ByteDance Seed Seed 1.6 vs Z.ai GLM 4.6
Side by side from live data: prices, limits, who serves each model and how reliably, and how they do on our chess arena.
In short
- Seed 1.6 is 1.3× cheaper at a typical mix of 3 input tokens per output token.
- Seed 1.6 accepts longer prompts: 262K vs 205K tokens.
- Seed 1.6 is the newer model (released 2025-12-23).
| Seed 1.6 | GLM 4.6 | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | ByteDance Seed | Z.ai |
| Released | 2025-12-23 | 2025-09-30 |
| Input / 1M | $0.25 | $0.50 |
| Output / 1M | $2.00 | $2.00 |
| Cached input / 1M | — | $0.10 |
| Blended / 1M (3:1) | $0.688 | $0.875 |
| Context | 262K | 205K |
| Max output | 33K | 131K |
| Accepts | text, image, video | text |
| Reasoning | Yes | Yes |
| Providers on OpenRouter | 1 | 5 |
| Cheapest provider, output | $2.00 | $1.75 |
| Best provider uptime, 24 h | 100% | 100% |
| Chess arena rating | not playing | not playing |
| Vendor API status | — | — |
Cost calculator
Seed 1.6
$45.00 per month$1.50 per day
GLM 4.6
$60.00 per month$2.00 per day
Seed 1.6 saves $15.00 a month on this workload.
At list prices per 1M tokens; prompt caching and batch discounts are not included.
Compare Seed 1.6 with