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RETIRED MAY 11 2026256K CONTEXTTEXT + VISIONLOW COSTCONTEXT CACHINGCNY SOURCE

Doubao Seed 1.6 Lite API Pricing

Retired May 11, 2026: Volcano Ark's model-deprecation notice stopped new purchases of doubao-seed-1-6-lite-251015 on April 9, 2026 and shut the service down on May 11, 2026, naming Doubao Seed 2.0 Mini as the migration target. Doubao Seed 1.6 Lite is a lower-cost Seed 1.6 multimodal tier for support, extraction, and vision-assisted routing. Volcano Ark last listed the baseline at CNY0.3/M input, CNY2.4/M output, and CNY0.06/M cache-hit input; AI//COST converts that to $0.0446/M and $0.3571/M using CNY6.7209/USD. Checked by hand against volcengine.com.

Input - per 1M tokens
$0.0446/M
Original CNY0.3/M CNY source
Output - per 1M tokens
$0.357/M
Original CNY2.4/M CNY source
Cached input - per 1M tokens
$0.009/M
Original CNY0.06/M -81%
Effective - agentic blend
$0.0427/M
92/8 split - 82% cache
§ 01 / TERMINAL

Doubao Seed 1.6 Lite API cost calculator.

Live calculator pre-loaded with Doubao Seed 1.6 Lite rates converted from Volcano Ark's CNY pricing. Adjust spend, split, or cache assumptions to model CN-region text + vision 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 Lite cost on real workloads.

VISION

Image triage

$0.00041/image
6,000 in - 900 out~241,640 units/$100
CHATBOT

Support turn

$0.00026/turn
3,000 in - 600 out~383,900 units/$100
RAG

FAQ lookup

$0.00037/query
5,500 in - 800 out~269,960 units/$100
EXTRACTION

Form cleanup

$0.00011/record
1,600 in - 250 out~877,748 units/$100
§ 03 / TOKENIZER

Doubao Seed 1.6 Lite 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 488
Words 75
Tokens (estimated) 94 tokens
Cost as input · uncached $0.000004 USD
Cost as output · uncached $0.00003 USD
Cost as cached input $0.000001 USD
§ 04 / SHELF

Doubao Seed 1.6 Lite vs similar models.

All models →
Model Input /M Output /M Effective blended Context Best for
Doubao Seed 2.0 Pro $0.476 cache $0.0952 $2.38 $0.341 deprecated · +8.0× 256K Complex agent workflows
Doubao Seed 2.0 Code $0.476 cache $0.0952 $2.38 $0.341 deprecated · +8.0× 256K Coding agents and IDE workflows
Doubao Seed 2.0 Lite $0.0893 cache $0.0179 $0.536 $0.0711 +66% 256K Balanced multimodal routing
Doubao Seed 2.0 Mini $0.0298 cache $0.006 $0.298 $0.0333 −22% 256K Fast low-latency routing
Doubao Seed 1.8 $0.119 cache $0.0238 $1.19 $0.133 retired 256K Thinking plus vision workloads
Doubao Seed 1.6 $0.119 cache $0.0238 $1.19 $0.133 retired 256K General thinking and multimodal chat
Doubao Seed 1.6 Lite Current $0.0446 cache $0.009 $0.357 $0.0427 agentic 92/8 256K Budget multimodal support
Doubao Seed 1.6 Flash $0.0223 cache $0.0045 $0.223 $0.0249 retired 256K High-volume low-cost chat
Doubao 1.5 Pro 32K $0.119 cache $0.0238 $0.298 $0.0615 retired 32K Legacy 32K deployments

Doubao Seed 1.6 Lite 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 Lite still sold? +
No. Volcano Ark's model-deprecation notice stopped new purchases of doubao-seed-1-6-lite-251015 on April 9, 2026 and shut it down on May 11, 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 Lite priced at? +
Doubao Seed 1.6 Lite's baseline tier is listed at CNY0.3/M input, CNY2.4/M output, and CNY0.06/M cache-hit input. AI//COST stores that as $0.0446/M, $0.3571/M, and $0.009/M using CNY6.7209/USD.
Q · 03 Does the price change for longer prompts? +
Tiered by input length and short-vs-long output length; this page uses the <=32K input plus long-output baseline tier. Short-output tier is CNY0.6/M output; this page shows the long-output baseline. The calculator on this page uses the listed baseline so cross-model comparisons stay consistent.
Q · 04 How does context caching work? +
The pricing table lists a cache-hit input rate of CNY0.06/M, converted here to $0.009/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 tax, enterprise contract terms, or deployment-region 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 Lite's effective blended cost is $0.04/M.
Y
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.