Seed 1.6 Flash is an ultra-fast multimodal deep thinking model by ByteDance Seed, supporting both text and visual understanding. It features a 256k context window and can generate outputs of up to 16k tokens.
Model details →ByteDance Seed: Seed 1.6 Flash vs StepFun: Step 3.5 Flash (free)
ByteDance Seed: Seed 1.6 Flash and StepFun: Step 3.5 Flash (free) are evenly matched on 6 axes — pick the one whose provider, latency, or licensing fits your stack.
Step 3.5 Flash is StepFun's most capable open-source foundation model. Built on a sparse Mixture of Experts (MoE) architecture, it selectively activates only 11B of its 196B parameters per token. It is a reasoning model that is incredibly s…
Model details →Side-by-side comparison
| Capability | ByteDance Seed: Seed 1.6 Flash | StepFun: Step 3.5 Flash (free) | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Context window Maximum number of input tokens the model can attend to in a single request. | 262K | 256K | 🏆 ByteDance Seed: Seed 1.6 Flash |
| Input price (per 1M) Cost per million input tokens billed by the provider. | $0.07 | $0.00 | 🏆 StepFun: Step 3.5 Flash (free) |
| Output price (per 1M) Cost per million output tokens billed by the provider. | $0.30 | $0.00 | 🏆 StepFun: Step 3.5 Flash (free) |
| Tool / function calling First-class support for emitting structured tool calls. | Yes | Yes | Tie |
| Vision input Accepts image inputs alongside text. | Yes | — | 🏆 ByteDance Seed: Seed 1.6 Flash |
| Reasoning mode Internal chain-of-thought / extended-thinking support. | Yes | Yes | Tie |
Frequently asked questions
Is ByteDance Seed: Seed 1.6 Flash better than StepFun: Step 3.5 Flash (free)?
ByteDance Seed: Seed 1.6 Flash and StepFun: Step 3.5 Flash (free) are evenly matched on 6 axes — pick the one whose provider, latency, or licensing fits your stack.
What's the price difference between ByteDance Seed: Seed 1.6 Flash and StepFun: Step 3.5 Flash (free)?
Input: $0.07 vs $0.00 per 1M tokens. Output: $0.30 vs $0.00 per 1M tokens.
What context windows do ByteDance Seed: Seed 1.6 Flash and StepFun: Step 3.5 Flash (free) support?
ByteDance Seed: Seed 1.6 Flash supports up to 262K tokens. StepFun: Step 3.5 Flash (free) supports up to 256K tokens.
Do both ByteDance Seed: Seed 1.6 Flash and StepFun: Step 3.5 Flash (free) support tool calling?
ByteDance Seed: Seed 1.6 Flash: yes. StepFun: Step 3.5 Flash (free): yes.