Comparison
IRIS AVA and HeyGen LiveAvatar, side by side.
HeyGen makes excellent avatars for the browser. We build for a different place: portrait screens in the real world, from 4K footage, on infrastructure you control. Here is the honest comparison.
| IRIS AVA | HeyGen LiveAvatar | |
|---|---|---|
| Screens and format | ||
| Built for | Portrait screens people walk up to: Holobox, Holofans and portrait displays. The web as well. | An avatar in a browser or app window, embedded through their SDK and API. |
| Framing | Full body, life size in The 86, from a 4K portrait recording. | Their recording guide recommends a chest up frame; full body previews exist. |
| Hardware | Holobox (The 22, The 43, The 75, The 86), Holofans and the IRIS appliance, from Holoconnects. Buy or rent. | None. You bring your own screen or website. |
| Fleet management | IRIS OS runs every screen. Switch live between content, a live person and your avatar; manage all sites from one place. | Session based API. Screens and venues are yours to manage. |
| Image | ||
| Custom avatar output | Native 4K body and background, AI face composited in. Live at 1080p 4K live route in testing | 720p on Essential, 1080p on Business (plan overview in the account, 25 September 2026). |
| What is generated | Only the face. Hair, hands, clothing and posture are the real recording. | The avatar video is rendered by their model from your recording. |
| Infrastructure and data | ||
| Where it runs | Our cloud, a dedicated GPU, or on premises on one NVIDIA GPU of about 32 GB. Cloud in pilot On premises in testing | HeyGen's cloud. Enterprise mentions dedicated capacity and an SLA by arrangement. |
| Language model | Your own LLM through an OpenAI compatible endpoint (Ollama, vLLM), or ours. On premises the model, the speech recognition and the video all stay in your building. | A model from HeyGen's list, or your own through an OpenAI compatible endpoint in FULL mode. The avatar itself is rendered in HeyGen's cloud. |
| Speech recognition | Whisper, running on our own GPU. On premises it stays in your building. | Part of the HeyGen service. |
| Knowledge | Answers only from content you approve; anything else is declined. | Knowledge contexts you configure in their platform. |
| Working together | ||
| Getting an avatar | A guided recording, a human review on our side, and your approval before anything goes live. | Self service upload; their help text mentions processing within about 24 hours for a qualified recording. |
| Pricing | Pilot terms per project, based on screens and expected conversations. | Essential $99 per month (1,100 credits, 20 minute sessions). Business $475 per month (6,000 credits, 60 minute sessions). A full conversation uses 2 credits per minute, so Business covers 3,000 minutes. Extra credits cost $0.09 to $0.095 when overage is switched on. Additional avatar slots are sold separately. |
| Who you work with | Holoconnects, building holographic displays since 2020. One team for screen, software and avatar. | A software platform; screens and installation through your own suppliers. |
Sources. HeyGen details as seen on 25 and 26 September 2026 on liveavatar.com, in the custom LiveAvatar creation guide, the getting started article, and in the plan overview of a LiveAvatar account on the Essential plan. Plans and features change; check HeyGen for current terms.
HeyGen and LiveAvatar are trademarks of their owner. This comparison is ours and is not endorsed by HeyGen.
Our statuses are labelled on purpose: Pilot means available to pilot customers, In testing means built and being measured, not yet promised.
See the difference
on a real screen.
Book a walkthrough on a Holobox, or start with a recording of your own.