Both put a talking avatar in front of your visitors. They are priced differently, built for different buyers, and one of them is ours. Prices below came from their own pricing page on 2026-09-18.
The short answer. Smara costs less per minute on every plan we could compare: $0.073 against $0.095 at entry, and $0.055 against $0.090 in the middle.
| Product | Plan | Per month | Minutes | Per minute |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Smara | Starter | $29 | 400 | $0.073 |
| HeyGen LiveAvatar | Starter | $19 | 200 | $0.095 |
| Smara | Growth | $99 | 1,800 | $0.055 |
| HeyGen LiveAvatar | Essential | $99 | 1,100 | $0.090 |
Their price covers the whole conversation, as ours does, so these are comparable numbers.
HeyGen's real-time API, separate from the video generator most people know them for. 1080p, an avatar from a single image or a two minute clip, and a full voice stack or avatar only if you prefer your own.
Their published engineering claims: first frames under 300ms, 99.99% uptime, and unlimited concurrency on every paid plan.
Their session caps are the thing to check. Five minutes on Starter ends a real conversation mid-sentence. We do not cap a conversation, our entry plan is twice the minutes for ten dollars more, and an extra minute costs $0.04 against their unpublished credit packs.
Underneath, the thing that makes our price possible is that the engine runs without a GPU. That is also why the same software can run inside a clinic or a law firm's own building, why the stream fits a 100 kbps connection, and why we can charge four cents for an extra minute rather than thirty-seven.
She can also operate the page she is on: point at what she is describing, fill in a booking form from what you told her, and finish the job rather than describe it.
Where we are weaker: we are newer, we are one product rather than a platform, and if you need a hundred simultaneous conversations today, several of the names here have been doing this longer.
You have developers, you want an API to build on, and concurrency matters more than price.
You want an avatar on a normal business website that greets visitors, answers their questions and completes tasks, installed with one script tag, at the lowest running cost per minute of any complete product here.
No signup, no card.