# SadTalker Review

> SadTalker review: Landmark academic photo-to-talking-head model; single-image + audio in, stylized head/expression motion out, not a full body/avatar platform.

Landmark academic photo-to-talking-head model; single-image + audio in, stylized head/expression motion out, not a full body/avatar platform.

See pricing · Open source · facts verified Aug 24, 2026

## What we know about SadTalker

SadTalker sits in the ai avatar video category, where it is landmark academic photo-to-talking-head model; single-image + audio in, stylized head/expression motion out, not a full body/avatar platform. We keep this SadTalker profile grounded in primary sources, each fact dated to when we last confirmed it.

SadTalker does not publish a public per-minute rate we have been able to verify, so the price figure here stays blank until we can confirm one. We would rather show nothing than a guessed number; if you have a current SadTalker quote, it is the fastest way for us to close that gap.

On capabilities, SadTalker covers self-hostable. Each of those is verified against SadTalker's own docs or dashboard, not marketing copy.

In total we track 4 verified facts for SadTalker today, each linking the primary source it came from so you can check our work - and vendor claims we have not measured ourselves are labeled as such on the SadTalker fact sheet below.

## Fact sheet

### Compliance & trust

| Fact | Value | Verified | Source |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Aug 24 | [source](https://github.com/OpenTalker/SadTalker/blob/main/LICENSE) |
| Self-hostable | ✓  Yes | Aug 24 | [source](https://github.com/OpenTalker/SadTalker#readme) |

### Commercial

| Fact | Value | Verified | Source |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| GitHub stars | 14,000 | Aug 24 | [source](https://github.com/OpenTalker/SadTalker) |
| Last release | 2023-06-05 date | Aug 24 | [source](https://github.com/OpenTalker/SadTalker/releases) |

## SadTalker head-to-head

| Comparison | Record | Per use case |
| --- | --- | --- |
| [SadTalker vs Wav2Lip](https://www.versusref.com/avatar-video/sadtalker-vs-wav2lip/) | won 5 · lost 0 · tied 1 | Budget: won; Conversational Avatars: tie; Developers & API: won; Marketing & UGC Ads: won; Sales Outreach: won; Training & L&D: won |

Source: https://www.versusref.com/avatar-video/tools/sadtalker/