Live avatars at $0 per minute — from ASCII to advanced 3D.
Everywhere else, a talking avatar runs a meter — so many cents for every minute it's on screen. NetShow renders yours in your visitor's browser: nothing streams, so there is nothing to bill. You pay for brains when your agent thinks. The face is free — every minute, every visitor, every page.
No card, no meter, no cap on face time. The face on this page is rendering live right now — watch its clock run. Your first conversation is free, no signup.
Rendered in the browser, not streamed from a farm.
The per-minute meter isn't greed — it's physics. A hosted avatar is video rendered on someone's GPU and streamed to your visitor, so every minute costs the vendor money and costs you more. We took the other road.
Rendered, not streamed
A NetShow avatar is a small program your page runs, not a video call it receives. Your visitor's browser draws every frame — so an hour on screen costs exactly what a minute costs: nothing.
Brains are the only meter
When your agent thinks with a hosted model, that's the part you pay for — plainly, on the plans page. When it idles, greets, or presents, the face runs free. You pay for thinking, never for being visible.
Honest about open source
Browser rendering isn't a secret — open-source libraries can draw a free face too, and good ones. NetShow is everything a library isn't: identity, memory, voice, tools, a marketplace, an editor for every face class, and a two-line embed. The rendering is free everywhere; the living agent is the product.
Six body classes. One identity. Zero meters.
The same agent can wear any of these — from a terminal-native ASCII face to a full 3D body. Every tile below renders live in your browser as it scrolls into view, wearing its own clock. There is no stream to bill.
They sell you minutes. We deleted the meter.
These are the hosted-avatar vendors' own words about live avatar time, read from their public pages on 2026‑08‑16 and quoted verbatim — then the NetShow ladder, read live from the same registry the checkout charges against.
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HeyGen · LiveAvatar
1 credit (10 US cents) = 30 seconds of streaming when you build with Full mode
— help.heygen.com, verified 2026-08-16 -
D-ID · Agents
Agent pricing is based on the Agent's speaking time
— and at zero credits,the Agent will stop responding until more credits are available.
— help.d-id.com, verified 2026-08-16 -
Tavus
$0.37/min
beyond plan minutes, with a30-second minimum charge
per conversation. — tavus.io/pricing, verified 2026-08-16 -
Anam
$0.16 per extra minute
of live avatar conversation on the entry plan. — anam.ai/pricing, verified 2026-08-16 -
Synthesia
Avatar video minutes are the billing unit,
calculated in seconds
; real-time interactive avatars are enterprise-gated with no public price. — synthesia.io/pricing, verified 2026-08-16
Vendor enterprise tiers vary (some sell unlimited video minutes at custom prices); the self-serve reality is quoted above. Open-source libraries render free faces too — see the honesty card above.
- Free $0/mo
- Starter $9/mo
- Creator $29/mo
- Professional $79/mo
- Business $149/mo
Live avatar minutes included on every tier above: all of them. The plans price brains — model time, phone lines, channels — never face time.
Five ways in. Start anywhere.
However your character exists today — an idea, a photo, a 3D model, or nothing at all — there's a door for it: two open now, three coming.
Start from a template
The creator's first brush: pick a ready identity and make it yours in minutes.
Pick from the marketplace
Browse living agents with faces already on. Meet one, then make it work for you.
Upload your photo
Your own face becomes your agent's still portrait: a 2D likeness, not a 3D rig.
Load your VRM
Bring a 3D body you already own; it walks onto the estate's 3D stage.
Type a character prompt
Describe who they are; the studio drafts the face and the personality together.
Every face class has its own edit bay.
However you started — template, marketplace, photo, VRM, or prompt — the result is a normal, fully editable identity, never a locked export. The agent editor is yours on every plan, and under every face sits the studio's 122‑field dial registry — eyes, face, motion, presence — the same dials our own crew tunes the flagship cast with, opening up class by class. Start anywhere, dial in everything.
Your page. Your show. Your lobby screen.
Embed anywhere
Two lines of markup put your agent — face and all — on any site you own. The self-serve embed door ships with every account: create your agent, open Embed, copy, paste.
Put agents on stage
The Live Stage runs whole shows — debates, round tables, podcast formats — with living avatars holding the floor. Watch one now, no signup.
Take the big screen
Presentation Mode puts any public agent full-bleed on a TV, a kiosk, or the projector at the back of the room — still $0 a minute, however long the doors stay open.