What ByteDance has in AI
ByteDance builds Seedance, the model that came first in our video ranking. The strangest thing about this vendor is not the model but the documentation: its own page for Seedance 2.5 states no resolution anywhere, and reading the real ceiling means going to somebody else price list.
- Seedance leads the video table
- release date inside the model id
- resolution from elsewhere
Last checked: This is a reference page. It is re-checked against the vendor sources and updated when a new version ships. What changed
Model families
The model lines: Seedance for video, Seedream for images.
Versions
| Versions | Released | Status | Model families |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seedance 2.5 | current | Seedance | |
| Seedream 5.0 Pro | current | Seedream |
A good habit almost no other vendor has
ByteDance puts the release date inside the model id. From its own API documentation the ids are doubao-seedance-1-0-lite-i2v-250428, doubao-seedance-1-0-pro-250528, doubao-seedance-1-5-pro-251215, doubao-seedance-2-0-260128 and doubao-seedance-2-5-260628. The last six digits are year, month and day. So the timeline of this family can be read off the id list alone, with no changelog needed. None of the other vendors in this reference do that.
Documentation that has fallen behind its own models
The page at seed.bytedance.com/en/seedance still describes Seedance 1.0 and headlines "1080p videos". There is a separate Seedance 2.5 page on the same site and it is a complete page, but across its whole text a resolution figure never appears once; it talks about thirty seconds of storytelling, reference control and green-screen editing, and says nothing about how many pixels come out.
The Volcano Engine API documentation renders in JavaScript, and the raw page text carries no resolution figure either. We checked that ourselves, because we assumed at first that the numbers would be there.
The practical result: the only place this family resolution ceiling is written in readable text is Runway price list. There, Seedance 2.0 has four rows going up to 4K and Seedance 2.5 has only two, 480p and 720p. So the evidence that the newer version has the lower ceiling does not come from its maker; it comes from a shop that resells it.
What this page does not claim
ByteDance also owns TikTok and we write nothing about that here, because it has no bearing on the models. We have also not read the official Seedance price in yuan on the Volcano Engine console and we are not inventing one; the price you see in this reference is Runway price and it is attributed to Runway explicitly.
What it is good at
- Seedance 2.5 comes first in our video ranking table
- the release date is written inside the model id, so the timeline is readable with no changelog
- it ships models in two categories: video with Seedance and images with Seedream
- the same family is sold through several platforms, so you are not tied to one gateway
Where it falls short
- The Seedance 2.5 page states no resolution at all, and the Seedance 1.0 page has not been updated.
- The API documentation renders in JavaScript, so its numbers are not straightforwardly readable.
- This family resolution ceiling can only be read from another company price list.
- It publishes no country list and its official purchase route is a Chinese console, so the Iran column reads unknown.
Our take
If you want the best video quality, ByteDance model is the first pick in our table today. Just do not expect to read its specifications on ByteDance own site; for a number you have to go to whoever resells it.
Questions people actually ask
Who owns Seedance and where is it sold?
ByteDance owns it. It ships on their own cloud, Volcano Engine, and it is also sold through the Runway API and Higgsfield. So it is one model reaching you through several doors.
Why is the Seedance 2.5 resolution not on its own page?
We do not know why, only that it is not. We read the whole text of that page and a resolution figure never appears. That is why in this reference the number is attributed to Runway rather than to ByteDance.