Seedance 2.0 and 2.5 API Pricing: Every Route, Compared
13 min read • July 21, 2026 (October 5, 2026)
Table of contents
- Introduction
- Official Seedance 2.0 and 2.5 API pricing
- Four ways to run Seedance 2.0 through useapi.net
- Seedance 2.5 pricing
- The real-faces gap
- Seedance API pricing across resellers
- How to call the Seedance API
- Which route should you use for Seedance 2.0 or 2.5?
- Examples
- FAQ
Introduction
A 5-second 1080p Seedance 2.0 clip costs $1.87 on ByteDance’s official API, and the lowest verified per-clip rate is $1.44 through useapi.net’s PixVerse route on a yearly plan ($1.80 monthly), before the flat $15/month useapi.net subscription, with Segmind at $1.70 the only reseller under official. Seedance 2.5 is a different story. At $2.84 per 1080p clip, ByteDance’s own rate beats every reseller and every monthly plan we found, and only a yearly PixVerse plan ($2.72) edges under it. On October 5, 2026 we re-read the prices of ByteDance’s two official channels and a dozen third-party vendors from their live pages, recomputed our own four routes from current credit rates, and normalized everything to one unit: the dollar cost of a 5-second, text-to-video clip with no video input.
The picture has shifted since we first published this in July. PixVerse repriced Seedance and ended its Pro and Premium discount, lifting its route from $1.20 to $1.80 a clip on a monthly plan, ByteDance launched Seedance 2.5 at a roughly 50% higher token rate than 2.0, and most resellers followed with 2.5 tiers of their own. This revision follows the data, including where it no longer favors us.
It is worth being upfront about where we sit. useapi.net is a bring-your-own-account layer, not an official ByteDance reseller. We drive your own PixVerse, Runway, Dreamina, or MiniMax account over a single REST API, so you spend those platforms’ consumer credits instead of the metered developer-API rate. Every figure below carries its date and source, and prices in this market move monthly, so re-check before committing spend.
Official Seedance 2.0 and 2.5 API pricing
ByteDance sells Seedance through two official channels — BytePlus ModelArk internationally and Volcano Engine in China. Both bill per million tokens, where a clip’s token count is width × height × 24fps × seconds ÷ 1024. A 5-second 1080p clip is 243,000 tokens. Seedance 2.0 charges $7.7 per million at 1080p, so that clip is $1.87. Seedance 2.5 charges $11.7 per million at 1080p, so the same clip is $2.84. Normalized, per the BytePlus pricing page (read October 5, 2026):
| Resolution | Seedance 2.0, 5s | Seedance 2.0, 10s | Seedance 2.5, 5s | Seedance 2.5, 10s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 480p | $0.35 | $0.70 | $0.51 | $1.03 |
| 720p | $0.76 | $1.51 | $1.16 | $2.31 |
| 1080p | $1.87 | $3.74 | $2.84 | $5.69 |
| 4K | $3.89 | $7.78 | — | — |
Seedance 2.5 tops out at 1080p but runs up to 30 seconds per clip against 2.0’s 15, and takes up to 50 references (30 images, 10 videos, 10 audio clips). A full 30-second 1080p 2.5 clip is about $17. Seedance 2.0 Fast and Mini remain cheaper and still cap at 720p — a 720p 5-second clip lists at $0.60 on Fast and $0.38 on Mini, before a time-limited discount for enterprise accounts that runs to October 7, 2026. Audio is included at no extra cost. Volcano prices 2.5 at ¥77 per million tokens at 1080p, but it requires Chinese real-name and face verification, so it is effectively China-only.
The sticker price is not the whole cost. Activating Seedance on BytePlus takes about $30 up front — a prepaid resource pack (the smallest are $30.10 for 2.0 and $32 for 2.5, non-refundable, expiring after 90 days) or the $30 balance top-up BytePlus recommends. Individual accounts are throttled to 3 concurrent tasks (180 requests/minute), and 4K is capped at a single concurrent task for everyone. None of that makes the official API a bad deal. It sets the bar every alternative should be measured against.
Four ways to run Seedance 2.0 through useapi.net
One useapi.net token drives Seedance 2.0 on four platforms. All four sit under the same flat $15/month that covers every service we support, on top of the underlying account plan. Costs below are the generation cost per 5-second 1080p clip, derived from the credit rates and plan prices in our docs.
| Route | Seedance models | 5s 1080p, monthly plan | 5s 1080p, yearly plan | Stands out for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PixVerse | 2.5, 2.0, Fast, Mini | $1.80 | $1.44 | cheapest 1080p 2.0 and 4K, real human faces |
| Dreamina | 2.5, 2.0, Fast, Mini, 1.5 Pro, 1.0 family | — | ~$1.66 (Canada accounts) | widest model range, Seedance 2.5 with real faces |
| MiniMax | 2.0, Fast, Mini | $2.00 | $1.70 | 4K plus a rich reference-image workflow |
| Runway | 2.5, 2.0, Fast, Mini | $2.00 | $1.60 | real faces, lighter moderation than Dreamina |
The PixVerse route bills Seedance 2.0 at 90 credits a second at 1080p, so a 5-second clip is 450 credits. On the $60/month Premium plan ($0.004 a credit) that is $1.80, and on Premium billed yearly ($0.0032 a credit) it is $1.44. Premium beats the pricier Ultra plan here too, because Ultra’s 40% third-party discount is outweighed by its worse per-credit rate ($2.15 a clip). PixVerse also reaches 2160p (4K) on Seedance 2.0, at $4.00 for 5 seconds, or $3.20 billed yearly — the cheapest 4K we found. In July this route cost $1.20 a clip — PixVerse has since repriced the Seedance family and ended the Pro and Premium discount it carried, which is the single biggest change in this update (PixVerse cost tables).
The Dreamina route works out to $1.66 for a 5-second 1080p clip — 57 credits a second on a Canada-region Advanced plan billed yearly. Its 4K is about $3.67, below the official $3.89. The catch is that 1080p and 4K are locked to Canada accounts, and Dreamina’s 2.0 family rejects real human faces. Treat the Dreamina figures as approximate — the credit rates were read from Dreamina’s price metadata (Canada on September 7, US on August 14), but the plan price comes from an August snapshot, and Dreamina has since renamed its plans, so confirm the current Canada plan price before you count on it (Dreamina cost calculator).
The MiniMax route bills Seedance 2.0 at 50 credits a second at 1080p, unchanged since July, but MiniMax has repriced its plans. The $89 Master plan (10,500 credits) puts a clip at $2.12, the $216 Max plan (27,000 credits) at $2.00, and Master billed yearly at $1.70, with 4K at $3.39 on that yearly plan. The Runway route now has a published rate too. Its Seedance 2.0 costs 40 credits a second at 1080p, which is $2.00 a clip on Runway’s $95 Max plan and $1.60 billed yearly (Runway cost calculator). Runway’s legacy exploreMode still runs Seedance at 480p and 720p without spending credits on older Unlimited accounts that already have Explore mode enabled, but Runway no longer enables it on new accounts, and it is slow — one clip at a time, roughly 10 to 15 minutes each. Treat it as a perk if you already have it, not a reason to pick Runway.
These are marginal costs per clip, and the cheapest of them assume a yearly commitment you actually use. Premium billed yearly is $576 up front for 15,000 credits a month, about 33 1080p clips, and the $15/month useapi.net subscription comes on top, so a single-model user at full use lands close to the official rate. The saving grows when the same account and token also drive other models and services.
The trade-offs are worth naming. Our routes automate consumer accounts, so concurrency is account-bound (typically 5–10 parallel jobs, versus the official API’s per-key limits), and the platforms reprice without notice, as PixVerse just did. What you get in return is a per-clip cost below official on 2.0 on yearly plans (and on PixVerse monthly), no prepaid pack, and one token across all four platforms.
Seedance 2.5 pricing
Seedance 2.5 runs on three of our four routes — PixVerse, Dreamina, and Runway. MiniMax does not carry it. Here is what a 5-second, no-video-input clip costs on each, next to ByteDance’s own rate:
| Route | 480p | 720p | 1080p | Max length |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Official BytePlus | $0.51 | $1.16 | $2.84 | 30s |
| Dreamina (CA / US, yearly plan) | $0.64 / $0.69 | $1.40 / $1.50 | $3.41 (CA only) | 30s, or 180s in long video mode |
| PixVerse (Premium monthly / yearly) | $0.70 / $0.56 | $1.50 / $1.20 | $3.40 / $2.72 | 30s |
| Runway (Max monthly / yearly) | $1.00 / $0.80 | $1.50 / $1.20 | — | 30s |
On price alone, the official API wins Seedance 2.5 at 480p and 720p, and at 1080p only PixVerse Premium billed yearly ($2.72) comes in under it. ByteDance priced 2.5 about 50% above 2.0 per token, and the consumer platforms priced it higher still — PixVerse charges 170 credits a second at 1080p, nearly double its 2.0 rate. PixVerse ran a 30% launch discount on 2.5 at 1080p that brought a clip to $2.38, but its own pricing data no longer carried that promotion by September 20, so the table shows the list rate. PixVerse’s subscribe page now shows Seedance discounts on its Ultra plan only.
Where our routes still earn their place on 2.5 is everything around the price. The official API takes about $30 up front before the first clip, and the Seedance 2.5 guide states it does not accept reference images or videos containing real human faces. The Dreamina route accepts real faces on 2.5 directly, and adds a long video mode that runs from 31 to 180 seconds in one job, plus video edit. The Runway route also takes real faces on Seedance and, on legacy Explore-mode accounts, runs 2.5 up to 15 seconds without credits.
The real-faces gap
Both Seedance 2.0 and 2.5 reject reference images and videos that contain real human faces on the official API, unless the face comes from the model’s own recent output, a preset digital character, or a verified real-person asset. Doing real-person reference work at scale means ByteDance’s enterprise “Advanced Creation Rights” — $14,000 a year or $1,400 a month for a million assets, $42,000 a year for five million, corporate verification required.
Our routes soften this in four places. The PixVerse route accepts real human faces on Seedance 2.0, the Runway route documents real-face support on Seedance and generally lighter moderation than Dreamina, the MiniMax route accepts real faces in image references (video references with recognizable faces are still moderated), and the Dreamina route accepts photographic portraits on Seedance 2.5, though not on its 2.0 family. For advertising, UGC, and creator workflows that revolve around a real person, that difference matters more than a few cents per clip — and it does not require an enterprise contract.
Seedance API pricing across resellers
Most third-party Seedance vendors resell ByteDance’s own API with a margin on top. Here is Seedance 2.0 at 5 seconds and 1080p, every third-party price read from the vendor’s live page on October 5, 2026:
| Vendor | 5s 1080p | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| useapi.net (PixVerse route) | $1.44–1.80 | consumer-account credits, yearly or monthly Premium, + $15/month useapi.net |
| useapi.net (Runway route) | $1.60–2.00 | Max plan, yearly or monthly, + $15/month useapi.net |
| useapi.net (Dreamina route) | ~$1.66 | Canada accounts, yearly plan, August plan snapshot, + $15/month useapi.net |
| useapi.net (MiniMax route) | $1.70–2.12 | Master yearly to Master monthly ($2.00 on Max monthly), + $15/month useapi.net |
| Segmind | $1.70 | the only reseller below official — bills 1080p at the 720p token rate |
| Official BytePlus | $1.87 | the yardstick, matched exactly by OpenRouter’s passthrough |
| RunComfy | $2.00 | $0.40 per second, down from $0.55 in July |
| EachLabs | $2.22 | about $0.444 per second, down from $0.60 |
| Replicate | $2.25 | “Official” model badge, $0.45 per output second |
| Poyo.ai | $2.25 | $0.45 per second |
| EvoLink | $2.49 | $0.497 per second |
| PiAPI | $2.50 | $0.50 per second |
| Kie.ai | $2.55 | added 1080p since July, prices still marked beta |
| Atlas Cloud | $2.74 | $2.20 with a 20% promotion, no longer a flat rate across resolutions |
| WaveSpeedAI | $3.00 | $0.60 per second |
| fal.ai | $3.41 | the market’s default, and still the most expensive |
That last row is worth sitting with. fal.ai is where a lot of developers reach for Seedance first, and at $0.682 a second it charges about 82% more than ByteDance’s own rate for the same model. It does the same on 2.5, where its 720p clip is $2.31 against the official $1.16 and its 1080p clip is about $5.69 against $2.84.
Seedance 2.5 has its own reseller field. Replicate and OpenRouter pass the official rate through exactly ($1.16 for 720p, $0.51 for 480p) but stop at 720p. Among vendors selling 2.5 at 1080p, Poyo ($2.85) and Segmind ($2.94) sit within a few percent of official, EachLabs ($3.25) runs about 14% above, and EvoLink ($3.70), RunComfy ($3.82), Kie.ai ($3.95), PiAPI ($4.00), and WaveSpeedAI ($4.50) run 30–60% above it.
You will also see sticker prices that look far lower than official. Every one we chased down decomposed into something other than a cheaper standard clip. A few patterns to watch for when a price looks too good:
- “Turbo” or “accelerated” variants that are not the standard model — one vendor lists a 1080p 5-second clip at $0.80 under a turbo model name ByteDance does not publish, while its standard Seedance 2.0 costs $3.00 on the same site.
- Prices quoted at 720p when you wanted 1080p — several “cheapest Seedance” pages, and the Seedance 2.5 listings on Replicate and OpenRouter, have no 1080p tier at all.
- 2.0 prices on a page about 2.5 — Seedance 2.5 costs about half again as much per token, so a “Seedance” price without a version number is not comparable.
- Credits with no published dollar value — if a page prices generations in credits but never says what a credit costs, you cannot compare it, and that is usually the point.
None of this means those vendors are dishonest — it means version, resolution, and fine print have to match before a comparison means anything.
How to call the Seedance API
Every price above is one REST call away. Generate a 1080p Seedance 2.0 clip through the PixVerse route:
curl --location 'https://api.useapi.net/v2/pixverse/videos/create' \
--header 'Authorization: Bearer user:12345-…' \
--form 'model="seedance-2.0"' \
--form 'prompt="A lone lighthouse on a storm-battered cliff at dusk, waves exploding against the rocks, beam sweeping through the rain, cinematic wide shot."' \
--form 'quality="1080p"' \
--form 'duration="5"' \
--form 'aspect_ratio="16:9"'
The same call runs Seedance 2.5 by changing model to seedance-2.5, with duration anywhere from 4 to 30. Or, if your Runway account already has Explore mode enabled — Runway no longer offers it on new accounts — the same shape runs without credits at 720p by adding exploreMode, one slow clip at a time:
curl --location 'https://api.useapi.net/v1/runwayml/videos/create' \
--header 'Authorization: Bearer user:12345-…' \
--form 'model="seedance-2"' \
--form 'text_prompt="A lone lighthouse on a storm-battered cliff at dusk, waves exploding against the rocks, beam sweeping through the rain, cinematic wide shot."' \
--form 'resolution="720p"' \
--form 'duration="5"' \
--form 'exploreMode="true"'
Both return a job id to poll (or a replyUrl webhook when the clip is ready). The full parameter set — reference images, first and last frames, aspect ratios, and audio — lives on each endpoint page linked in the tables above.
Which route should you use for Seedance 2.0 or 2.5?
- Cheapest 1080p Seedance 2.0 — the PixVerse route on a yearly plan. Without a yearly commitment, Segmind’s pay-as-you-go rate is 10 cents a clip under PixVerse monthly.
- Cheapest 4K — the PixVerse route at $3.20 on a yearly plan, then MiniMax at $3.39 yearly and Dreamina at about $3.67, all below the official $3.89.
- Cheapest Seedance 2.5 without a yearly plan, with no faces involved — ByteDance’s official API, if the roughly $30 up-front purchase and per-key limits suit you.
- Seedance 2.5 with real human faces, or clips longer than 30 seconds — the Dreamina route.
- Real human faces on Seedance 2.0 — the PixVerse, MiniMax, or Runway route.
- Seedance 1.5 Pro or 1.0 — the Dreamina route, the only one carrying the 1.x family. BytePlus has retired 1.5 Pro on its own API.
Examples
Real Seedance 2.0 output from each route, reused from our blog posts — the same model, run on different platforms. Three of these lean on real human faces, the workflow the official API gates behind an enterprise contract.
PixVerse · Seedance 2.0 (Standard), 1080p — a real face from a photo dropped into reference footage and given speech from a reference audio clip, all in one omni request. From PixVerse Seedance 2.0: Mini vs Fast vs Standard.
MiniMax · Seedance 2.0 (Standard), 1080p — the same real-face omni workflow on the MiniMax route. From MiniMax Seedance 2.0: Standard vs Fast vs Mini.
Runway · Seedance 2.0, 15 seconds, 9:16 — a real face animated on the Runway route, which applies lighter moderation on real people. From Seedance 2.0: Using Real Faces.
Dreamina · Seedance 2.0, text-to-video with lip-sync from a prompt alone. From Dreamina: Seedance 2.0 Video Generation.
FAQ
Is useapi.net an official Seedance API?
No. useapi.net is a REST layer that automates your own PixVerse, Runway, Dreamina, or MiniMax account, each of which runs Seedance. You spend those platforms’ consumer credits rather than ByteDance’s metered developer-API rate.
How much does Seedance 2.0 cost per video?
On ByteDance’s official API a 5-second clip is $0.35 at 480p, $0.76 at 720p, $1.87 at 1080p, and $3.89 at 4K, as of October 5, 2026. See the official price table.
How much does Seedance 2.5 cost?
On the official API a 5-second clip is $0.51 at 480p, $1.16 at 720p, and $2.84 at 1080p, about 50% more than Seedance 2.0. It has no 4K tier but runs up to 30 seconds, so a 30-second 1080p clip is about $17. Through our routes a 5-second clip starts at $0.56 for 480p on PixVerse billed yearly. See Seedance 2.5 pricing.
What is the cheapest way to run Seedance 2.0 at 1080p?
Of everything we verified on October 5, 2026, the PixVerse route at $1.44 per 5-second clip on a yearly Premium plan. Without a yearly commitment, Segmind’s pay-as-you-go $1.70 is cheapest, then PixVerse monthly at $1.80, both below ByteDance’s official $1.87. The PixVerse figures are per clip and exclude the flat $15/month useapi.net subscription, which matters at low volume. See the market table.
Can I generate Seedance videos with real human faces?
The official API restricts real-face reference inputs on both 2.0 and 2.5 to verified assets or an enterprise contract starting at $14,000 a year. The PixVerse, Runway, and MiniMax routes accept real faces on 2.0 (MiniMax in image references), and the Dreamina route accepts them on 2.5.
How does useapi.net charge less than ByteDance’s own API?
On Seedance 2.0, consumer plans on PixVerse (monthly or yearly), Runway, Dreamina, and MiniMax (yearly) price the same generation below the metered developer rate, and useapi.net automates one of those accounts over REST, plus a flat $15/month across every service. On Seedance 2.5 it mostly does not — the official rate is lower except against a yearly PixVerse plan at 1080p, and our routes win on real faces, longer clips, and no prepaid pack instead.
Are the sub-dollar Seedance prices I see elsewhere real?
Usually not for a standard 1080p clip. They tend to be 720p rates, 2.0 prices on a 2.5 page, subsidized flat-rate plans, distilled “turbo” variants, or credits with no published dollar value — see the wider market section.
Ready to try it? The whole comparison is one script — github.com/useapi/seedance-2-api sends a prompt to all four routes and prints the cost and speed of each, alongside a price calculator you can run with no account at all. Then pick a route — PixVerse for the cheapest 1080p Seedance 2.0, Dreamina for Seedance 2.5 with real faces and long clips — connect the account, and a useapi.net subscription drives all four with one token. Prices in this article were current on October 5, 2026, and this market moves monthly, so confirm the live rate before you scale.
Start using the API
A single $15/month subscription covers every API on useapi.net — one token, all services. You connect up to 3 of your own provider accounts per service, and useapi.net handles the REST API, load balancing, and polling.
Pricing, crypto payment, and volume options — full refund within the first 14 days if you have fewer than 50 successful generations.
Cross posted
Also published on dev.to.