Doubao Seed 1.6 Vision API Pricing
Off the price list: as of September 24, 2026, Volcano Ark no longer lists doubao-seed-1-6-vision 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 Lite. Doubao Seed 1.6 Vision is ByteDance's vision-first Seed 1.6 tier for GUI analysis, image reasoning, and multimodal workflows. The official Volcano Ark table last started the <=32K tier at Y0.80/M input, Y8.00/M output, and Y0.16/M cache-hit input; AI//COST stores that as $0.119/M, $1.1903/M, and $0.0238/M at Y6.7209/USD. Checked by hand against volcengine.com.
Run the numbers.
Live calculator pre-loaded with Doubao Seed 1.6 Vision's baseline tier. Adjust input length assumptions if you expect the 32K-128K or 128K-256K price bands instead of the default <=32K row.
Real-world presets.
Desktop inspection
Receipt extraction
Short clip reasoning
Image-grounded lookup
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.
| Model | Input /M | Output /M | Effective blended | Context | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Doubao Seed 1.6 Vision Current | $0.119 cache $0.0238 | $1.19 | $0.133 agentic 92/8 | 256K | Vision reasoning and GUI analysis |
| Doubao Seed 1.6 | $0.119 cache $0.0238 | $1.19 | $0.133 deprecated · same | 256K | General thinking and multimodal chat |
| Doubao Seed 1.6 Flash | $0.0223 cache $0.0045 | $0.223 | $0.0249 deprecated · −5.3× | 256K | High-volume low-cost chat |
| Doubao Seed 2.0 Pro | $0.476 cache $0.0952 | $2.38 | $0.341 +2.6× | 256K | Complex agent workflows |
| Gemini 3.8 Flash | $0.75 cache $0.075 | $3.75 | $0.481 +3.6× · promo | 1M | Mainstream multimodal work |
Frequently asked.
Practical Doubao vision-tier pricing questions, with the public CNY ladder separated from workload assumptions.
Q · 01 Is Doubao Seed 1.6 Vision still sold? +
doubao-seed-1-6-vision 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 Lite; the rates on this page are the last ones Volcano Ark listed.Q · 02 What is Doubao Seed 1.6 Vision priced at? +
Y0.80/M input, Y8.00/M output, and Y0.16/M cache-hit input. AI//COST stores that as $0.119/M, $1.1903/M, and $0.0238/M using Y6.7209/USD. Verified 2026-07-11 - the base input and output rates doubled from the earlier Y0.40/Y4.00.Q · 03 Does the price change above 32K input length? +
32K-128K and 128K-256K bands above the <=32K baseline used on this page. Check the vendor table for the exact higher-band rates for your prompt length.Q · 04 How large is the cache-hit discount? +
Y0.16/M against a base input price of Y0.80/M - an 80% discount. The cache-hit rate stayed at Y0.16/M when the base rates doubled in July 2026.Q · 05 How does it compare with Seed 2.0 Pro? +
$0.451/M input and $2.254/M output on its baseline tier. Seed 1.6 Vision is cheaper and more focused on mid-tier multimodal reasoning.Q · 06 Does this page include tax or enterprise discounts? +
Q · 07 What does the $0.13 effective number represent? +
92/8 blended workload using an 82% cache-hit assumption on input. It is a planning shortcut, not a second vendor list price.