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OFF THE PRICE LISTULTRA LOW COST256K CONTEXTTEXT + VISIONCONTEXT CACHINGCNY SOURCE

Doubao Seed 1.6 Flash API Pricing

Off the price list: as of September 24, 2026, Volcano Ark no longer lists doubao-seed-1-6-flash on its pricing page or model list, and we found no retirement notice - so do not plan new work on it. The closest current model is Doubao Seed 2.0 Mini. Doubao Seed 1.6 Flash is ultra-low-cost Seed 1.6 Flash tier for high-throughput chat and extraction. Volcano Ark last listed the <=32K tier at ¥0.15/M input, ¥1.5/M output, and ¥0.03/M cache-hit input; AI//COST converts that baseline to $0.021/M and $0.211/M using the reference rate of ¥6.7209/USD. Checked by hand against volcengine.com.

Input - per 1M tokens
$0.0223/M
Original ¥0.15/M CNY source
Output - per 1M tokens
$0.223/M
Original ¥1.5/M CNY source
Cached input - per 1M tokens
$0.0045/M
Original ¥0.03/M -81%
Effective - agentic blend
$0.0249/M
92/8 split - 82% cache
§ 01 / TERMINAL

Run the numbers.

Live calculator pre-loaded with Doubao Seed 1.6 Flash rates converted from Volcano Ark's CNY pricing. Adjust spend, split, or cache assumptions to model CN-region token usage.

$ /mo
Workload split
Prompt cache hit rate
Tokens you can process
—
Words equivalent (English)
—
Effective rate
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Open full calculator (all models · share URL · CSV) →
§ 02 / SCENARIOS

Real-world presets.

AGENT

Workflow planning

$0.00135/task
30,000 in - 5,000 out~74,232 units/$100
VISION

Screenshot analysis

$0.00055/screen
14,000 in - 2,000 out~180,422 units/$100
RAG

Knowledge-base lookup

$0.00034/query
9,000 in - 1,200 out~296,581 units/$100
CHATBOT

Support turn

$0.00018/turn
3,500 in - 700 out~545,839 units/$100
§ 03 / TOKENIZER

Paste text. See tokens. See cost.

What's a token →
Calibrated · measured on the vendor's tokenizer · 2026-06-10 Auto-counts as you type

Counts use a chars-per-token calibration measured on the vendor's own published tokenizer (ByteDance-Seed/Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct, 2026-06-10). English prose is typically within a few percent; code and non-Latin scripts tokenize heavier. For billing-exact counts use the vendor's count-tokens API.

Characters 524
Words 81
Tokens (estimated) 101 tokens
Cost as input · uncached $0.000002 USD
Cost as output · uncached $0.00002 USD
Cost as cached input $0.0000005 USD
§ 04 / SHELF

Up against the shelf.

All models →
Model Input /M Output /M Effective blended Context Best for
Doubao Seed 1.6 Flash Current $0.0223 cache $0.0045 $0.223 $0.0249 agentic 92/8 256K High-volume low-cost chat
Doubao Seed 2.0 Pro $0.476 cache $0.0952 $2.38 $0.341 +14× 256K Complex agent workflows
Doubao Seed 2.0 Code $0.476 cache $0.0952 $2.38 $0.341 +14× 256K Coding agents and IDE workflows
Doubao Seed 2.0 Lite $0.0893 cache $0.0179 $0.536 $0.0711 +2.9× 256K Balanced multimodal routing
Doubao Seed 2.0 Mini $0.0298 cache $0.006 $0.298 $0.0333 +33% 256K Fast low-latency routing
Gemini 3.8 Flash $0.75 cache $0.075 $3.75 $0.481 +19× · promo 1M Mainstream multimodal work
GPT-5.4 mini $0.75 cache $0.075 $4.50 $0.541 +22× 400K OpenAI low-latency coding
Kimi K2.5 $0.60 cache $0.10 $3.00 $0.415 retired 262K Kimi multimodal agents

Frequently asked.

Practical Doubao pricing questions, including CNY conversion, context tiers, cache hits, and regional tax caveats.

Q · 01 Is Doubao Seed 1.6 Flash still sold? +
Not as a listed model. On September 24, 2026 doubao-seed-1-6-flash was missing from both Volcano Ark's model pricing page and its model list, and ByteDance published no retirement notice we could find, so whether existing integrations still get answers is unconfirmed. For new work, start from Doubao Seed 2.0 Mini; the rates on this page are the last ones Volcano Ark listed.
Q · 02 What is Doubao Seed 1.6 Flash priced at? +
Doubao Seed 1.6 Flash's <=32K tier is listed at ¥0.15/M input, ¥1.5/M output, and ¥0.03/M cache-hit input. AI//COST stores that as $0.021/M, $0.211/M, and $0.0045/M using ¥6.7209/USD.
Q · 03 Does the price change for longer prompts? +
Yes. Volcano Ark lists Doubao prices by input length tiers, with higher rates above 32K and again above 128K for Seed 2.0 models. This page uses the <=32K baseline tier and calls out the tiering in notes.
Q · 04 How does context caching work? +
The pricing table lists a cache-hit input rate of ¥0.03/M, converted here to $0.0045/M. The calculator defaults to an 82% cache-hit workload for agentic reuse patterns.
Q · 05 Are taxes or international region markups included? +
No. The source price is the Volcano Ark CNY token price before any tax, enterprise contract, or regional deployment adjustments. USD conversion is stored only for AI//COST comparison pages.
Q · 06 How is the effective price calculated? +
AI//COST uses the same 92/8 agentic blend everywhere. With an 82% cache-hit rate, Doubao Seed 1.6 Flash's effective blended cost is $0.02/M.
Q · 07 Is this an OpenAI-compatible API? +
Volcano Ark exposes Chat Completions-style model serving for Doubao models. Parameter support varies by model and deployment mode, so production integrations should verify function calling, Responses API, and cache behavior in the Volcano console.
Y
Reviewed by Yaroslav Vikhariev Founder · AI//COST · Prices checked by hand against volcengine.com · Last verified Jun 24, 2026
Methodology Report a correction More by Y.V.