The 7 Best AI Avatar Generators (4 of Them Free)

Want to spruce up your profile picture on LinkedIn, Instagram, or a dating site? Or transform yourself into a video game character? Or maybe even create a talking AI avatar?

Then you've come to the right place!

In this article, I introduce seven AI avatar generators that cover a wide range of use cases:

Here you'll find tools to create video game avatars, virtual assistants, personalized stickers for messengers, "talking heads," and much more.

The best part:

Four of these tools are even free or offer free basic plans.

AI Avatar Generators Comparison

1. Synthesia

Synthesia is currently the best AI avatar generator for talking AI avatars (also called "Talking Heads").

You can use it to quickly and easily create videos using AI avatars that look and sound mostly natural.

In total, you can choose from 150+ talking avatars for your videos. You can also create your own AI avatar that looks like you and speaks with your voice.

However, quality comes at a price:

For a webcam avatar, you currently need to pay $240 per year. You film yourself, choose your outfit and lighting, and speak into the camera. Synthesia then provides your talking AI avatar directly in your Synthesia account after 5 business days.

This talking AI avatar can be linked to more than 400 voices, but not yet your own voice by default. For that, you need the "Enterprise plan," for which there's no fixed pricing (meaning it's likely in the triple digits).

In addition to the webcam avatar, you have the option to get a "Studio AI Avatar" created for $1,000.

This comes in 1080p instead of 720p and is currently the best quality talking AI avatar on the market. And you don't have to worry about camera, lighting, and background quality anymore. It's available approximately 10 business days after the shoot.

You can even choose the framing for your talking avatar. With the webcam avatar, it's always (only) the upper body. There's a German studio in Frankfurt am Main.

2. HeyGen

HeyGen is one of the best and most well-known AI avatar generators on the market and is an excellent alternative to Synthesia.

It's aimed more at users who want to quickly and easily create a talking AI avatar of themselves without much effort.

It offers two ways to quickly, easily, and affordably create AI avatars of yourself using photos or short video clips:

Photo Avatar

With HeyGen's "Photo Avatar," you can create a talking AI avatar from a photo of yourself. Alternatively, you can have a photo generated directly in HeyGen using AI:

This feature is very quick and easy to use and also offers acceptable video quality (considering it only had a photo of you as a basis).

Instant Avatar

According to their own claims, the Instant Avatar is meant to be your "digital twin." Here you record a video of yourself and can subsequently create more videos from text input.

In our experience, this works quite well:

Those who know Nele will notice in comparison to the talking "Photo Avatar" that her teeth and facial expressions come very close to the original.

And sure, of course it can be even better, but for that you simply need to dig deeper and also upload a very good video template. 😉

Pricing

HeyGen offers four pricing plans for talking AI avatars. The Free plan is a one-minute demo version, but it's sufficient to test the "Instant Avatar."

With the Creator and Business plans, you can select the required credits using the slider. The price changes accordingly.

3. Ready Player Me

Ready Player Me is an avatar system for games, apps, and VR/AR experiences, developed for platforms like Unity, Unreal Engine, React, and native mobile solutions.

It supports almost any technology that uses REST and PostMessage.

With minimal effort, you can integrate the "Ready Player Me" avatar creator into your app or game.

You have thousands of customization options to create an avatar that perfectly reflects your identity. These avatars are delivered as fully developed and animation-ready 3D models in your preferred development environment.

For easy integration, you can use the SDKs (Unity, Unreal, React) or work directly with the APIs and/or the iFrame avatar creator integration.

Avatars are the centerpiece of Ready Player Me. You can create your avatar either from a selfie or a pre-made set and customize it with a variety of standard and special assets.

You can choose between full-body and half-body avatars, depending on your application's requirements.

All avatars are stored as GLB files on Ready Player Me servers via a unique URL. The GLB format is a standardized file format for 3D data.

As a developer, you can create your own avatar creator in Unity or Unreal Engine using the SDK.

With a Ready Player Me account, you can manage your avatars and browse through Ready Player Me-enabled games and apps. Without a registered account, users can only save and manage their avatars through a guest account.

Pricing

Ready Player Me is currently free for all developers for non-commercial use and for registered partners for commercial use.

4. Photo AI

Photo AI is probably the most well-known tool for creating AI-generated profile pictures for social media or dating platforms.

In addition to AI avatars, you can also do incredibly realistic-looking photo shoots and use them as business photos or for your Instagram feed.

The starting point in Photo AI is creating your own AI avatar (called "AI Character" in the interface) in the left sidebar.

For this, you need to provide some personal information about your AI avatar (e.g., age, skin color, eye color) and upload at least 20 pictures of yourself. However, we recommend using 30-60 images, which produces significantly better results:

Once you've uploaded images, it takes about 30 to 60 minutes for Photo AI to create your AI avatar. Then you can use the avatar to create pictures of yourself.

A unique selling point compared to most other tools is that with 33 different photo shoots, it covers just about every private and professional use case.

You can choose between Tinder, Glamour, Swimsuit, Instagram, Cyberpunk, or Professional headshots, for example.

If none of the photo shoots work for you, you can also create more specific photos based on your own prompts (with your trained model, of course).

As a reference, Photo AI offers hundreds of templates:

The results are generally very good and often better than expected:

Compared to many other tools, there's significantly less waste, and the AI avatars look more natural.

What I like most is the variability. Other tools usually only offer business shoots, which means you have a limited number of clothing styles and backgrounds. Due to the photo shoots and the ability to prompt yourself, that's not the case with Photo AI. Here you can see me on a world trip, for example:

Pricing

The affordable plan at Photo AI for $39 per month will be sufficient for most users:

If you opt for an annual subscription, you save 2 months, so you only pay $390 per year. However, we recommend booking Photo AI "as needed," meaning when you currently need pictures of yourself.

And don't worry:

If you cancel, photos and AI avatars you created remain in your account. 😉

5. D-ID

D-ID is one of the currently most well-known AI avatar generators. With the tool, similar to Synthesia or HeyGen, you can create talking AI avatars.

However, with some differences:

For example, you can create your own AI avatars based on portrait photos or bring non-animated portrait photos to life.

D-ID's main feature is the "Creative Reality Studio," where you can create videos with talking AI characters (called "Presenters" by D-ID).

As a source for presenters, you can choose from a library of pre-made presenters:

Alternatively, you can create your own presenters based on your own photos or generate presenters with Stable Diffusion:

Once you've created or selected your presenter, you can then enter a script for the AI avatar to speak or optionally upload your own audio file to have it speak in your own voice:

That's it! In just a few minutes, you'll receive a finished video of your AI avatar that you can download or share.

Pricing

D-ID offers four different pricing models:

• Free Trial: You can try D-ID for free and create up to 5 minutes of video
• Lite: For $5.90 per month ($4.70 with annual billing), you can create 10 minutes of video each month
• Pro: For $29 per month ($16 with annual billing), you can create up to 15 minutes of video each month, get access to premium presenters, and can use videos commercially
• Advanced: For $196 per month ($108 with annual billing), you can create up to 65 minutes of video and get access to the PowerPoint plugin

All in all, I find D-ID's prices too expensive, especially the Pro and Advanced plans. For $108 per month, you can only produce just over an hour of video, which probably won't be enough for most content creators.

6. Bitmoji

Bitmoji is an app (and web application) that lets you create your personal avatar.

This avatar is a cartoon version of yourself that you can use anywhere – on social media, in chats, or even in emails.

Here's how to create your Bitmoji avatar:

1. Download the Bitmoji app and create an account.
2. Take a selfie so the app has a basis for your avatar.
3. Customize your avatar. You can adjust hairstyle, eye color, clothing, and many other details.
4. Save your avatar and use it in your favorite apps.

Bitmoji is particularly popular in messaging apps like Snapchat or WhatsApp. Once you've created your avatar, Bitmoji automatically generates hundreds of stickers and emojis with your personal avatar.

These stickers show your avatar in various situations and with different emotions. This way, you can make your messages more personal and fun.

A major advantage of Bitmoji is the seamless integration into many apps. For example, if you use Snapchat, you can incorporate your Bitmoji avatar directly into your Snaps.

It works similarly with other apps that support Bitmoji.

Pricing

Bitmoji is completely free. You don't have to pay for either the app or the stickers.

7. Lensa AI

Lensa AI is a very cool app that lets you create artistic avatars of yourself.

The app uses artificial intelligence to turn your selfies into stunning works of art. I've tried Lensa AI several times myself, as there was a lot of media hype, and found it impressive.

Here's how it works:

1. Download the Lensa app.
2. Upload 10-20 selfies of yourself. Make sure that:
   • your face is clearly visible
   • no other people are in the pictures
   • different facial expressions and angles are included
3. Your AI avatars are ready in a few minutes.

What makes Lensa AI special is the variety of avatar styles. The app offers a wide range of artistic styles, such as:

• Anime
• Superheroes
• Cyberpunk
• Science Fiction
• Old Money
• Pink Android
• First Grade (elementary school)
• etc.

Similar to Bitmoji, with Lensa you can only create photo avatars and not video avatars. However, with Lensa you have much more artistic freedom and aren't bound to any specifications for hair, facial features, eye color, or clothing.

Pricing

Lensa AI's pricing isn't quite logical – at least not to us.

You pay $36.99 for an annual membership and save 57% on creating Magic Avatars with this subscription. So you additionally pay between $0.035 and $0.06 per generated avatar.

We wouldn't want to use it as a subscription but rather create Magic Avatars as needed, pay for them, and be done.

But if you want to create AI avatars from new photos monthly, weekly, or even daily, it's certainly a good solution to save money.