weeks, while my production sat stopped.

I asked for escalation to Level 2 and management, because we had already been through a formal complaint about essentially the same issue. What came back was another Level 1 response explaining the restriction to me. I already knew what the restriction was. That's why I was writing.

This isn't about the individuals answering tickets — they work with what they're given. It's about a process that returns you to the start.

?Questions people ask me

Disclosure: I previously did a paid collaboration with HeyGen. This post is not sponsored and contains no affiliate links. Last updated September 2026 — if anything changes, this page will be updated.