ByteDance Seed: Seed 1.6 Flash

Rated cheaper than roughly three-quarters of comparable models at $0.075 per million input tokens, Seed 1.6 Flash is the cheapest option in this set. It reads text and images and returns answers fast, an ultra-fast multimodal model with adaptive deep thinking, a 262,144-token context window, chain-of-thought reasoning, function calling, and structured JSON output. That makes it a natural fit for a high-volume moderation or triage pipeline that scans uploaded images and text, decides how to route each item, and returns a JSON verdict, thousands of times an hour without the bill spiraling. Compared with Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude Sonnet 5, which prioritize peak answer quality at higher prices, this model's edge is speed and the lowest per-token cost here, trading some reasoning ceiling for throughput. Ideal for engineering teams running large-scale, latency-sensitive multimodal tasks who need predictable, minimal spend. The one caveat is the lack of a free tier, so usage is metered from the first token. Choose it when volume and cost dominate and you can accept a lighter model for straightforward classification and routing; reach for a stronger name when a task calls for deeper reasoning than a fast, economical model is meant to supply.