API cost decision in 10 seconds

Seed 1.6 Flash vs INTELLECT-3

Pick Seed 1.6 Flash when budget and context both matter.

Pricing data updated: 2026-05-26T11:08:00Z Prices normalized to USD per 1M tokens Sample workload: 1M input + 500K output

Budget verdict

Pick Seed 1.6 Flash when budget and context both matter.

On the standard 1M input plus 500K output workload, Seed 1.6 Flash is estimated at $0.22 vs $0.75 for INTELLECT-3, saving $0.53 (70% lower).

Cost-first pickSeed 1.6 Flash

Context-first pickSeed 1.6 Flash

Sample savings$0.5370%

10x traffic gap$5.25

Seed 1.6 Flash is cheaper on the standard workload and also has the larger context window. At 10x that traffic, the same price gap is about $5.25. Use the calculator below to replace the sample workload with your own token volume.

Cost sensitivity

Workload Sensitivity

Same prices, different token mixes.

Seed 1.6 Flash stays cheaper across input-heavy, balanced, and output-heavy sample workloads.

Workload shape	Token mix	Better pick	Seed 1.6 Flash	INTELLECT-3
Input-heavy / RAG	5M input + 500K output	Seed 1.6 Flash	$0.53	$1.55
Balanced workload	1M input + 1M output	Seed 1.6 Flash	$0.38	$1.3
Output-heavy chatbot	1M input + 5M output	Seed 1.6 Flash	$1.57	$5.7

Cheaper input Seed 1.6 Flash $0.075 vs $0.2 / 1M

Seed 1.6 Flash is $0.12 cheaper per 1M input tokens (62.5% lower; 2.67x difference).

Cheaper output Seed 1.6 Flash $0.3 vs $1.1 / 1M

Seed 1.6 Flash is $0.8 cheaper per 1M output tokens (72.7% lower; 3.67x difference).

Larger context Seed 1.6 Flash 262.14K vs 131.07K

Seed 1.6 Flash has 131.07K more context (2x larger).

Sample workload Seed 1.6 Flash $0.22 vs $0.75

Seed 1.6 Flash is $0.53 cheaper on the standard workload (70% lower).

Estimate your workload cost

Your Workload Cost

Prices are normalized to USD per 1M tokens.

Monthly input tokens Monthly output tokens

Seed 1.6 Flash Calculating… Estimated API cost

INTELLECT-3 Calculating… Estimated API cost

Cheaper for this workload Calculating… Difference: calculating…

This estimate uses normalized public API pricing per 1M tokens. It is a planning aid, not a billing quote. Verify provider pricing, limits, and terms before production use.

Quick Decision

Verdict

Seed 1.6 Flash has the lower input price; Seed 1.6 Flash has the lower output price; Seed 1.6 Flash offers the larger context window. For the 1M input plus 500K output sample, Seed 1.6 Flash is cheaper for the standard workload.

For a 1M input token plus 500K output token workload, the estimated API cost is $0.22 for Seed 1.6 Flash and $0.75 for INTELLECT-3.

Best Fit

Choose Seed 1.6 Flash when you care most about lower input-token price, lower output-token price, and larger context window.

Choose INTELLECT-3 when its provider, model quality, latency, or availability is more important than the numeric price/context winner.

Decision Notes

On the standard 1M input plus 500K output workload, Seed 1.6 Flash is estimated at $0.22 vs $0.75 for INTELLECT-3, saving $0.53 (70% lower).
Seed 1.6 Flash is $0.53 cheaper on the standard workload (70% lower).
Seed 1.6 Flash is $0.12 cheaper per 1M input tokens (62.5% lower; 2.67x difference).
Seed 1.6 Flash is $0.8 cheaper per 1M output tokens (72.7% lower; 3.67x difference).
Seed 1.6 Flash has 131.07K more context (2x larger).

Head-to-Head Specs

Feature	Seed 1.6 Flash (ByteDance Seed)	INTELLECT-3 (Prime Intellect)
Input Price prompt tokens per 1M	$0.075	$0.2
Completion Price per 1M tokens	$0.3	$1.1
Sample Workload Cost 1M input + 500K output	$0.22	$0.75
Context Window	262.14K	131.07K
Release Date	2025-12-23	2025-11-27

Use-Case Decision Matrix

Use case	Better pick	Why
Budget-constrained production	Seed 1.6 Flash	On the standard 1M input plus 500K output workload, Seed 1.6 Flash is estimated at $0.22 vs $0.75 for INTELLECT-3, saving $0.53 (70% lower).
High-volume input processing	Seed 1.6 Flash	Lower prompt-token price matters most when prompts, retrieved passages, or documents dominate the bill.
Long responses and chatbots	Seed 1.6 Flash	Lower output-token price matters most when assistants generate many completion tokens.
RAG or long-document work	Seed 1.6 Flash	A larger context window leaves more room for retrieved passages, conversation history, or source files.

Related Alternatives

Same-provider lower-cost swaps

No lower-cost same-provider swap is currently tracked for this pair.

Larger context near this budget

Llama 4 Scout offers 10M context with $0.23 sample workload cost.
Owl Alpha offers 1.05M context with $0 sample workload cost.
DeepSeek V4 Pro offers 1.05M context with $0.87 sample workload cost.
DeepSeek V4 Flash offers 1.05M context with $0.2 sample workload cost.

Popular competitors

No popular competitor is currently available.

Cheaper alternatives

Review low-cost models sorted by a standard 1M input plus 500K output workload.

Open cheapest models

Larger context alternatives

Find models with larger context windows for RAG, long documents, and codebase review.

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Provider catalogs

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ByteDance Seed catalog

Review all tracked ByteDance Seed models before deciding whether this matchup is the right shortlist.

Open ByteDance Seed models

Prime Intellect catalog

Check other Prime Intellect models with comparable pricing, context, or release timing.

Open Prime Intellect models

Seed 1.6 Flash

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...

INTELLECT-3

INTELLECT-3 is a 106B-parameter Mixture-of-Experts model (12B active) post-trained from GLM-4.5-Air-Base using supervised fine-tuning (SFT) followed by large-scale reinforcement learning (RL). It offers state-of-the-art performance for its size across math,...