Doubao API Pricing
The Doubao model family from ByteDance — parent of TikTok and Douyin. Served through the Volcano Ark (火山方舟) platform on ByteDance's Volcano Engine cloud, Doubao powers China's most-used consumer AI app and undercuts most frontier labs on price.
Doubao Seed 2.1 Pro LAUNCHED JUN 2026
Official Volcano Ark large-language-model rate row, live verified 2026-06-24.
Doubao Seed 2.1 Turbo LAUNCHED JUN 2026
Official Volcano Ark Seed 2.1 Turbo row, live verified 2026-06-30.
Doubao Seed 2.1 Lite LAUNCHED SEP 2026
Doubao Seed 2.1 Lite is ByteDance's low-cost Seed 2.1 model, released 2026-09-15 as doubao-seed-2-1-lite-260915 and described in Volcano Ark's model release announcements as a new-generation omni-m…
Doubao Seed 2.0 Pro
ByteDance Seed 2.0 Pro via Volcano Ark.
Doubao Seed 2.0 Code
Code-specialised Seed 2.0 — SAME pricing as Seed 2.0 Pro.
Doubao Seed 2.0 Lite
ByteDance's light Seed tier, priced in CNY across three context bands whose rates climb with the band - a 200K prompt bills at triple the <=32K rate.
Doubao Seed 2.0 Mini
Live verified Volcano Ark.
Doubao Seed Character
Live verified Volcano Ark.
Doubao Seed Translation
Live re-verified 2026-05-23 on Volcano Ark.
Doubao Seed Evolving
Doubao Seed Evolving is ByteDance's continuously updated Seed model for agent and coding work: one model id, doubao-seed-evolving, that Volcano Ark describes as 'dynamically iterated, with at least…
Doubao Seed 1.8
Live verified Volcano Ark.
Doubao Seed 1.6
Live verified Volcano Ark.
Doubao Seed 1.6 Lite
Live verified Volcano Ark.
Doubao Seed 1.6 Flash
ByteDance's cheapest Seed tier, priced in CNY across three context bands where input and output climb but the cache-hit rate does not - it stays CNY 0.03/M at every band.
Doubao Seed 1.6 Vision
Live verified Volcano Ark.
Doubao Seed Code
Live verified Volcano Ark.
Doubao Pro 32K (legacy)
Original Doubao Pro 32K — predates the 1.5/Seed families.
Doubao 1.5 Lite 32K
Legacy Doubao 1.5 light (32K).
Doubao 1.5 Pro 32K
Legacy Doubao 1.5 flagship (32K context).
Doubao 1.5 Vision Pro
Legacy Doubao 1.5 vision flagship.
| Model | Input /M | Output /M | Cached | Context | Max output | Vision | Tools | Tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Doubao Seed 2.1 Pro FLAGSHIP | $0.893 | $4.46 | $0.178−80% | 1M | — | ✓ | ✓ | Frontier |
| Doubao Seed 2.1 Turbo | $0.446 | $2.23 | $0.0893−80% | 256K | — | ✓ | ✓ | Active |
| Doubao Seed 2.1 Lite | $0.119 | $0.402 | $0.0238−80% | 1M | — | ✓ | ✓ | Light |
| Doubao Seed 2.0 Pro | $0.476 | $2.38 | $0.0952−80% | 256K | — | ✓ | ✓ | Frontier |
| Doubao Seed 2.0 Code | $0.476 | $2.38 | $0.0952−80% | 256K | — | ✗ | ✓ | Frontier |
| Doubao Seed 2.0 Lite | $0.0893 | $0.536 | $0.0179−80% | 256K | — | ✓ | ✓ | Light |
| Doubao Seed 2.0 Mini | $0.0298 | $0.298 | $0.006−80% | 256K | — | ✗ | ✓ | Light |
| Doubao Seed Character | $0.119 | $0.298 | $0.0238−80% | 128K | — | ✗ | ✓ | Mid |
| Doubao Seed Translation | $0.178 | $0.536 | — | documented elsewhere | — | ✗ | ✓ | Mid |
| Doubao Seed Evolving | $0.893 | $4.46 | $0.178−80% | 1M | — | ✓ | ✓ | Frontier |
| Doubao Seed 1.8 DEPRECATED | $0.119 | $1.19 | $0.0238−80% | 256K | — | ✓ | ✓ | Deprecated |
| Doubao Seed 1.6 DEPRECATED | $0.119 | $1.19 | $0.0238−80% | 256K | — | ✓ | ✓ | Deprecated |
| Doubao Seed 1.6 Lite DEPRECATED | $0.0446 | $0.357 | $0.009−80% | 256K | — | ✓ | ✓ | Deprecated |
| Doubao Seed 1.6 Flash DEPRECATED | $0.0223 | $0.223 | $0.0045−80% | 256K | — | ✗ | ✓ | Deprecated |
| Doubao Seed 1.6 Vision DEPRECATED | $0.119 | $1.19 | $0.0238−80% | 256K | — | ✓ | ✓ | Deprecated |
| Doubao Seed Code DEPRECATED | $0.178 | $1.19 | $0.0357−80% | 128K | — | ✗ | ✓ | Deprecated |
| Doubao Pro 32K (legacy) LEGACY | $0.286 | $0.298 | $0.0714−75% | 32K | — | ✗ | ✓ | Legacy |
| Doubao 1.5 Lite 32K LEGACY | $0.0446 | $0.0893 | $0.009−80% | 32K | — | ✗ | ✓ | Legacy |
| Doubao 1.5 Pro 32K LEGACY | $0.119 | $0.298 | $0.0238−80% | 32K | — | ✗ | ✓ | Legacy |
| Doubao 1.5 Vision Pro LEGACY | $0.446 | $1.34 | — | 32K | — | ✓ | ✓ | Legacy |
Pricing across the lineup.
The Doubao story so far.
Releases and corporate moves from ByteDance's AI line. Sourced from Volcano Engine, ByteDance press, and Wikipedia — verified at publication.
Volcano Ark (火山方舟) on ByteDance's Volcano Engine cloud — the managed API for the full Doubao catalog. Pricing is tiered by input length (≤32K / 32–128K / 128–256K).
CONSUMER · APPThe Doubao (豆包) app — China's most-used consumer AI assistant at 155M weekly active users. Free chat, vision, and voice; no API on this surface.
INTERNATIONALBytePlus — ByteDance's international B2B brand — offers Doubao/Seed models through ModelArk for teams that need access outside mainland China.
ByteDance was founded in 2012 in Beijing by Zhang Yiming and co-founder Liang Rubo (CEO since 2021). It is the company behind TikTok, Douyin, Toutiao, and CapCut, and one of the world's largest internet firms by revenue — a 2025 employee share buyback set its valuation above $330 billion, with secondary trades reported higher.
ByteDance's AI line centers on the Doubao (豆包) family, served through Volcano Ark (火山方舟) — the model platform on its Volcano Engine cloud. The consumer Doubao app is China's most-used AI assistant, reported at 155 million weekly active users in early 2026, which gives ByteDance a distribution advantage few labs can match.
The current flagship, Doubao Seed 2.1 Pro (launched June 23, 2026 and refreshed to a 1M-token context on September 15), is a multimodal reasoning model priced at a small fraction of Western frontier models. Alongside it sit Seed 2.1 Turbo and Lite, Seed Evolving - one model id that ByteDance updates at least weekly for coding and agents - and the Seed 2.0 Pro, Lite, Mini and Code variants, plus specialist role-play (Character) and translation models that reflect ByteDance's consumer-product roots.
Pricing on Volcano Ark is tiered by input length — the headline rates here are the ≤32K tier (converted from CNY at ¥6.7209/USD), and costs roughly double at 32–128K and again at 128–256K. Cache-hit input runs about 20% of the base input rate. Most Doubao models are closed / API-only rather than open-weight.
The trade-offs: Volcano Ark is a China-hosted cloud, so the direct API stores data in mainland China — non-China teams use the BytePlus international brand instead. US export-control and TikTok-related geopolitics also apply. Versus Alibaba's Qwen and DeepSeek, ByteDance trades open weights for the largest consumer distribution in China and aggressive pricing.
Alibaba (Qwen)
Broad open-weight Qwen catalog with 119-language coverage and dual cloud/self-host deployment. ByteDance counters with bigger consumer distribution but mostly closed models.
COST DISRUPTORDeepSeek
MIT open weights and the lowest cost-per-token at frontier reasoning. Doubao matches the low pricing but keeps weights closed and is text-or-vision only.
CHINESE PEERTencent (Hunyuan)
WeChat-scale distribution and the Hunyuan family on Tencent Cloud. Comparable China-residency profile; ByteDance leads on standalone-app usage.
PRIMARY RIVALOpenAI
Frontier benchmarks + global ecosystem (GPT-5, ChatGPT). But several times pricier and unavailable in mainland China, where Doubao dominates.
FRONTIER LEADERAnthropic
Leads coding + reasoning with Claude and zero-retention defaults. No China presence and far higher prices than the Doubao Seed tiers.
GLM ARCHITECTZhipu (Z.ai / GLM)
The Beijing lab behind the GLM models, also operating internationally as Z.ai. Spun out of Tsinghua University in 2019, Zhipu ships strong coding/agentic models, multiple free tiers, and open weights — and was the first of China's "Six Tigers" to pursue an IPO. It also sits on the US Entity List.
Frequently asked.
Practical questions about Doubao pricing, deployment, and data residency.
Q · 01 Which Doubao model should I start with? +
$0.893/$4.46) for frontier reasoning with a 1M context, or Seed 2.1 Lite ($0.119/$0.402) for cheap omni-modal production. Seed Evolving costs the same as 2.1 Pro and tracks ByteDance's weekly coding-model updates; pin 2.1 Pro when you need reproducibility. Drop to Seed 2.0 Mini ($0.0298/$0.298) for high-volume text. See the use case picker above.Q · 02 Why don't the prices match my Volcano Ark invoice? +
≤32K tier; costs roughly double at 32–128K and again at 128–256K. Cache-hit input is about 20% of the base input rate, and cache storage is billed per million tokens per hour. Prices here are converted from CNY at ¥6.7209/USD. The Seed 2.1 line is the exception: Seed 2.1 Pro, Seed 2.1 Lite and Seed Evolving each have a single rate up to 1,024K input tokens.Q · 03 Where is my data stored? +
Q · 04 Are Doubao models open-weight? +
Q · 05 How cheap is Doubao versus GPT-5 or Gemini? +
Q · 06 What makes ByteDance different from other Chinese labs? +
155M weekly active users make it China's most-used consumer AI app, and ByteDance ships consumer-flavored specialists like role-play (Character) and translation models. Versus Qwen it trades open weights for reach; versus Tencent's Hunyuan it leads on standalone-app usage.