ByteDance Seed · language model
Seed 1.6: pricing, context and benchmarks
Seed 1.6 is a language model from ByteDance Seed released on December 23, 2025. It costs $0.25 per million input tokens and $2 per million output tokens, with a 262.1K-token context window. No independent score has been published for it so far.
| Price | 16/30 | |
|---|---|---|
| Context | 9/15 | |
| Features | 11/15 |
What you need to know about Seed 1.6
Seed 1.6 was released by ByteDance Seed (China) on December 23, 2025. It accepts images, text, and video as input and produces text. Its context window reaches 262,144 tokens, larger than 58 % of the models in the registry, and it can write up to 32,768 tokens in one go.
It has been available for about 10 months, long enough for its prices and scores to have settled.
Seed 1.6 pricing
On OpenRouter, Seed 1.6 costs $0.25 per million input tokens and $2 per million output tokens. Counting three tokens read for every token written, its average price is $0.688 per million, more expensive than 48 % of paid models (1.1 times cheaper than the median of $0.76).
A concrete example: a task that sends 2,000 tokens (about 1,500 words) and receives a 500-token answer costs $0.0015. At 1,000 tasks a day, budget $45 a month. The price calculator redoes this with your own volumes.
Performance and benchmarks
Epoch AI does not yet publish a capabilities index for Seed 1.6. We therefore show no made-up performance rating: only price, context and features count towards its score.
Features, privacy and local use
- It supports tool calling, so it can drive an AI agent, call APIs or MCP servers.
- It can answer in an enforced JSON format (structured outputs).
- It is a reasoning model: it "thinks" before answering, which helps on hard tasks but uses more output tokens.
Its weights are not published: it can only be used through the ByteDance Seed API or a broker such as OpenRouter, which means sending your data off your machines.
Other ByteDance Seed models
| Model | Released | Avg. price | ECI |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seed 2.1 Turbo | Aug 12, 2026 | $1 | — |
| Seed-2.0-Code | Aug 12, 2026 | $1.13 | — |
| Seed-2.0-Lite | Mar 10, 2026 | $0.69 | — |
| Seed-2.0-Mini | Feb 26, 2026 | $0.18 | — |
| Seed 1.6 Flash | Dec 23, 2025 | $0.13 | — |
Verdict
Seed 1.6 scores 60/100 on our grid, which only uses published figures.
Strengths
- Agent-ready: tool calling and structured JSON output.
Limitations
- No independent score published: performance cannot be verified.
Avoid if…
- your data must not leave your servers.
Alternatives
- Qwen3.6 27B$0.69
- Qwen3.5-27B$0.74
- Mistral Large 3 2512$0.75
- Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Instruct$0.63
- GPT-5 Mini$0.69
- Nemotron 3 Super$0.83
Comparisons and tools
Learn more
Frequently asked questions
How much does Seed 1.6 cost?
$0.25 per million input tokens and $2 per million output tokens on OpenRouter (checked October 25, 2026). A task with 2,000 tokens read and 500 written costs $0.0015.
How big is Seed 1.6's context window?
262,144 tokens, roughly 197,000 words, with a maximum of 32,768 output tokens.
Can Seed 1.6 run locally?
No, ByteDance Seed does not publish its weights: it is API-only.
Is Seed 1.6 suitable for an AI agent?
Technically yes: it supports tool calling and structured outputs. Then check its cost for your volume.
What are the alternatives to Seed 1.6?
The closest models on price and performance are Qwen3.6 27B, Qwen3.5-27B, and Mistral Large 3 2512.
Related articles
- Mistral AI: models, pricing and agentsOctober 25, 2026
- LLM benchmarks: how to read model rankingsOctober 24, 2026
- Running a local LLM: hardware, software, and limitationsOctober 24, 2026
- Open-source or closed models for your AI agents?October 5, 2026
Neutrality. No affiliate links. No vendor pays to be reviewed, rated or ranked. Reviews are directed by François Chollet, neutral and factual, and every data point is dated and sourced. How we score