AI Models · Paid vs Paid

FIEmber-1 Paid vs Seed 1.6 Paid

Ember-1 vs Seed 1.6 compared — price per token, context window, multimodality, openness and which to choose. Full 2026 breakdown.

Prices & specs refreshed from live data · olud.ai

Open-model prices = cheapest provider via OpenRouter; official maker rates may be higher.

FIEmber-1PaidFireworks
$3 /M input
$15 /M outputManaged API (no infra to run)
TypeProprietary
Context window1M tokens
MultimodalYes
Self-hostNo
Seed 1.6PaidByteDance Seed
$0.25 /M input
$2 /M outputManaged API (no infra to run)
TypeProprietary
Context window262K tokens
MultimodalYes
Self-hostNo
Choose Seed 1.6 for the lower output price ($2/M vs $15/M). Choose Ember-1 if you need the larger 1M context window.

Ember-1 vs Seed 1.6 specs

SpecEmber-1Seed 1.6Winner
MakerFireworksByteDance Seed–
TypeProprietaryProprietary–
Context window1M tokens262K tokensFIEmber-1
Input price$3/M$0.25/MSeed 1.6
Output price$15/M$2/MSeed 1.6
Vision / multimodalYesYes= Tie
Tool / function callingYesYes= Tie
Self-hostableNo (API only)No (API only)–
LicenseProprietaryProprietary–

Price gap & when to choose each

7.5×cheaper per output token

Seed 1.6 is ~7.5× cheaper than Ember-1 on output tokens ($2 vs $15 per M tokens).

FIChoose Ember-1 if…
  • You want frontier performance through a managed API
  • You need the longer 1M context window
  • You value reliability & ecosystem
  • You don't want to manage infrastructure
Choose Seed 1.6 if…
  • You want frontier performance through a managed API
  • You want the lower output price
  • You value reliability & ecosystem
  • You don't want to manage infrastructure

Feature comparison

CapabilityEmber-1Seed 1.6
Open weights (downloadable)✗✗
Self-hostable✗✗
Runs fully offline✗✗
Vision / multimodal✓✓
Tool / function calling✓✓
1M+ context window✓✗

How Ember-1 and Seed 1.6 score

🤝 Neck and neck on these criteria (3.1 vs 3.2 / 5).
CriterionEmber-1Seed 1.6
Cost-efficiency3.04.5
Context window5.04.0
Openness1.51.5
Self-hosting1.01.0
Multimodality5.05.0

Scores come from live data — output price (cost), context length, open vs closed weights (openness & self-hosting) and vision/tool support (multimodality). Raw task quality isn't scored here; it depends on your benchmark — see the verdict.

What each model is

Ember-1 Paid

Fireworks · Proprietary

Ember-1 is a specialized reasoning model from Fireworks Research, built on [Kimi K3](https://openrouter.ai/moonshotai/kimi-k3). It is designed to make every token go further: it produces shorter reasoning traces, using roughly 40%...

Seed 1.6 Paid

ByteDance Seed · Proprietary

Seed 1.6 is a general-purpose model released by the ByteDance Seed team. It incorporates multimodal capabilities and adaptive deep thinking with a 256K context window.

Frequently asked questions

Ember-1 vs Seed 1.6 — which is cheaper?

Seed 1.6 is cheaper on output ($2/M vs $15/M).

Which has the larger context window?

Ember-1 offers the larger context window (1M tokens).

Ember-1 vs Seed 1.6 — which should I pick in 2026?

Choose Seed 1.6 for the lower output price ($2/M vs $15/M). Choose Ember-1 if you need the larger 1M context window.

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