Doubao Seed 2.1 Lite API Pricing
Doubao Seed 2.1 Lite is the low-cost member of ByteDance's Seed 2.1 line, released September 15, 2026 as an omni-modal model - text, images and audio in one request - with a 1M-token context. Volcano Ark lists CNY 0.80/M input, CNY 0.16/M cache-hit input and CNY 2.70/M output for the whole window, about $0.119, $0.0238 and $0.402 at our dated CNY rate. Audio input is billed separately at CNY 12/M. Checked by hand against Volcano Ark.
Run the numbers.
Live calculator pre-loaded with Seed 2.1 Lite's text rates, converted from CNY at the catalogue's single dated rate. Audio input bills at CNY 12/M, fifteen times the text rate, and is not in this calculator; the low-latency tier doubles every rate.
Real-world presets.
Ticket triage with tools
Reading 100-page contracts
Screenshot field extraction
Repo-wide bug fix
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 2.1 Lite Current | $0.119 cache $0.0238 | $0.402 | $0.0698 agentic 92/8 | 1M | Low-cost omni-modal Seed 2.1 work |
| Doubao Seed 2.1 Pro | $0.893 cache $0.178 | $4.46 | $0.64 +9.2× | 1M | ByteDance's Seed 2.1 flagship |
| Doubao Seed 2.1 Turbo | $0.446 cache $0.0893 | $2.23 | $0.32 +4.6× | 256K | Mid-price Seed 2.1 agents |
| Doubao Seed 2.0 Lite | $0.0893 cache $0.0179 | $0.536 | $0.0711 same | 256K | The previous Lite, tiered by length |
| Doubao Seed 2.0 Mini | $0.0298 cache $0.006 | $0.298 | $0.0333 −2.1× | 256K | Cheapest Seed text routing |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite | $0.30 cache $0.03 | $2.50 | $0.272 +3.9× | 1M | Budget multimodal outside China |
| Qwen3.6 Flash | $0.25 cache $0.25 | $1.50 | $0.35 +5.0× | 1M | Low-cost Qwen chat and reasoning |
Frequently asked.
Practical Doubao Seed 2.1 Lite pricing questions - the CNY rate card, what audio costs, and how it compares with the Seed 2.0 Lite it follows.
Q · 01 What is Doubao Seed 2.1 Lite priced at? +
doubao-seed-2.1-lite at CNY 0.80/M input, CNY 0.16/M cache-hit input and CNY 2.70/M output for any input length up to 1,024K tokens. At the catalogue's dated reference rate that is about $0.119, $0.0238 and $0.402 per million. Cache storage is CNY 0.017 per million tokens per hour.Q · 02 What does audio input cost? +
CNY 12.00/M input and CNY 2.40/M for audio cache hits, fifteen times the text rate. Output is text, at the same CNY 2.70/M. Budget audio-heavy workloads on the audio rate, not the headline one.Q · 03 Does the price rise with context length? +
Q · 04 Is there a faster tier? +
Q · 05 Are the USD prices what ByteDance charges? +
Q · 06 What model ID should I call? +
doubao-seed-2-1-lite-260915; the price table lists it as doubao-seed-2.1-lite. It supports deep thinking, which is on by default and can be switched off (Chat API thinking.type=disabled), plus tool calling, structured output and GUI tasks. Rate limits are listed as 30,000 RPM and 5,000,000 TPM.