How much does Seed 1.6 cost per million tokens?

Seed 1.6 costs $0.25 per million input tokens and $2 per million output tokens at list price.

What is the context window of Seed 1.6?

Seed 1.6 accepts up to 262,144 tokens of context and returns up to 32,768 output tokens.

How much do 1,000 chat messages cost with Seed 1.6?

About $1.25, assuming 1,000 input + 500 output tokens per message.

Is there a cheaper alternative to Seed 1.6?

In the same price range, OpenAI GPT-6 Luna Pro ($0.1 / $0.5), OpenAI GPT-6 Luna ($0.1 / $0.5), Qwen Qwen3.8 Omni Flash ($0.15 / $0.47) cost less per token. Quality differs: test on your own prompts.

Where can I buy ByteDance Seed API credits for less?

Discount credit books resell OpenRouter usage below face value within their depth, OpenRouter adds a 5.5% card fee, and ByteDance Seed sells its own credits at face value. The live table on this page ranks them for $100 of usage.

ByteDance Seed · live price

Seed 1.6 API pricing

Seed 1.6 is a general-purpose model released by the ByteDance Seed team. It incorporates multimodal capabilities and adaptive deep thinking with a 256K context window.

Small and cheap (under $1 per 1M)Tool callingReasoningimage inputvideo inputRetiring 2026-11-11

Input: $0.25; per 1M tokens
Output: $2; per 1M tokens
Cached input: –; per 1M tokens
Context: 262K; 33K max output

List price from OpenRouter, which passes ByteDance Seed's price through without markup. Refreshed hourly. Released December 23, 2025. Model id bytedance-seed/seed-1.6.

What Seed 1.6 costs in practice

At list price, before any batch or caching discount.

1,000 chat messages

$1.25

1,000 input + 500 output tokens each

1,000 RAG questions

$3.00

8,000 input + 500 output tokens each

100 coding-agent steps

$1.15

30,000 input + 2,000 output tokens each, no caching

Seed 1.6 price history

No price change since we started tracking on 2026-10-01. We record prices daily; changes will show here.

Seed 1.6 price by host

One host serves this model through OpenRouter.

Seed$0.25 in · $2 out · 262K ctx · 100.0% uptime 24h

Where to buy ByteDance Seed credits for less

Seed 1.6 costs the same per token everywhere it's sold through OpenRouter. What changes is the price of the credits. Live quotes for $100 of usage:

#	Where you buy	You payYou pay for $100.00 of usage	vs list price	Price source
1	OrbioCardCheapest right now Credits from a discount book, plus a 5% platform fee and card processing, both included in the quote.	$85.10 incl. $2.60 card processing	-14.9%	live quote
2	smaaartCard Credits from a discount book, plus a 5% platform fee on face value. Card processing and taxes shown at checkout.	$95.00 + card processing and tax at checkout (not in this number)	-5.0%	live quote
3	Direct from the labCard Prepaid credits at face value (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google…). Taxes may apply.	$100.00 no top-up fee	list price	face value
4	OpenRouterCrypto 5% on crypto purchases. No markup on model prices.	$105.00 fees included	+5.0%	published fee
5	OpenRouterCard 5.5% on card purchases, $0.80 minimum. No markup on model prices.	$105.50 fees included	+5.5%	published fee

Disclosure: this site is run by the team behind smaaart, one of the options compared. Tables are ranked by price only, from live quotes and published fees, including when smaaart isn't first. How we compare

Seed 1.6 cost calculator

Enter your monthly tokens to price your own usage.

Model$0.25 in / $2.00 out per 1M tokens · list price, liveInput tokens / month (millions)Output tokens / month (millions)

Usage at list price$32.50/ month(quotes below are for $33.00: purchases run from $5.00 to $10,000.00)

Cheaper alternatives to Seed 1.6

Other labs' models in the same price range or the one below, cheaper per token.

Model	Input / 1M	Output / 1M	Blended 3:1	Context
OpenAI: GPT-6 Luna Pro	$0.1	$0.5	$0.2	1.1M
OpenAI: GPT-6 Luna	$0.1	$0.5	$0.2	1.1M
Qwen: Qwen3.8 Omni Flash	$0.15	$0.47	$0.23	1M
Z.ai: GLM 5.3 FlashX	$0.37	$1.25	$0.59	1.0M
DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash	$0.03	$0.5	$0.147	1.0M
Qwen: Qwen3.8 Flash	$0.15	$0.47	$0.23	1M

Other ByteDance Seed models

Model	Input / 1M	Output / 1M	Blended 3:1	Context
Seed-2.0-Mini	$0.1	$0.4	$0.175	262K
Seed-2.0-Lite	$0.25	$2	$0.688	262K
Seed 2.1 Turbo	$0.5	$2.50	$1	262K

All ByteDance Seed API prices