Seedream
ByteDance
Seedream is an image generation model line from ByteDance. The latest release is Seedream 5.5 (9 Nov 2026). This page tracks all 7 Seedream releases since 1 Dec 2024, with specs, licensing, and how to access each one. Official site →
Seedream 5.5released
Improved photorealism and stable multi-round editing across up to 100 rounds without drift
- Availability
- Official API, Consumer app
Incremental update to Seedream 5.x line; focuses on photorealism (skin texture, fabric, lighting) and edit-consistency over extended iterative sessions. No architectural details or parameter counts disclosed.
Seedream 5.0 Proreleased
Professional tier above 5.0 Lite: deep-thinking prompt reasoning and real-time web search before drawing; complex information visualisation (infographics, posters, UI mockups), precision editing, realistic portrait textures; native text in 10+ languages
- License
- Proprietary
- Commercial use
- Allowed
- Availability
- Official API, Consumer app
Rolled out across ByteDance's own platforms and third-party APIs in the weeks after launch.
Seedream 5.0 Litereleased
Adds deep thinking reasoning and real-time web search to image generation
- License
- Proprietary
- Commercial use
- Allowed
- Availability
- Official API, Consumer app
Seedream 4.5released
Refinement of 4.0 focused on editing fidelity: cross-image consistency module for stable character/clothing/lighting across a batch; up to 14 reference images; sharper small-text and face rendering; 1K output dropped
- License
- Proprietary
- Commercial use
- Allowed
- Availability
- Official API, Consumer app
- Resolution
- 2K-4K
Released via Volcengine/BytePlus as Doubao-Seedream-4.5. Public test window 2025-12-03 to 2025-12-09, full release from 2025-12-10 (Beijing-time reports say early 04:00 on 2025-12-04). No single ByteDance Seed blog post fetched for the exact day - date rests on the Volcengine rollout schedule and consistent secondary coverage. Closed, API-only plus Doubao/Jimeng.
Seedream 4.0released
Unified T2I, image editing, and multi-image composition in one model; highly efficient DiT with powerful VAE reducing image tokens; 1.4s for 2K image generation; multimodal post-training via fine-tuned VLM
- License
- Proprietary
- Commercial use
- Allowed
- Availability
- Official API, Consumer app
- Resolution
- 1K-4K
Date approximate - paper states 'integrated into Doubao and Jimeng as of September 2025'. Accessible on Volcano Engine API as Doubao-Seedream-4.0.
Seedream 3.0released
Improved prompt alignment for complex instructions; fine-grained typography; 4-8x inference speedup via consistent noise expectation; doubled training dataset with defect-aware paradigm
- License
- Proprietary
- Commercial use
- Allowed
- Availability
- Official API, Consumer app
Date approximate - technical report states 'integrated into multiple platforms in early April 2025'.
Seedream 2.0released
Native Chinese-English bilingual image generation; self-developed bilingual LLM as text encoder; strong cultural knowledge and text rendering in both languages
- License
- Proprietary
- Commercial use
- Allowed
- Availability
- Consumer app
Date approximate - paper states 'incorporated into Doubao and Dreamina as of early December 2024'. Available via Doubao (豆包) and Jimeng (即梦/Dreamina).
FAQ
- When was Seedream 5.5 released?
- Seedream 5.5 was released on 9 Nov 2026.
- Is Seedream open source?
- No. Seedream 5.5 is closed: the weights are not released and it is available through an API or app only.
- Where can I use Seedream?
- Seedream 5.5 is available via Official API and Consumer app.
See Seedream in context on the image model timeline, or browse all model families.