Discussions

Hi HeyGen Team ,

I’ve integrated Live Avatar successfully into my application, and the avatar itself is working as expected. However, I’m facing a major issue with credit consumption that makes testing extremely difficult.

Issue Description

1. As soon as a Live Avatar session is created, 1 full credit is deducted
2. This happens even if:
3. The session lasts only 0.1 seconds
4. Because of this behavior, each test attempt costs 1 credit, which makes iterative development and debugging almost impossible

Comparison with Interactive Avatar (Previous Product)

I’ve previously used Interactive Avatar, and in that product:

1. Credits were deducted based on actual usage time
2. Short-lived or test sessions did not immediately consume full credits
3. This made development and testing much more practical

Why This Is a Problem

During development, sessions may fail due to:

1. Network issues
2. WebSocket reconnects
3. UI bugs
4. Backend retries
5. Losing a full credit for each short or failed session makes Live Avatar very expensive to test, even before production usage

Questions / Clarification Needed

1. Is this immediate 1-credit deduction on session creation expected behavior?
2. Is there:

         1. A **grace period**

         2. A **minimum duration threshold**

         3. Or a **testing / sandbox mode** where credits are not deducted instantly?

3. Are there any plans to align Live Avatar credit usage with Interactive Avatar’s time-based model?
4. Is this something the team is already aware of or actively working on?

Suggestion

For developer experience, it would be extremely helpful if:

1. Credits were deducted after a minimum active duration, or
2. A developer/testing mode was provided with relaxed credit rules

Looking forward to clarification from the team.
Thanks in advance for your support