People say just use AI to dub your videos with absolutely zero cost detail, so I priced out the full pipeline for my own channel. Sharing the math because I couldn't find it anywhere.
A real dubbing pipeline is two API costs, not one:
Voice (ElevenLabs) - cloning your voice + generating the translated track. Credit-based; for talking-head content budget roughly a few dollars per finished minute depending on plan. (check their current tiers, this moves.)
Lipsync (the part everyone forgets) - matching the mouth to the new audio. This is where the surprises are:
Sync (sync.so): $0.05/sec = $3/min, flat, via API. Predictable, which matters when you're batching.
HeyGen: priced per-minute on higher tiers and climbs fast at volume, but note it's really avatar-generation, not syncing your footage.
Wav2Lip: "free," but you're paying in GPU time + setup hours. If your time is worth anything it's not free.
My rough all-in: ~$5–7 per finished minute for voice + lipsync via API, no editor. For a 10-min video in 3 languages that's ~$150–210 vs. the reshoot/agency cost of… don't ask.
Anyone found cheaper for the lipsync leg specifically? Curious what volume folks are running.
[link] [comments]