Superseded - verified 2026-10-01
Seedream 4.0 (2025) was followed by Seedream 4.5 (Dec 2025), Seedream 5.0 Lite (Feb 2026) and Seedream 5.0 Pro (mid-2026). The current flagship is 5.0 Pro. This note keeps the 4.0 details and tracks the series.
Seedream (ByteDance)
by bytedance (Seed team)
ByteDance’s image generation and editing model family, sold through BytePlus ModelArk and consumer apps (Dola / Doubao / Dreamina).
Series status (2026-10-01)
| Version | Date | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Seedream 4.0 | 2025 | unified generation + editing; per ByteDance Seed’s Seedream 4.0 page (fetched 2026-10-02): up to 4K output, multiple reference images, several outputs in one go (the page gives no release date and no reference-image limit) |
| Seedream 4.5 | late 2025 (per the earlier audit, Dec 2025) | successor to 4.0; details not independently verified here |
| Seedream 5.0 Lite | Feb 2026 (per the earlier audit) | lighter successor; details not independently verified here |
| Seedream 5.0 Pro | mid-2026 (July to August; the Seed page and The Rundown give no date, so no day is stated here) | ByteDance Seed page: multimodal model with reasoning, high-density text-rich infographics, sketch/annotation-guided editing with layer separation, photographic lighting and skin realism, native prompting in about a dozen languages; via BytePlus playground, API and the Dola app. The Seed page itself gives no date. |
Pricing (attributed; not from BytePlus directly)
- Seedream 5.0 Pro: 1K or 2K output on BytePlus pay-as-you-go billing (per The Rundown, reviewed 2026-08-29); the first reference image is free. Also listed on OpenRouter as
bytedance-seed/seedream-5-0-pro. Current prices: see BytePlus ModelArk.
Use
Branding, packaging, posters and infographics, product shots, restoration and colourisation, multi-image fusion.
Related
seedance, midjourney, flux-dot-1, nano-banana, comfyui, kie-dot-ai
Sources (accessed 2026-10-01 and 2026-10-02)
- https://www.therundown.ai/tools/seedream-5-0-pro
- https://seed.bytedance.com/en/seedream5_0_pro
- https://docs.byteplus.com/en/docs/ModelArk/1330310 and /1541523 (navigation only)
- https://openrouter.ai/bytedance-seed/seedream-5-0-pro (listing; no date shown)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seedream (no version timeline)
- https://seed.bytedance.com/en/seedream4_0 (fetched 2026-10-02)