Best tools to turn a PDF into a video in 2026, compared

Most PDF to video tools do the same first step: they read the file and write a script. They differ in what they put on screen while the narration plays. Some show slides, some cut stock footage together, some put an AI presenter in front of the camera, and a few draw or animate the explanation. Pick the kind of picture you want first, and the list gets short.

We make Rekka, so it's on this list and we've put it first. Everything about the other tools comes from their own product, pricing and help pages, checked on November 11, 2026. Several of them price by region, so look at the pricing page from where you are before you pay.

Quick comparison

Tool	What's on screen	PDF upload	Free	Cheapest paid plan
Rekka	A hand-drawn explanation, drawn as it's spoken	Yes, up to 30 pages	1 video, no card	$5/month for 26 videos
Gemini Notebook (NotebookLM)	Narrated slides with generated visuals	Yes, up to 200 MB	Yes, with usage limits	Google AI Plus, price varies by country
Scrimba Explain	Typed slides with diagrams and code	Yes	5 explainers, watermarked	Scrimba Pro, 100 explainers a month
Ozor	Animated motion graphics	Yes, up to 50 MB	6 one-time credits, 720p, watermarked	$19/month for 50 credits
Pictory	Stock footage with captions	Yes, up to 50 MB	14-day trial, branded	$29/month, or $25 billed annually
Fliki	Stock or AI visuals with captions	Yes, up to 20 MB	A few minutes a month, 720p, watermarked	$28/month, or $21 billed annually
Lumen5	Stock footage with text overlays	Yes	5 videos a month, 2 minutes each, branded outro	$19/month billed yearly
HeyGen	An AI avatar presenter	Yes	3 videos a month, 1 minute each, watermarked	$29/month, or $24 billed annually
Synthesia	An AI avatar presenter	Yes	10 minutes a month, watermarked	$19/month, or $14 billed yearly
openCanviz	A drawn explainer in five styles	No, you paste the text	100 one-time credits, no mp4 download	$39/month for 1,200 credits

If you want the explanation drawn

Rekka

Rekka reads your PDF, writes a lesson from it, and draws each part on screen at the moment the narration reaches it, the way a teacher works at a whiteboard. You get a whiteboard, chalkboard or crayon video as an mp4.

It takes a PDF of up to 30 pages, and also Word, PowerPoint, Keynote, Pages and photos of pages. A long document is planned into chapters, and you see the credit cost before anything renders. A video usually takes 5 to 10 minutes. There's a REST API and an MCP server on the same credits.

Every account gets one free video of up to 100 seconds without a card. After that, Starter is $5 a month for 26 videos. You can try it on your own PDF.

openCanviz

openCanviz also draws its explainers, in five styles (whiteboard, doodle, cut-out, painted and poster), and it has an editor for individual elements. Its documentation says it takes no file uploads, so for a PDF you copy the text out and paste it in. The free plan has 100 one-time credits, which is about 14 minutes of video, but downloading the mp4 isn't included. Pro is $39 a month.

If narrated slides are enough

Gemini Notebook, formerly NotebookLM

Google renamed NotebookLM to Gemini Notebook in July 2026, and most people still use the old name. Video Overviews turns your sources into a narrated video in three formats: Explainer, a Short of about 60 seconds, and Cinematic. Explainer comes in preset looks such as Classic, Whiteboard and Anime.

It's free with a Google account. Since September 2026 the free limits are based on usage and refresh every five hours, so Google doesn't publish a fixed number of videos. A source can be up to 200 MB or 500,000 words, with no page limit, and Explainer supports 80 languages. Google says a video can take more than 30 minutes to generate. Paid Google AI plans raise the limits.

If you study from PDFs and want a visual summary for yourself, start here. We wrote a longer comparison with Rekka.

Scrimba Explain

Scrimba Explain makes a sequence of typed slides with spoken narration, and it handles diagrams and code well, which suits papers and technical documentation. You attach the PDF to a prompt. You can make one explainer without an account, and a free account gets five in total, with a watermark. Scrimba Pro raises that to 100 a month and removes the watermark. Scrimba shows the current Pro price in the app. Narration is available in 33 languages, and there's an API.

If you want motion graphics

Ozor

Ozor turns a document into animated scenes with typography, brand visuals, narration and music, and you edit by chatting. It accepts PDFs up to 50 MB, plus PowerPoint, Word and Google Docs. The free plan is 6 one-time credits at 720p with a watermark. Pro is $19 a month for 50 credits and exports up to 4K. It fits product and marketing material better than teaching material.

If stock footage fits

Pictory

Pictory has the most direct PDF workflow of the stock footage tools. You drag in a PDF of up to 50 MB (it says files under 50 pages work best), and it builds scenes from stock clips with a voiceover and captions, pulling charts and images from the document. The 14-day trial covers up to 10 minutes of video with Pictory branding. Starter is $29 a month, or $25 billed annually, for up to 30 minutes of video a month.

Fliki

Fliki takes a PDF of up to 20 MB and condenses it into narrated scenes with stock or AI visuals and word-level captions, in more than 80 languages. Scanned PDFs need OCR first. The free plan gives you a few minutes a month at 720p with a watermark. Standard is $28 a month, or $21 billed annually, with videos of up to 15 minutes.

Lumen5

Lumen5 is built for short social clips: stock footage and images with text overlays and an optional AI voiceover. You upload the PDF inside its AI script flow. The free plan allows 5 videos a month, 2 minutes each, at 720p with a Lumen5 outro. Basic is $19 a month billed yearly and removes the branding.

If you want a presenter on screen

HeyGen

HeyGen turns a PDF into a video led by an AI avatar, in more than 177 languages and dialects. The free plan is 3 videos a month of up to a minute each, with a watermark. Creator is $29 a month, or $24 billed annually, and allows videos of up to 30 minutes.

Synthesia

Synthesia is the avatar tool most training teams know. You upload the PDF, add other files or links as context, and get a 1080p presenter video. The free Basic plan covers 10 minutes a month with a watermark. Starter was listed at $19 a month, or $14 a month billed yearly, when we checked. If you're weighing it for training content, see our Synthesia alternatives post.

How to choose

You're studying and want a free summary for yourself: Gemini Notebook.
You're teaching something and want viewers to watch each idea being drawn: Rekka.
The PDF is a technical paper full of code or diagrams: Scrimba Explain.
It's a product or marketing document and you want it animated in your brand: Ozor.
You want a conventional narrated video with footage: Pictory or Fliki.
You need a person on screen for training or sales: HeyGen or Synthesia.
You want videos generated from documents automatically: Rekka and Scrimba Explain both have an API on ordinary accounts.

Where Rekka is the wrong pick

Rekka doesn't show your pages, so if viewers need to see the original slides or figures exactly as they are, use a slide-based tool. It has no avatar presenter. It reads up to 30 pages per video, so a 200-page report needs splitting. And you can't edit a finished video scene by scene: you steer it in chat before it renders.

We left VideoScribe off the list. It makes whiteboard animation, but you build each scene by hand, and we found no PDF import on its site.

The fastest way to decide is to run one PDF through two of these. Rekka's first video is free, so it costs nothing to include it in the test.

Sources, checked November 11, 2026: Google's Video Overviews help page and usage limits post; Scrimba's limits and plans; Ozor pricing; Pictory pricing and its PDF to video page; Fliki pricing; Lumen5 pricing; HeyGen pricing; Synthesia pricing; openCanviz's plans and credits and accepted inputs. Rekka details are from our pricing page and FAQ.