Blog · 2026-11-05

GPT Image 2.6 vs Seedream 5.0 Pro: Format Range Against a Fixed Price

Model pages: GPT Image 2.6 Flare API · GPT Image 2.6 Sunburst API · Doubao Seedream 5.0 Pro API — pricing, specs and the playground

Pick Seedream 5.0 Pro when you want a fixed price per image, $0.03 at 1K and $0.06 at 2K, and multilingual text inside posters or covers; pick GPT Image 2.6 when you need animated GIF, SVG vectors, 4K output or up to 10 images in one call.

The fact that decides most projects is how each one bills. Seedream 5.0 Pro charges a flat amount per image, so a batch has a known cost before you send it. GPT Image 2.6 bills per token at the same rates as OpenAI's official API, so the cost follows quality, size, format, reference images and prompt length. In our 5 November 2026 tests every measured GPT Image 2.6 request came in below Seedream's flat price at the same resolution, from about $0.0077 for a 1K low image to $0.0516 for 2K medium. Those are measured examples, not a price list.

GPT Image 2.6 has two tiers on apimodels.app. Flare (gpt-image-2.6-flare) is the default tier for everyday volume; Sunburst (gpt-image-2.6-sunburst) spends more time per image on fine detail and keeps edits scoped to the instruction across many rounds. Both take the same parameters and bill from the same token price list. Seedream 5.0 Pro is ByteDance Doubao's flagship image model, with one endpoint for text-to-image, single-image edits and multi-image fusion.

GPT Image 2.6 vs Seedream 5.0 Pro at a glance

Pricing — GPT Image 2.6 bills image output at $30 per 1M tokens, image input at $8 (cached $2), text input at $5 (cached $1.25) and text output at $10, each request rounded up to $0.0001; SVG is a flat $0.035 per image. Seedream 5.0 Pro costs $0.03 per image at 1K and $0.06 at 2K.

Resolution and sizes — GPT Image 2.6 takes aspect_ratio with 1K, 2K or 4K, an exact WIDTHxHEIGHT (multiples of 16, longest edge up to 3840, ratio up to 3:1, 0.66 to 8.29 megapixels), a preset name or auto; in our tests a 16:9 request delivered 1360×768 at 1K and 2720×1536 at 2K. Seedream 5.0 Pro outputs 1K or 2K; its exact pixel dimensions are not documented.

Inputs and edits — GPT Image 2.6 accepts up to 16 reference images, prompts up to 32,000 characters, and either a markup image or a mask for local edits, not both. Seedream 5.0 Pro does text-to-image when you omit the image field, single-image editing, multi-image fusion with 2 to 10 references, and interactive edits driven by coordinates, box-select, arrows or hand-drawn marks.

Output types — GPT Image 2.6 returns png, jpeg or webp, transparent backgrounds, animated GIF (2 to 64 frames, 20 to 2000 ms per frame) and SVG vectors, with up to 10 images per call. Seedream 5.0 Pro returns one image per call at 1K or 2K, with no watermark.

Controls — GPT Image 2.6 has quality (low, medium, high or auto) and reasoning_effort (low, medium or high), which trades latency for detail. Quality defaults to medium on apimodels.app; the model's own default is high, which uses more tokens. Seedream 5.0 Pro reads intent from brief prompts, and no quality or reasoning setting is documented for it.

Speed — In our 5 November 2026 tests a GPT Image 2.6 1K low text-to-image took about 20 seconds (about 27 at high quality), a 1K low edit with one reference 22 to 58 seconds, and 2K and 4K images, including high quality, 13 to 25 seconds; Flare and Sunburst showed the same timings. No measured timing is documented for Seedream 5.0 Pro.

Limits — On GPT Image 2.6, SVG is text-to-image only with n set to 1, a GIF lays all frames on one sheet of at most 3840 px on the longest edge, and results are kept for 30 days. Seedream 5.0 Pro's anti-deepfake content review rejects image-to-image whose output still carries a real person's identity, so use synthetic or non-real-person references. Its result retention is not documented.

A flat price against a token meter

If a budget owner needs a number per image before the job runs, Seedream 5.0 Pro gives it: $0.03 at 1K, $0.06 at 2K. A 2K image costs twice a 1K one, and resolution is the only variable.

GPT Image 2.6 has no fixed per-image price. Quality, size, GIF output, every reference image and the prompt all change the token count. apimodels.app holds an upper bound when the request is accepted and releases the unused part when the image is ready. Completed png, jpeg and webp text-to-image and edit requests return a usage object in data.usage on the task query, and its cost.charged field is what was actually deducted. GIF, markup or mask edits and SVG return no usage object.

The measured examples point one way. 1K high at about $0.0162 and a 1K low edit with one reference at about $0.0157 both sit below Seedream's 1K price, and 2K low at $0.0283 sits below its 2K price. What is not measured matters as well: 4K, GIF and requests with many references have no published example, so price them with a small test batch before you commit a pipeline.

Like any generative model, GPT Image 2.6 does not succeed on every call. Moderation refusals and upstream errors happen, and those failed requests are never charged.

Output formats only one side has

This is where the two models are built for different jobs. Seedream 5.0 Pro produces one raster image per call at 1K or 2K. GPT Image 2.6 adds output types Seedream does not offer.

Animated GIF is set with output_format gif, plus frame_count (2 to 64, default 9) and frame_duration_ms (20 to 2000, default 200). Every frame lands on one sheet whose longest edge is at most 3840 px. With aspect_ratio plus 1K, 2K or 4K, or no size at all, apimodels.app shrinks the frames so the sheet fits; with an exact size you keep it small yourself, and the whole sheet must stay within 3840 px on the longest edge and 8,294,400 pixels in total.

SVG comes from a text prompt, one image per request, at a flat $0.035 whatever the quality. The file is a static vector with no scripts, external resources or embedded raster, so it suits icons, logos and flat illustrations rather than photographic scenes.

The rest is size and batch: 4K, exact pixel sizes up to 3840 on the long edge, and up to 10 images per call. If your product needs any of these, the choice is already made.

Pointing at the edit

Both models let you show where to change an image instead of only describing it, and they do it differently.

GPT Image 2.6 takes a markup image, a transparent PNG with circles, arrows or notes drawn over the first reference, or a mask in which white marks the area to change and black the area to keep. You cannot send both. We have not measured how strictly 2.6 respects masks; on the previous generation they behaved as hints rather than hard boundaries, so name the region in the prompt as well. Sunburst is the tier positioned for edits that stay scoped across many rounds, with subject and composition preserved.

Seedream 5.0 Pro accepts coordinates, box-select, arrows or hand-drawn marks on the image and edits only that region while keeping the rest of the composition, lighting and style intact. How the marks are passed in the request is not described in the model summary, so read the Seedream 5.0 Pro docs on apimodels.app before you build a UI around it.

For fusion work the ceilings differ: up to 16 reference images on GPT Image 2.6, up to 10 on Seedream 5.0 Pro. If your references are photos of real people and the output must keep their identity, Seedream's content review will reject the request.

Text inside the image

Seedream 5.0 Pro documents accurate in-image text across 14+ languages, including Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean, Russian and Arabic, and is positioned for posters, magazine covers and infographics. GPT Image 2.6 documents complex layouts on Flare and fine, dense type on Sunburst, but no list of supported languages. No side-by-side text benchmark is documented, so if non-Latin text is the point of the image, run the same prompt on both before you decide.

What a job costs

The GPT Image 2.6 figures below come from our measured requests on 5 November 2026 (16:9, one image). They are examples, not a fixed price; a longer prompt, more references or another quality setting moves them. Seedream 5.0 Pro figures are its listed per-image prices.

1. 100 social posts at 1K: Seedream 5.0 Pro $3; GPT Image 2.6 about $0.77 at low quality or $1.62 at high.
2. 100 hero images at 2K: Seedream 5.0 Pro $6; GPT Image 2.6 about $2.83 at low or $5.16 at medium.
3. 100 single-reference edits at 1K: Seedream 5.0 Pro $3; GPT Image 2.6 about $1.57 at low quality.
4. 1000 icons: GPT Image 2.6 as SVG costs $35 flat; Seedream 5.0 Pro cannot return vectors, and the same count of 1K raster images would be $30.

Which one to use

Choose Seedream 5.0 Pro when the price per image must be fixed in advance, when the image carries text in several languages, or when you fuse up to 10 references at 1K or 2K and never need 4K.

Choose GPT Image 2.6 Flare when you need GIF, SVG, 4K or several images per call, or when the measured per-token figures suit a high-volume pipeline and you can accept a range instead of a fixed number. Choose Sunburst over Flare when the image will be inspected up close or revised over many rounds; the per-token prices are the same, so that choice is about time per image, not budget.

Neither is the right pick if you want OpenAI's model family at a predictable per-image price: GPT Image 2.5 stays available on apimodels.app with fixed per-image prices. And if a Seedream 5.0 Pro pipeline already delivers 2K posters on budget, do not switch only for the measured savings; you would trade a known price for a variable one.

Calling both with one key

Both models sit behind the same apimodels.app key and OpenAI-compatible base URL, so moving between them means changing the model string and the optional fields.

# GPT Image 2.6 Flare: animated GIF at 16:9
curl https://api.apimodels.app/v1/images/generations \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "gpt-image-2.6-flare",
    "prompt": "A paper boat drifting across a pond, looping",
    "aspect_ratio": "16:9",
    "output_format": "gif",
    "frame_count": 9,
    "frame_duration_ms": 200
  }'

# GPT Image 2.6 Sunburst: high-detail still
curl https://api.apimodels.app/v1/images/generations \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "gpt-image-2.6-sunburst",
    "prompt": "Close-up of a glass perfume bottle with an embossed label",
    "aspect_ratio": "16:9",
    "quality": "high"
  }'

# Seedream 5.0 Pro: text-to-image (no image field)
curl https://api.apimodels.app/v1/images/generations \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "doubao-seedream-5-0-pro",
    "prompt": "Magazine cover with the headline Summer Market in English and Japanese"
  }'

# Each call returns a taskId; poll it with
# GET /v1/images/generations?task_id=... until the task completes.

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