Head-to-head comparison
Seed 1.6 (ByteDance Seed) and Seed 2.1 Turbo (ByteDance Seed) compared on the ModelCap Index, API price, context window, provider availability, weight access and every public benchmark board they share. Figures are the same ones shown on the live rankings; nothing here is a hidden score.
Snapshot as of 17 August 2026
As of 17 August 2026, Seed 1.6 holds the stronger ModelCap Index position (#122 vs #123); and Seed 1.6 is 1.3× cheaper per output token ($2.00/1M vs $2.50/1M).
Evidence: global corpus prior · leave-one-anchor-out calibrated · global corpus prior · leave-one-anchor-out calibrated. Prices are the lowest listed API offer per million tokens observed on the OpenRouter catalogue.
Neither model has a published result on a public benchmark board ModelCap tracks yet.
Scores are the sources' own published figures for each model's best evaluated configuration; ModelCap never re-runs a benchmark.
Want a different pairing? Open the interactive comparison tool to swap either model for any current ranked language model.
Seed 1.6 ranks higher on the ModelCap Index as of 17 August 2026: #122 against #123. That is a capability ranking built from public benchmark evidence with published uncertainty; whether it is "better" for you also depends on price, context and where you can run it.
Seed 1.6 is cheaper on output tokens: $2.00/1M against $2.50/1M. Input tokens are $0.25/1M for Seed 1.6 and $0.50/1M for Seed 2.1 Turbo. Prices are the lowest listed API offer ModelCap observed, in USD per million tokens.
Both publish a 262K-token context window.
The two models do not share a coding benchmark board on ModelCap yet, so no head-to-head coding score is published; the ModelCap Index position is the closest overall signal.
Seed 1.6: API only. Seed 2.1 Turbo: API only. Open weights mean the checkpoint can be downloaded and self-hosted under its licence; API-only models are available solely through hosted endpoints.
ModelCap currently lists 1 API provider for Seed 1.6 and 1 for Seed 2.1 Turbo, from the OpenRouter catalogue snapshot the site serves; each model page lists the providers and their prices.
Every figure comes from the sealed ModelCap dataset published 17 August 2026; the page re-renders within a minute of each data refresh, and the ModelCap Index positions are the same ones shown on the live rankings.