HeyGen finishes at the render. An ad starts about there.

Record once and publish in a stack of languages, with lip movement matched to the new audio. For a company selling in nine markets that is a serious capability.

The API matters too. When video generation has to sit inside a product or a support flow, that is a build. HeyGen is built for the build.

Both are real reasons to buy there, and they are worth naming before anything else.

Neither is what an ad account needs on a Tuesday. An ad account needs finished creatives, in volume, this week.

That is the job Cutroom does end to end. One take goes in, up to three minutes. A 9:16 MP4 comes back with captions burned in and b-roll already placed.

The batch that does it is 100 credits, whatever the take is about. Export is 20 credits per finished minute. Nothing is priced per generated video, so the fourth attempt does not cost what the first one did.

The avatar module is deliberately smaller: one photo plus a voice-over, lip-synced, at 320 credits a minute. One presenter you own, then cut like any other take.

The render arrives and the work restarts. It needs captions, because most of the feed is watched with the sound off.

It needs footage over the claims. Sixty seconds of one framing is where a viewer leaves.

It needs a first line that interrupts. It needs a pace that does not sag at second nineteen.

That second stage is the part that eats the afternoon. A presenter generator does not claim to do it.

So the real comparison is not presenter against presenter. It is a presenter clip against a finished file.

If you are already exporting renders into a second editor to caption and cut them, that second app is what this replaces.

Cutroom transcribes your take and drafts the cut. Back comes a 9:16 MP4 with captions and b-roll already in place.

You then direct it on the words. Highlight a phrase and a clip lands over exactly those words, not near them.

Delete a line and every downstream boundary recomputes. Change the pace from normal to fast. The coverage ceiling moves from 45 to 52 percent with it.

Emphasise a single word so it pops in the captions. Fix a mis-heard word and the burned-in text follows the correction.

Switch the caption pack, colour, weight, size and position from a menu. Six packs ship. None of them needs a designer.

There is no timeline, no keyframes and no layers. None of those is a decision about whether the ad works.

Trim the opening or the ending without touching a track. Write the headline that carries the first three seconds, or take the drafted one.

Source over three minutes is refused. This is built for ads, and a three-minute ad is already long.

There is one output shape and it is vertical. That is the shape TikTok, Reels, Shorts and Meta Stories all run.

There is no frame-level control. The compiler owns every boundary in the file, which is why the edit takes four minutes rather than an evening.

Nothing of yours is stamped on the export. No logo, no closing frame.

Either you film, or you own a photo and a voice-over the avatar module can drive.

Those are the facts you plan around on day one. They buy you the thing no presenter tool ships: an ad that is finished when the render is.

Many kinds of video, from many people, in many languages, wired into systems. That is a platform purchase.

A stream of vertical ads from footage that already exists, finished without opening an editor. That is this one.

The arithmetic behind it: winners are 5 to 8 percent of creatives, per Motion's analysis of 550,000+ Meta ads.

Six creatives a month draws about half a winner. Thirty draws two. Nothing about the craft changes that. Only the count does.

A second cut of an existing take costs 20 credits a minute. That price is why the idea you were unsure about gets made anyway.

The trial is seven days and 300 credits, no card. Roughly two finished one-minute ads from fresh takes.

Ten fresh one-minute ads is about 1,200 credits. Basic is 39.99 dollars for 2,500 credits a month, with top-ups at 15 dollars for 1,000.