Our take
Seed is a small, tightly-curated host for ByteDance's Seed model family with a zero-retention option and strong throughput on its cheapest tier. It offers just four models, all from the same vendor line, with a clear speed advantage on the entry-level Flash variant.
Use this for privacy-sensitive workloads that require zero data retention, or for low-latency, cost-efficient inference on Seed 1.6 Flash when 59 tokens per second suffices. Skip it if you need models outside the ByteDance Seed family, if you require verified SOC 2 or a confirmed EU endpoint, or if you need the fastest throughput on premium tiers rather than the cheapest one.
- Strongest throughput on the cheapest offer: Seed 1.6 Flash at 59 tokens per second, which is 7.4% faster than Seed 2.0 Mini and 28.3% faster than Seed 1.6.
- Zero data retention is available, not merely claimed.
- Does not train on prompts.
- Very narrow model catalogue: only 4 tracked offers, all from a single vendor family.
- Premium tiers have steep output pricing and falling throughput: Seed 1.6 and Seed 2.0 Lite both charge six-and-two-thirds times the output price of Seed 1.6 Flash, with throughput dropping to 46 and 42 tokens per second respectively.
- Compliance and geographic footprint are undocumented: headquarters country, SOC 2 and EU endpoint are all unverified in our data.
Privacy & data handling
- ✓
- Yes
- ✗
- No
- No answer on record
The colour says whether the answer favours you, not whether it is a yes — not training on your prompts earns a green cross, no zero-retention option earns a red one.
Prompt retention: none.