Doubao API Pricing (November 2026)
Doubao API prices run from $0.0298 to $4.46 per million tokens across 8 current models. The cheapest is Doubao Seed 2.0 Mini at $0.0298 input and $0.298 output per million tokens. The flagship, Doubao Seed 2.1 Pro, costs $0.893 input and $4.46 output per million tokens. Every rate below was read on ByteDance (Doubao)'s own pricing page, on the date shown in its row.
| Model | Input /M | Cache read /M | Output /M | Batch in /M | Batch out /M | Context | Status | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Doubao Seed 2.1 Pro | $0.893 | $0.178−80% | $4.46 | — | — | 1M | Flagship | 2026-10-29 |
Doubao Seed 2.1 Turbo doubao-seed-2.1-turbo | $0.446 | $0.0893−80% | $2.23 | — | — | 256K | Current | 2026-10-29 |
Doubao Seed 2.1 Lite doubao-seed-2-1-lite-260915 | $0.119 | $0.0238−80% | $0.402 | — | — | 1M | Current | 2026-10-29 |
| Doubao Seed 2.0 Lite | $0.0893 | $0.0179−80% | $0.536 | — | — | 256K | Current | 2026-10-29 |
| Doubao Seed 2.0 Mini | $0.0298 | $0.006−80% | $0.298 | — | — | 256K | Current | 2026-10-29 |
Doubao Seed Evolving doubao-seed-evolving | $0.893 | $0.178−80% | $4.46 | — | — | 1M | Current | 2026-10-29 |
| Doubao Seed Translation | $0.178 | — | $0.536 | — | — | documented elsewhere | Current | 2026-10-29 |
| Doubao Seed Character | $0.119 | $0.0238−80% | $0.298 | — | — | 128K | Current | 2026-10-29 |
| Doubao Seed 2.0 Pro | $0.476 | $0.0952−80% | $2.38 | — | — | 256K | Deprecated · retires Nov 24, 2026 · → Doubao Seed 2.1 Lite | 2026-10-29 |
| Doubao Seed 2.0 Code | $0.476 | $0.0952−80% | $2.38 | — | — | 256K | Deprecated · retires Nov 24, 2026 · → Doubao Seed Evolving | 2026-10-29 |
US dollars per million tokens, list rates on ByteDance (Doubao)'s own API. Cache read is the price of a cached input token. Batch is the asynchronous API, where the vendor offers one. The date in each row is when we last read it on the vendor's pricing page; it links to that page.
Doubao API monthly cost estimates
What light use (10M input + 2M output tokens a month), medium use (100M input + 20M output tokens a month), heavy use (1B input + 200M output tokens a month) costs on each current model, at list price with no caching and no batch discount.
| Model | Input / output per 1M | Light · 10M + 2M | Medium · 100M + 20M | Heavy · 1B + 200M |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Doubao Seed 2.0 Mini | $0.0298 / $0.298 | $0.893 | $8.93 | $89.32 |
| Doubao Seed 2.0 Lite | $0.0893 / $0.536 | $1.96 | $19.64 | $196 |
| Doubao Seed Character | $0.119 / $0.298 | $1.79 | $17.85 | $179 |
| Doubao Seed 2.1 Lite | $0.119 / $0.402 | $1.99 | $19.93 | $199 |
| Doubao Seed Translation | $0.178 / $0.536 | $2.86 | $28.56 | $286 |
| Doubao Seed 2.1 Turbo | $0.446 / $2.23 | $8.93 | $89.28 | $893 |
| Doubao Seed 2.1 Pro, Evolving | $0.893 / $4.46 | $17.85 | $179 | $1,785 |
Prompt caching and the Batch API cut these figures; the next sections show by how much. For your own token counts, use the LLM API cost calculator.
Doubao API price history
Doubao API price changes and releases
Releases and corporate moves from ByteDance's AI line. Sourced from Volcano Engine, ByteDance press, and Wikipedia — verified at publication.
Retired Doubao models and their replacements
10 Doubao models no longer answer on ByteDance (Doubao)'s API. The price is the last one ByteDance (Doubao) listed; the replacement is the current end of the vendor's own succession chain.
| Model | Status | Last price in / out per 1M | Use instead |
|---|---|---|---|
| Doubao Pro 32K (legacy) | Retired Nov 27, 2025 | $0.286 / $0.298 | Doubao Seed 2.0 Lite |
| Doubao Seed 1.8 | Retired Sep 21, 2026 | $0.119 / $1.19 | Doubao Seed 2.0 Lite |
| Doubao Seed 1.6 | Retired Sep 21, 2026 | $0.119 / $1.19 | Doubao Seed 2.0 Lite |
| Doubao Seed 1.6 Vision | Retired Sep 21, 2026 | $0.119 / $1.19 | Doubao Seed 2.0 Lite |
| Doubao Seed 1.6 Lite | Retired May 11, 2026 | $0.0446 / $0.357 | Doubao Seed 2.0 Mini |
| Doubao Seed 1.6 Flash | Retired Sep 21, 2026 | $0.0223 / $0.223 | Doubao Seed 2.0 Mini |
| Doubao 1.5 Lite 32K | Retired Sep 21, 2026 | $0.0446 / $0.0893 | Doubao Seed 2.0 Mini |
| Doubao 1.5 Vision Pro | Retired Sep 21, 2026 | $0.446 / $1.34 | Doubao Seed 2.0 Lite |
| Doubao 1.5 Pro 32K | Retired Sep 21, 2026 | $0.119 / $0.298 | Doubao Seed 2.0 Lite |
| Doubao Seed Code | Retired Sep 21, 2026 | $0.178 / $1.19 | Doubao Seed Evolving |
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.
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.
Doubao API pricing FAQ
Practical questions about Doubao pricing, deployment, and data residency.
Q · 01 Which Doubao model should I start with?
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$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?
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≤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?
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Q · 04 Are Doubao models open-weight?
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Q · 05 How cheap is Doubao versus GPT-5 or Gemini?
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$0.893/M input and $4.46/M output, and Seed 2.0 Mini goes down to $0.0298/M input - well below most US frontier models per token. The catch is China-hosted infrastructure and closed weights, which matter for many compliance teams; compare current rates on the full leaderboard. Q · 06 What makes ByteDance different from other Chinese labs?
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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.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.