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RETIRED SEP 21 2026ULTRA LOW COST256K CONTEXTTEXT + VISIONCONTEXT CACHINGCNY SOURCE

Doubao Seed 1.6 Flash API Pricing

Retired September 21, 2026: Volcano Ark's model-deprecation notice stopped new purchases of doubao-seed-1-6-flash-250615 and doubao-seed-1-6-flash-250828 on July 10, 2026 and shut the service down on September 21, 2026, naming Doubao Seed 2.0 Mini as the migration target. 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

Doubao Seed 1.6 Flash API cost calculator.

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
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Words equivalent (English)
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Effective rate
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Open full calculator (all models · share URL · CSV) →
§ 02 / SCENARIOS

Doubao Seed 1.6 Flash cost on real workloads.

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

Doubao Seed 1.6 Flash token counter and 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

Doubao Seed 1.6 Flash vs similar models.

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 deprecated · +14× 256K Complex agent workflows
Doubao Seed 2.0 Code $0.476 cache $0.0952 $2.38 $0.341 deprecated · +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-6.1 Terra $1.00 cache $0.05 $5.00 $0.645 +26× 1.05M OpenAI's fast, efficient GPT-6 tier
Kimi K2.5 $0.60 cache $0.10 $3.00 $0.415 retired 262K Kimi multimodal agents

Doubao Seed 1.6 Flash API pricing FAQ.

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? +
No. Volcano Ark's model-deprecation notice stopped new purchases of doubao-seed-1-6-flash-250615 and doubao-seed-1-6-flash-250828 on July 10, 2026 and shut it down on September 21, 2026; remaining endpoints were switched to the migration target, Doubao Seed 2.0 Mini, or closed. This page keeps the last price Volcano Ark published for reference.
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.
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Reviewed by Yaroslav Vikhariev Founder · AI//COST · Prices checked by hand against volcengine.com · Last verified Oct 29, 2026
Methodology Report a correction More by Y.V.