Seed 1.6 API Pricing
ByteDance · Mid-tier · Proprietary · released 2025-12. Prices in USD per 1 million tokens. Data snapshot: 2026-09-28.
Seed 1.6 is the cheapest Mid-tier model we track, and its list price has not moved since 2026-08-15. Only one host, Seed, sells it, so there is no second price to shop. No Arena score is published for it, so it carries no Efficiency score and cannot hold the FinOps Friendly badge.
- Input: $0.25 per 1M tokens
- Output: $2.00 per 1M tokens
- Batch API (input/output): not published
- Prompt-cache read: not published
- Context window: 262K
Seed 1.6 market position
On blended price ($1.47 per 1M tokens at 30% input, 70% output) it is the cheapest of 108 Mid-tier models, tied with 3 others. Across every category it is cheaper than 49% of priced text models in the catalogue: 140th cheapest of 281, tied with 3 others.
Seed 1.6 licence, size and capabilities
Seed 1.6 is recorded here as proprietary: access is through an API, priced by the token. Its parameter count is not published. Listed capabilities: Text, Vision, Reasoning, Code, Agents. Filling its 262K context window once costs $0.07 in input tokens at list price.
Monthly cost at 100K requests, by business use case
From the after-discounts figure (prompt caching on the cached input share, batch API for async workloads, only where the provider publishes those rates), which assumes you implement both, to the list price. One figure means no discount is published.
| Use case | Tokens (in/out) | Monthly (after discounts – list) |
|---|---|---|
| Support Ticket | 1,500 / 500 | $138 |
| Knowledge Q&A | 2,000 / 800 | $210 |
| Meeting Summary | 10,000 / 1,200 | $490 |
| Marketing Content | 2,500 / 1,800 | $422 |
| Coding Task | 3,000 / 2,000 | $475 |
| Invoice Processing | 1,500 / 600 | $158 |
| Call Summary | 2,000 / 700 | $190 |
| Agent Workflow | 6,000 / 3,000 | $750 |
Seed 1.6 pricing by host
A host is a company that runs the model and sells it by the token — the lab that made it, a cloud platform like Amazon Bedrock, Azure or Vertex, or an independent provider. One model, several sellers, and often several prices. This model is sold by 1 host. The price quoted above is the one we publish so that models stay comparable; it is not necessarily the cheapest way to buy this model. List prices as published on 2026-09-28 via OpenRouter — negotiated rates, committed-use discounts and provisioned capacity are not shown.
Seed is the only host with a published rate, $0.25 input / $2.00 output per 1M tokens, which is the price shown on this page. It serves a quantized fp8 build, which is not the same product as the full-precision model.
| Host | Input $/1M | Output $/1M |
|---|---|---|
| Seed (the price shown above) — fp8 | $0.25 | $2.00 |
Seed 1.6 price history
Seed 1.6 has been in our daily price archive since tracking began on 2026-08-15, when it listed at $0.25 input / $2.00 output per 1M tokens. No list price change since tracking began on 2026-08-15. Last checked against the 2026-09-28 snapshot.
Alternatives to Seed 1.6
- Next more expensive: Devstral 2 2512 (Mistral) at $1.52 blended, 3% more.
Common questions about Seed 1.6 pricing
- How much does Seed 1.6 cost?
- Seed 1.6 costs $0.25 per million input tokens and $2.00 per million output tokens on the API.
- Does Seed 1.6 offer batch or cached pricing?
- No batch or cache pricing is published for this model.
- What would Seed 1.6 cost per month?
- For a support-ticket workload (1,500 input + 500 output tokens per request) at 100K requests/month, Seed 1.6 costs about $138 at list prices.
- Has the price of Seed 1.6 changed?
- Seed 1.6 has been in our daily price archive since tracking began on 2026-08-15, when it listed at $0.25 input / $2.00 output per 1M tokens. No list price change since tracking began on 2026-08-15. Last checked against the 2026-09-28 snapshot.
These are list prices: real cost also depends on caching, batching, negotiated discounts, marketplace agreements, and existing contracts. Get a FinOps review from OptimNow or compare all models.
Build the business case for Seed 1.6 in the AI ROI Calculator: add your business value on top of these costs to get ROI, break-even and payback.
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