ByteDance: Seed 1.6
Seed 1.6 is a reasoning model from ByteDance released on Sep 1, 2025. It reads text and images and writes text, with a 256K token context window and up to 32K tokens per reply.
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It costs $0.25 per million input tokens and $2 per million output tokens. Cached input bills at $0.05, 80% less than fresh input.
It supports tool calling and prompt caching.
- Modalities
- In / out price
- $0.25 / $2 per 1M
- Context
- 256K
- Max output
- 32K
- Released
- Sep 1, 2025
- Knowledge cutoff
- Oct 2024
- Tool calling
- Structured output
- Reasoning
- Prompt caching
- Open weights
- Free to use
Seed 1.6 pricing
USD, as listed on Oct 15, 2026. Most bills are input heavy, so the cached input rate matters as much as the headline price.
| Input | $0.25 / 1M tokens | |
|---|---|---|
| Output | $2 / 1M tokens | |
| Cached input (read) | $0.05 / 1M tokens | 80% off input |
| Prompts over 128K | $0.50 in, $4 out | long context rate |
What Seed 1.6 costs per month
Pick a workload close to yours or type your own volumes.
Supported request parameters
What you can set when you call Seed 1.6 through an OpenAI compatible API.
- Tools
tools - Reasoning
reasoning - Temperature
temperature
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Seed 1.6 questions
How much does the Seed 1.6 API cost?
$0.25 per million input tokens and $2 per million output tokens, with cached input at $0.05. Prompts over 128K tokens bill at $0.50 input and $4 output. The estimator on this page turns that into a monthly bill for your own workload.
What is the context window of Seed 1.6?
256,000 tokens of input, and it can write up to 32,000 tokens in one reply. As a rough guide, a million tokens is around 750,000 English words.
Does Seed 1.6 support tool calling?
Yes. It accepts tool definitions, which is what an agent needs to call your APIs.
Is Seed 1.6 open source?
No. ByteDance serves it through an API only, so you cannot download the weights or host it yourself.
When was Seed 1.6 released?
Sep 1, 2025, with training data up to Oct 2024.
Catalog data from models.dev (MIT licensed), refreshed daily, last on Oct 15, 2026. The summary is written from these facts.