What is LiveAvatar?
LiveAvatar is HeyGen’s real-time AI avatar technology that enables lifelike realtime and interactive conversations between softwares and end users. Unlike pre-recorded media, LiveAvatar listens and responds instantly, delivering spontaneous AI-driven dialogue with natural facial animation and lip-sync. It’s designed to transform the way people communicate with machines, making digital interactions more human, engaging, impactful, and accessible to everyone.
Who is LiveAvatar for?
LiveAvatar empowers software developers and businesses to build the next-generation AI solutions through a real-time, multimodal interface that delivers scalable human presences, fundamentally transforming how users perceive and interact with AI systems.
What are the key features of LiveAvatar?
Hyper-realistic avatars: The most lifelike digital humans powered by HeyGen’s cutting-edge technology.
Real-time interaction: Supports natural, 2-way communication through voice, video, and text with low latency, enabling smooth, lifelike conversation between users and AI in real time.
API-first architecture: Easily integrate LiveAvatar into existing products, workflows, or AI applications with our API and SDK. View docs here.
Scalable performance: Built to support large-scale, concurrent sessions with consistent quality
Low latency: Optimized infrastructure ensures smooth, responsive real-time experiences, delivering some of the fastest performance on the market.
What’s the process to create a custom LiveAvatar?
To train a LiveAvatar, submit a continuous 2-minute video with these three parts:
Listening (15 seconds)
Talking (90 seconds)
Listening (15 seconds)
The footage must be continuous, with no cuts or edits. You can review the best practices here.
How does LiveAvatar credits work, and how many minutes are included per credit?
Each LiveAvatar credit equals half or one minute of streaming, depending on how you integrate. More specifically:
1 credit = 30 seconds of streaming when you build with Full mode
1 credit = 1 minute of streaming when you build with Custom mode
Note, LiveAvatar credits are independent of HeyGen API credits.
For more details, please check out our API documentation.
What are the LiveAvatar use-cases?
LiveAvatar is versatile and widely applicable across industries:
Learning & Development: Empower teams through customized and immersive training.
Education & Training: Create adaptive, engaging learning experiences.
Customer Support: Deliver fast, human-like assistance.
Live Presentations: Host dynamic product demos, webinars, and events.
Sales Enablement: Drive stronger engagement and lead qualification.
Celebrity: Enable interactive fan engagement and live digital appearances.
Can I try LiveAvatar today?
Yes, visit our app and chat with sample LiveAvatars or create your own!
You can sign up for a free account to explore more avatars, or try our API integration using free credits with zero commitment.
What do real customers say about LiveAvatar?
LiveAvatar has been validated across multiple real-world use-cases. Check out our customer success stories:
What is the relationship between LiveAvatar and HeyGen’s Interactive Avatar?
LiveAvatar is the official production version of HeyGen’s Interactive Avatar, a beta innovation developed under HeyGen Labs. Built on the same cutting-edge avatar research and engineering foundation, LiveAvatar delivers a more scalable, reliable, and business-ready solution for real-time AI interaction.
How does LiveAvatar differ from HeyGen?
HeyGen: The all-in-one platform for AI video creation (marketing videos, product explainers, training content).
LiveAvatar: A real-time interactive avatar system designed for live conversations, dynamic engagement, and instant response experiences.
Can I access LiveAvatar using my existing HeyGen account?
Yes. You can access LiveAvatar using your existing HeyGen account, no separate signup required but it is on a separate platform than HeyGen web.
Are HeyGen and LiveAvatar avatars cross-compatible?
No, they are not. HeyGen and LiveAvatar avatars are trained on different models and are not cross-compatible at this time.
What should I do with my existing Interactive Avatar assets and plans?
If you are an Interactive Avatar user, we will help you migrate your content from Interactive Avatar to LiveAvatar without disruption, we’ll follow up with you separately with a migration plan soon.
How do I move my interactive avatar to LiveAvatar? Do I need to recreate my avatar?
You will not need to re-create your avatar when switching to LA, we will publish a detailed migration plan to all of our interactive avatar users and help move those interactive avatars Onto LiveAvatar.
What am I missing if I stay with Interactive until the migration plan? And why is LiveAvatar better?
You’re not missing anything for now — we’ll share the full migration guide with you soon. LiveAvatar is simply built on a newer, more flexible architecture, which makes it compatible with future improvements and offers more integration options, including both Full and Custom modes.
What if I want to stay on the HeyGen platform and still use Interactive avatar?
You can do that for now. Interactive Avatar will be sunset in the long term, but you can continue using HeyGen for your video-creation products while using LiveAvatar for realtime.
Do I need to migrate my Digital Twin the same way as LiveAvatars?
No. Digital Twins remain part of your HeyGen account. LiveAvatar is a completely separate platform with its own plans and settings, independent from the HeyGen platform and your HeyGen paid plans. HeyGen paid plans or avatar slots do not impact LiveAvatar whatsoever- you still need to purchase LiveAvatar plan to stream your avatar past basic free testing.
What’s the difference between Video Avatars and LiveAvatars?
Video Avatars are Digital Twins in your HeyGen account, designed for creating pre-recorded videos.
LiveAvatars are part of a separate platform built for real-time streaming, allowing avatars to talk, move, and respond to text or voice input.
What voice and speech models does LiveAvatar use?
LiveAvatar uses ElevenLabs Flash v2.5 for text-to-speech, with automatic speech recognition (ASR) handled by Deepgram and AssemblyAI.
How can I purchase the Essential plan?
Go to https://app.liveavatar.com/home, create your account, and click Pricing in the bottom-left corner.
I need more than 1,000 LiveAvatar credits per month. How can I purchase a larger or custom plan?
The Essential plan includes auto-renewal when credits run out. Enable Allow Overage in your LiveAvatar settings to automatically renew your plan so your LiveAvatar never goes offline.
If you need a large annual volume of credits and have a budget above $20K, select the Business plan and contact our team.
When creating a LiveAvatar, I see the error: “Please contact your account manager for more custom avatars.”
This means you don’t have an available custom LiveAvatar slot.
Enterprise users cannot purchase slots via self-serve and should contact their account manager.
Non-enterprise users can purchase slots after buying an active Essential LiveAvatar plan via
Settings → Custom Avatars → Manage.
If you are not an enterprise user and still see this error, contact [email protected]
How can I get my LiveAvatar in 1080p quality?
You can submit a request for a 1080p LiveAvatar through your account manager or the support team. Please note that 1080p streaming increases latency and requires 1080p source footage when creating the LiveAvatar.
Can I use pre-recorded consent to create a LiveAvatar?
Yes, but only for Enterprise or LiveAvatar Business plan users.
Essential and Free plan users must provide live consent via webcam or QR code if the person being recorded is not physically present.
Can LiveAvatars be used in public installations or large displays without watermarks and in HD or higher resolution?
Yes. Once you purchase a paid LiveAvatar plan, you can stream your avatar in any environment or setting without watermarks.
Is it possible to create a LiveAvatar with full control over appearance and gestures, including custom or branded characters?
LiveAvatar gestures and appearance are based on the movements in the input video. There is no way to control gestures dynamically during a live stream, but you can fine-tune movements by including or excluding gestures in your recording.
Can LiveAvatars be created via API?
No. LiveAvatars can only be created through the LiveAvatar platform. API-based creation is not currently supported.
Which custom LLMs can be connected as a knowledge base for LiveAvatar?
In Full mode, LiveAvatar uses OpenAI 4o-mini.
In Custom mode, customers can connect any LLM they use.
Additional LLM options will be added in the future. You can add your own LLM using this api doc.
How can I use LiveAvatar in a language that isn’t currently supported?
We recommend using Custom mode and integrating your own ASR and TTS providers that support the desired language. You can review this API doc for more.