AI illustrationHomeUnited States
Greetings from Santa Claus in the United States
In the United States the presents come from Santa Claus, on December 25.
⏳ How many days until Christmas?Who brings the presents, and when
Santa Claus
December 25
He comes overnight on the 24th and the presents are opened on Christmas morning. The figure is Dutch by descent — Sinterklaas, carried to New York by settlers — but almost everything Americans picture was assembled locally in the nineteenth century: the sleigh and the eight reindeer from Clement Clarke Moore’s poem of 1823, and the workshop, the ledger of good and bad children and the red suit from Thomas Nast’s drawings for Harper’s Weekly in the decades after. Milk and cookies are left out; in much of Europe the equivalent figure arrives on an entirely different night.
Services compared for the United States
26 of 26 entries below have been opened and checked by hand.
These are businesses that will send a child something personal from Santa Claus — with their name in it, and usually the thing they asked for, the town they live in and whether they have been good. Four formats exist and they are not interchangeable: a video message, a phone call, a letter that arrives in the post, and a performer who comes to the house. They run from under three dollars to three hundred.
Every entry below was opened and checked by hand in September 2026, and each one is filed under what it actually sells rather than what it ranks for. The last group is different and is labelled as such: general AI video platforms that publish a Santa page each December. They are not Santa services, but they hold about half the search results, so they are here to be recognised rather than to be recommended. Prices are what the service itself shows. Where a service publishes no price outside its own checkout — several do not — this says so rather than guessing, and where something is genuinely free it says that too, because in this category the word "free" is doing a lot of different jobs.
Video messages
The default answer, and the cheapest. Personalised in minutes, works right up to Christmas Eve, and watched on a screen rather than received. Prices are per video at most services and per household at a few — which is the difference that matters if you have more than one child.
Elfi
From$5.99
- Free version
- No
Around $5.99 when you buy two together, $7.99 to $12.99 for one on its own. There is no free tier at all here — which makes it cheaper than a Magic Pass if you want one video and worse value if you want several.
My Santa Message
From$2.99
- Free version
- No
- Signup needed
- No
- Photo in video
- Yes
- Call
- No
The cheapest video here at $2.99 for the short version, $5.99 for the longer one, and you can attach a photo. The catch is the name: Santa reads it from a pre-recorded library of about 2,400, so check yours is on the list before paying — an unusual spelling will not be. Delivered by email within about six hours, not instantly.
Portable North Pole
From$6.99
- Free version
- Limited
- Signup needed
- Yes
- Photo in video
- Yes
- Call
- Yes
The category leader. A single video runs about $6.99; the Magic Pass, which covers unlimited videos and calls for the season, is around $14.99 introductory. The free tier is a short trial and has historically closed around 19 December — it is not a free product, it is a sample.
Santa Joe Ho Ho Ho
From$75
- Free version
- No
- Signup needed
- No
One man in Chicago, not a platform, and that is the point: $75 buys a video recorded for your child by a real Santa who read what you sent, rather than a name dropped into a rendered clip. He also does live video chats and home visits around Orland Park. Expensive next to the $5 services and a completely different product.
A Touch of Magic
From$29
- Free version
- No
- Signup needed
- No
A Minnesota entertainment agency that films custom Santa videos to order — $29 for one, $99 for three, so it is the cheapest way to get a genuinely recorded-for-you video rather than a generated one. Human performers, and the same company sends them to the door if you would rather have that.
LiveImage Santa
From$6
- Free version
- No
- Signup needed
- Yes
- Photo in video
- Yes
Six dollars for a personalised AI Santa video, $9.99 for the larger pack. Part of a greeting-card product rather than a Santa specialist, so the Christmas video sits alongside birthday and thank-you cards — which is worth knowing if you want somewhere to come back to in January.
Hey Santa
Free
- Free version
- Yes
- Signup needed
- No
- Photo in video
- Yes
- Call
- No
Free, no account, and it takes a photo and a few details rather than picking from a list — the video is written around what you type, not a stock clip with a name dropped in. It renders in a few minutes and is emailed to you, so it arrives in an inbox rather than on screen. Same company as the Figments storybook app.
Santa's Whisper
Not published
Positions itself as the budget alternative to the big services. Worth a look if price is the deciding factor; we have not opened its checkout.
Festive Studio
Not published
- Free version
- No
- Signup needed
- Yes
- Photo in video
- Yes
The long one: about ten minutes rather than the ninety seconds everyone else sends, built as a story — a North Pole tour or a broken sleigh to fix. Up to five children share a single video, which makes it the cheapest option per child in a big family and the only one here priced that way. Photos and details are added in a portal. The price is not published outside it; a free Santa voice note is.
Synthesia Santa
Free
- Free version
- Yes
- Signup needed
- No
Free, and no account is needed — but it asks for an email address to deliver the video, so the result arrives in an inbox rather than on screen. You pick a template and edit a short script.
CreatorKit AI Santa
Free
- Free version
- Yes
- Signup needed
- No
- Photo in video
- No
- Call
- No
Free and no account needed. You pick one of a few templates, type what Santa should say — there is a button that drafts it for you — and give an email address. It takes about seven minutes and lands in the inbox. AI-generated and it looks it, so it suits a message to an adult better than a small child who will study the face.
Talking to Santa live
Not a recording — a conversation, where Santa answers what the child actually says. The AI versions are free and open only in season; a live human performer on video costs about the same as a short home visit and books out the same way.
AI Santa by Tavus
Free
- Free version
- Yes
- Signup needed
- No
- Call
- No
A real-time conversation, not a clip — Santa appears on video and answers what the child actually says to him. Free, no account, and the closest thing in this category to the thing children imagine. It is seasonal: right now the page shows a countdown and says Santa is back next year, so check again in late November.
SantaAI
Not published
An app rather than a website — an AI Santa the child can talk to on a phone, pitched as a companion that is there through December rather than a one-off greeting. Sold through the App Store and Google Play, so the price is on the store listing and not on the site.
Phone calls
Either an automated recording with the name dropped in, which costs little or nothing, or a live performer on the phone, which costs a great deal more. Listings almost never say which one they are selling, so the entries below say it instead.
Santa's Hotline
Free
- Free version
- Yes
- Signup needed
- No
- Call
- Yes
Free, no account, no payment — but read the direction carefully. The child calls Santa on 1 (605) 313-0691 and leaves a message; Santa does not call them. From a mobile you get a text back with the recording, which is the nicest thing about it. Run by a telecom as seasonal marketing, so it is genuinely free rather than free-with-an-upsell.
Letters and replies
A reply, not a printable template — the thing the child physically receives. Anything posted has a deadline in early December and nothing after it arrives in time; an emailed reply is the only version that still works in the last week.
Santa Mail
From$14.99
- Free version
- No
- Signup needed
- No
- Call
- Yes
A posted paper letter, not a video — packages run $14.99 to $79.99 and every one includes a free phone call from Santa. Extra calls are $3 upward. The call picks the child's name from a fixed library, so check it is there first. Posted, so it has a shipping deadline in early December and nothing after that will arrive in time.
EmailSanta
Free
- Free version
- Yes
- Signup needed
- No
- Photo in video
- No
- Call
- No
An instant written reply, first name only, no account. Letters only — there is no video and no call.
Santatelevision
Not published
- Free version
- No
- Call
- No
Not a video service, despite ranking like one — it is a Rovaniemi TV channel, and its video and call buttons are affiliate links to Portable North Pole. What is its own is the letter: a genuine posted letter from Lapland, fulfilled by Posti, the Finnish post office. Worth it for the postmark; order early, because it crosses the Atlantic by post.
Package From Santa
Not published
- Free version
- Limited
- Signup needed
- No
Sells physical packages — a printed letter and small gifts posted to the child — and gives the personalised video away free as the way in. If a free video is all you want, this is the most direct route to one in the United States.
A visit in person
A costumed performer at your door. The most expensive of the four and the first to sell out: the opening weekends of December and Christmas Eve itself go earliest. Ask about background checks and insurance before paying a retainer.
HireSanta
From$200
- Free version
- No
- Call
- Yes
Not a video service: a national booking platform for a real performer at your door. $200–300 for thirty to forty-five minutes, usually with a $150 retainer to hold the date. Background-checked and insured performers are the thing you are paying the premium for.
General AI video tools
These are not Santa services. They are general AI video platforms that publish a Santa landing page each December, and they take up roughly half the search results. Listed so you recognise them: the output is an avatar reading your script, "free" means trial credits on a subscription, and the account survives the season whether you use it again or not.
HeyGen
From$24
- Free version
- Limited
- Signup needed
- Yes
An enterprise avatar platform with a Santa page bolted on for December. You type a script and an avatar reads it. The free tier is credits against a subscription that starts around $24 a month, and the output is watermarked until you pay.
Jogg AI
From$60
- Free version
- Limited
- Signup needed
- Yes
An avatar and talking-photo platform. Same shape as the others — free credits, then a subscription in the region of $60 a month, which is a great deal more than any actual Santa service on this page costs.
ElevenLabs
Not published
- Free version
- Limited
- Signup needed
- Yes
Primarily a voice-cloning company; the Santa page is a lip-sync demo of it. The voice is the best of any tool here and the rest of the experience assumes you are a video producer, not a parent on Christmas Eve. Account required, credits metered.
Vidnoz
Not published
- Free version
- Limited
- Signup needed
- Yes
Gives away sixty credits a day, which is genuinely enough for a short video without paying — the trade is an account, heavy upsell banners throughout, and a watermark on free output.
Revid AI
Not published
- Free version
- Limited
- Signup needed
- Yes
A short-form social video tool aimed at creators publishing at volume. The Santa generator is one of dozens of templates on it, and the account is built for people making thirty videos a month, not one.
AI Studios
Not published
- Free version
- Limited
- Signup needed
- Yes
Two thousand stock avatars, one of which is dressed as Santa. Corporate training and marketing video is the real product; the free Santa generator is the top of a sales funnel for it.
Wondercraft
Not published
- Free version
- Limited
- Signup needed
- Yes
Ranks higher and across more Santa searches than most of the real services, which is worth knowing when you meet it at the top of the results. Underneath it is an audio and podcast production tool; the Santa generator is a landing page for it.
“Not verified” means we have not opened and checked it. It is never a guess.
Santa's phone number, and what actually happens when you call
There is no single official number, and that is the first thing worth knowing. The ones that circulate every December are run by telecom companies, charities and individual services; they change from year to year, and a number printed in a blog post from two Christmases ago will usually ring out. The free one we called ourselves is 1 (605) 313-0691, operated by FreeConferenceCall.com as seasonal marketing.
The direction catches people out. On that line the child calls Santa and leaves a message — Santa does not call them. From a mobile you get a text back afterwards with the recording, which is the part actually worth having, and which nothing on the page tells you before you dial.
A call in the other direction, where the phone rings and Santa is on the line, is a different product and is nearly always automated: a recording with the child's name dropped in from a pre-built library. Santa Mail includes one free call with every letter package and sells extra credits from $3. Because the name comes from a library rather than from what you type, check an unusual spelling is in it before paying for anything.
A live performer on the phone does exist and costs an order of magnitude more than either. It is rarely advertised as such — the listings describe it in the same words as the automated version — so the only reliable way to tell them apart is to ask outright whether the call is live.
The naughty list, the nice list, and the certificate
A large share of the people searching in this category are not looking for a video at all. They are looking for confirmation: a nice list certificate, which is a printed sheet with the child's name on it and Santa's signature at the bottom. The honest answer is that you do not need to buy one. The letter generator on this site produces the text, and any printer produces the object — what makes it land is the paper, not the wording.
The naughty list is the other half of that search and it needs more care. Several services sell a "naughty list warning", and a recorded voice telling a five-year-old they are on it lands very differently at the kitchen table than it does in the shopping cart. Most paid products let you pick the tone; the free ones often do not, and one or two default to the stern version. Read the sample script before buying, not after.
The list is the oldest piece of the whole apparatus, incidentally. It comes from the Thomas Nast drawings of the 1860s, where Santa is shown at a desk writing names into a ledger. It is older than the red suit.
Seeing Santa in person, without booking one
Hiring a performer for your own front room is the expensive end of this — $200 to $300 for forty minutes, covered further down. The free end is that Santa appears in public from late November onward: shopping centers, garden centers, large outdoor-goods stores and town squares all run some version of it, most with a free photograph and a paid print if you want one.
Search for the venue rather than for Santa. These schedules live on the venue's own website and almost nowhere else, they go up in late October, and the aggregator sites that rank for the search are usually showing last year's dates. Calling the venue is faster than any of them.
Two things save a wasted trip. Weekday mornings in the first fortnight of December are close to empty, and the final weekend before Christmas is a two-hour queue for the same four minutes. And a "reservation" at most free grottos books a time slot, not a photograph — the photograph is sold at the end, and the free digital copy is usually available if you ask for it by name.
The letter is a separate decision
Most of what ranks for a letter from Santa is a template: a printable PDF the child writes on, not something they receive. That is a different product from a reply, and the two are worth separating before you start. If a template is what you want, it should cost nothing — there is no version of that worth paying for.
A reply is the thing that arrives. USPS Operation Santa is the free institutional option and it runs on a posting deadline, so it has to be started early. A paid digital letter can be produced the same day and is the only version that still works in the last week before Christmas. A posted paper package — Santa Mail and Package From Santa both sell one — sits between the two at $14.99 and up, and has a shipping cut-off in early December that nothing will move.
If you want the reply to land properly, print it on something that is not printer paper. The detail children remember is the physical object: heavier stock, an odd size, a fold that is not the fold a school letter has. A postmark helps more than any wording — Santatelevision sells a genuine posted letter from Lapland through the Finnish post office, and the stamp is the entire point of it.
What a personalised Santa video actually costs
Video is the most competitive corner of this category and the smallest by search demand, which means the prices are keen. My Santa Message is the cheapest at $2.99 for a short message, though Santa reads the name from a pre-recorded library of about 2,400 — check yours is in it. Elfi is $5.99 if you buy two together and $7.99 to $12.99 for one alone. Portable North Pole, the service most American parents reach first, is around $6.99 for a single video, and its Magic Pass at roughly $14.99 introductory covers the whole season, which works out cheaper the moment you have more than one child.
The word to watch is free, because several services advertise one and mean different things by it. Hey Santa, CreatorKit and Synthesia all render genuinely free videos and all three deliver by email, so the result lands in an inbox rather than on the screen in front of the child. Package From Santa gives away a free personalised video and uses it as the way into its paid posted package. Portable North Pole's free tier is a trial, and it has historically stopped being available around 19 December — which is exactly when most people go looking.
The other split is AI against pre-recorded. A pre-recorded video with a name dropped in is limited to the names it was recorded with and looks like film. An AI-generated one will say anything you type and looks, on close inspection, like AI. Neither is better; they fail in opposite directions, and a child who will study the face wants the first.
What to check before paying
Does the free tier show you the result, or email it? That single question separates a free render from a mailing-list signup with a video attached, and almost no pricing page answers it.
Is there a watermark on the free output? Rarely stated anywhere, and it is the difference between something watched once and something a family keeps.
Is it priced per video or per household? A family with three children is buying three videos at some services and one pass at others, and the headline price is per video at nearly all of them.
And for anything spoken — a call or a pre-recorded video — is the child's name read from a library or from what you typed? A library means an unusual spelling may simply not exist, and you will find that out after paying.
Booking a visit
Santa Claus
$200 – $300
~40 min
December 24
The most professionalised version of this anywhere: background-checked, insured performers, some working under national franchises, booked through dedicated Santa platforms rather than general party agencies. A timed home visit with gift delivery, photographs, a story or a game.
Per visit rather than per hour, for thirty to forty-five minutes, with a non-refundable retainer of around $150 to hold the date. Hourly entertainer bookings run $150–300. A real beard costs more, and the first three weekends of December plus Christmas Eve carry a premium.
The first three December weekends and Christmas Eve go earliest and cost the most. Real-bearded performers are the constraint.
Where to book
- HireSantaNationwide
The largest dispatcher in the country and the one that went on Shark Tank. Books real-bearded performers for home visits, corporate parties and full-season mall staffing. Start here if you are outside the seven metros below.
- Santa For HireNationwide
Running since 1999 and the older of the two national agencies. Real-bearded performers only, booked through a request form rather than a public calendar, so expect a call back rather than an instant price.
- HireSanta — New York CityNew York City
City page with its own roster. Manhattan apartment visits book earliest of anywhere in the country.
- HireSanta — Los AngelesLos Angeles
Covers the LA basin. Travel time across the metro is charged, so ask what is included before the retainer.
- HireSanta — ChicagoChicago
Chicagoland roster. Weather cancellations are the thing to ask about here specifically.
- HireSanta — DallasDallas–Fort Worth
The company's home metro, and the deepest roster outside New York.
- HireSanta — HoustonHouston
Greater Houston. Same booking terms as the national arm.
- HireSanta — AtlantaAtlanta
Metro Atlanta roster.
- HireSanta — MiamiMiami–South Florida
South Florida. Bilingual performers are worth asking for here and are not listed by default.
Not a booking service — it is the performers' own professional body, and it does not run a public directory. Its regional chapters are how you find an independent Santa in a city no agency covers, and membership is a real credential to ask a performer about.
Santa True — home visits · HireSanta.com · SantaForHire.com · IBRBS
The free official option
United States runs a national postal programme: USPS Operation Santa
Common questions
- Who brings the presents, and when?
- Santa Claus, on December 25.
- Is there a free way to send a greeting?
- Yes. There is a national postal programme that replies to letters for free, and some video services have a free tier — though most of those ask for an email address before they show you the result.
- Video, letter or a visit — what can be sent?
- All three exist, and they suit different moments. A video is instant and works up to the last evening. A letter needs a reply, so postal deadlines fall in early December. A visit in person is booked weeks ahead and is the most expensive.
- How early should it be ordered?
- Earlier than feels necessary. Free tiers are seasonal and several close before the date itself. Of the 26 services listed here, 26 were opened and checked by hand — prices and terms in this category change during the season.
- How much does it cost to have someone come to the house?
- About $200 – $300. That is a performer in costume at your door, not a video — the most expensive of the three formats and the one that books out first.
- What if the date has already passed?
- A video still works — most services deliver the same day, and some within minutes. Letters and visits do not: postal deadlines fall in early December and visit slots are gone weeks before.
- Is it the same figure everywhere?
- No, and that is the point of this site. Fifty-six countries, sixty-five gift-bringers, eight different dates. A video from a red-suited Santa is simply the wrong character in a good part of Europe.