User licenses

Synthesia has three license types. They determine whether a seat is paid, and which actions the associated user can take.

• Full license: a paid license. Users can take all actions available to their role and permission level.
• Free license: an unpaid license, upgradeable to Full. Users can take most actions immediately; some auto-upgrade the license to Full when performed. A Free license can only be assigned when a user first joins—for example, as the default license type. Once changed to Restricted or Full, a license can't be reassigned back to Free.
• Restricted license: an unpaid license, not upgradeable by the user themselves. Users can take a limited set of actions.

Your license is set per workspace, not across your whole account—if you belong to more than one workspace, you can have a different license in each, for example Full in one and Restricted in another.

Licenses vs. roles

A license and a role are independent settings—assigning one doesn't determine the other.

• Your license (Full, Free, or Restricted) determines which actions you can take, like creating or editing videos.
• Your role (Admin, Member, or Guest) determines what you can access and manage, like settings, workspace membership, and Brand Kits. See User roles & permissions for the full breakdown.

License options

What each license can do:

• ✅ = users can perform this action with this license.
• 🆙 = users can perform this action, but doing so auto-upgrades their license to Full.
• 🙋 = users can't perform this action, but can request an upgrade to Full.

Videos

On a video where they have edit or full access permission, Free and Restricted license members (not guests) can:

• Edit the script of existing scenes.
• Set or change pronunciation for a word.
• Add or edit a translation for a term.
• Create a new screen recording and add it as a new scene.
• Preview changes.

Pronunciation and translation edits aren't license-gated at all—anyone with edit or full access permission on a video can set either for it, two ways: locally, which only affects that one video, or by saving it to the glossary, which standardizes it workspace-wide for future videos too.

This makes it possible to bring in translation reviewers, internal or external, on a Free or Restricted license without spending a Full seat on them—they can adjust translations and pronunciation directly, and optionally standardize their fixes in the glossary for future videos too.

Saving to the glossary is what Restricted glossary management controls—if it's on, only admins can save to the glossary, though anyone can still make local pronunciation and translation edits in their own video. Your Free and Restricted license members can be added as admins, and thus have control over glossary terms and their pronunciations.

What Free and Restricted license users can't do:

• Create a new scene, other than the screen-recording exception above.
• Edit an existing scene's visual content—they can only comment on it.
• Delete effects or animations, though they can move ones already applied to text they've edited.
• Generate or create a new video independent of the video they're been invited to with Edit or Full access.

With comment-only permission, they can view and comment, but not edit.

See How do I edit a video with a free or restricted license? for more detail. Guests can't edit scripts or add screen recordings, regardless of permission.

Folders

Templates

Library

Brand Kits

Glossary

Avatars & Voices

Assigning licenses

If your plan doesn't provision a shared workspace, license assignment is automatic. You can see each member or guest's license from the members page in Workspace settings.

If your plan provisions a shared workspace, workspace admins control license assignment. Admins can pre-set the default license for new members (not guests). See Workspace and Organization settings for more on configuring default licenses for new members.

By default:

• Workspace members join on a Free license.
• Guest members join on a Restricted license.

Admins can change a user's license, including their own, from Workspace settings.

Upgrading a license

Free or Restricted licenses can only be upgraded if your plan provisions a shared workspace and allows multiple Full licenses.

Free license

A Free license auto-upgrades to Full as soon as the user takes an 🆙 auto-upgrade action from the tables above. Once upgraded to Full, a user can only be downgraded to Restricted, not back to Free.

A user on a Free license can be added to a video with full access, editor, or commenter permission without needing to upgrade upfront.

Restricted license

A user on a Restricted license can request an upgrade by performing a 🙋 request to upgrade action. This opens an upgrade modal the user can use to send a request to workspace admins, who must approve it to trigger the upgrade to Full.

Downgrading a license

Full and Free license users can both be downgraded to Restricted:

• By a workspace admin, from Workspace settings.
• By an organization admin, from Organization settings.