ByteDance rolls out Seedream 5.5 across creative platforms

ByteDance introduced Seedream 5.5 on November 9, 2026, according to Unite.AI.[1] The rollout covers Dreamina, CapCut and BytePlus, according to Crypto Briefing.[2] The model is also available on Doubao and Volcano Engine Ark.[2] Volcano Engine said it would launch Seedream 5.5 API service that week.[4] The evidence does not specify the rollout schedule for each platform or whether access is the same across them, so teams evaluating it should check the relevant service for current availability.

ByteDance says users can continue editing the same image across 100 rounds, while preserving unedited regions at the pixel level and reducing color shifts in areas that are not edited.[3] Seedream 5.5 can generate images with an alpha channel for full or partial transparency, using text descriptions or reference images.[3] ByteDance says those transparent outputs can be used as standalone assets in layout, compositing and production.[3] The company also says the model renders lighting, materials and skin textures more naturally.[3]

ByteDance evaluated Seedream 5.5 across e-commerce, marketing, film and television, gaming, office productivity and fashion design, and reports improved quality scores and usability rates in all six use cases.[3] It says usability rates in film and television and office productivity were more than twice those of the previous version.[3] ByteDance also reports a 55.62% increase for realism in image-to-image tasks, and reports severe text corruption of 0.4% and minor text corruption of 1.7%.[3] These figures are company-reported; the evidence does not provide further evaluation methodology.

Guandian reports that a 2K square-image edit through the API costs about 0.28 yuan per image, less than half the price for Seedream 5.0 Pro.[4] It also reports that text tokens incur no charge under the API pricing structure.[4] These figures give teams a basis for an initial cost estimate, but the evidence does not state prices for other image sizes or editing tasks. ByteDance says a Pro version in the Seedream 5.5 series will follow, without specifying a release date.[3]