What is Seedream 5?
The flagship AI image model in the Seedream family — photorealistic images from a text description, no design skills needed. Now with video generation via Seedance.
Explore Seedream 5
Seedream 5 Pro
The design-intelligence flagship
Free tier
What 75 free credits unlock
Release notes
Version history — 4.0 to today
How it works
Describe, reason, edit
API access
Programmatic use via Studio
Prompt gallery
20 Seedream 5 prompts with previews
Creative freedom
Fewer restrictions on legal content — you own it
What Seedream 5 Can Do
Photorealistic Images
95% anatomy accuracy, natural lighting, and realistic materials — glass, metal, fabric all rendered true to life. Output that looks like a photograph, not AI.
Creators use this for product photography, fashion shoots, and social media content.
From Image to Video
Generate your image with Seedream, then animate it with Seedance. From a single text prompt to a moving scene — one seamless creative pipeline.
Generate your scene, then bring it to life with motion — one seamless pipeline.
Character Consistency
Keep the same face and identity across completely different scenes. Upload up to 10 reference images and Seedream locks in who your character is.
Keep the same face across storyboards, brand content, and serialized campaigns.
Text in Images
Clean, readable text on posters, signs, labels, and marketing materials. Multi-language support across English, Chinese, and more.
Clean typography on posters, product labels, and marketing visuals — multi-language.
Image Editing
Describe your edit in plain English — swap backgrounds, change outfits, transfer styles. Show Seedream a before/after example and it applies the same transformation to new images.
Describe your edit in plain English. Add, remove, or restyle anything.
Native 4K Resolution
Need maximum resolution? Seedream 4.5 outputs native 4K — up to 3840×3840 — without upscaling. Every image is print-ready and commercial-grade straight out of the generator. No extra tools needed.
Seedream 4.5 outputs native 4K up to 3840×3840. Print-ready, commercial-grade. No upscaling tools needed.
How Seedream 5 Works
Seedream 5 moves in three steps. First, describe what you want in plain English — a short phrase works as well as a long structured prompt, because chain-of-thought reasoning fills in sensible defaults for composition, lighting, and subject placement. Second, the model plans the shot before generating: it can pull real-time web search for current references, lock a character across up to 10 reference images, and render English or Chinese text with high accuracy. Third, refine the result. Describe edits in plain English, use precision editing to change one element while keeping the rest, then download your finished image. Need maximum resolution? Seedream 4.5 outputs native 4K — up to 3840×3840. Every output includes commercial-use rights. The full walkthrough, with five pro tips and FAQs, lives on its own page.
See the full walkthrougharrow_forwardHow Seedream 5 Compares
| Feature | Seedream 5.0 | Midjourney | GPT Image | Flux | Nano Banana |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Max Resolution | 4K (3840px) | 2K | 2K | 2K | 2K |
| Text Rendering | Best in class | Improving | Good | Moderate | Good |
| Image Editing | Built-in | None | Built-in | None | None |
| Image-to-Video | Seedance | None | None | None | None |
| Pricing | Pay-per-image | Subscription | Subscription | Pay-per-image | Subscription |
| Access | Web app + API | Discord + Web | ChatGPT | API only | Web app |
Comparison based on publicly available information as of February 2026. Features and pricing may change.
What People Create with Seedream 5
Product Photography
Studio-quality product shots without a studio. Swap backgrounds, adjust lighting, match regional markets.
Character & Story Art
Consistent characters across scenes for comics, storyboards, brand mascots, and serialized social content.
Video Pre-Production
Generate scenes with Seedream, animate with Seedance. Music videos, ad concepts, short-form content.
Marketing & Social Media
Campaign imagery, posters with clean text, lifestyle scenes. High-resolution output ready for print or digital.
Portraits & Fashion
AI headshots, fashion styling, editorial looks. Face structure stays intact through transformations.
Frequently Asked Questions
Seedream 5.0 is developed by ByteDance. Seedream Studio is a production-ready creative interface built around the Seedream models — with character consistency, project collections, and one-click commercial licensing (and native 4K on Seedream 4.5). You get the models' full capabilities without managing API keys or infrastructure.
Seedream 5 is an AI image generator built by ByteDance, the company behind TikTok. It creates photorealistic images from text descriptions, with industry-leading text rendering and multi-reference character consistency. It's part of the Seedream model family, which powers Seedream Studio.
Seedream is developed by ByteDance's visual generation research team. Seedream Studio is the easiest way to use it — no API keys, no Discord bots, no technical setup. Just sign up and start creating.
Yes — sign up and get 75 free credits, enough for 1 generation. After that, one-time credit packs start at $9.98 and monthly subscriptions start at $14.98/mo with a 50% launch discount. All plans include full commercial rights.
Seedream 4.5 focuses on photorealism and raw image quality — it's the pure generation workhorse. Seedream 5 adds intelligence: web search for current events, multi-step visual reasoning for complex scenes, and example-based editing. Seedream Studio gives you access to both.
Yes — generate your images with Seedream, then animate them with Seedance. The full image-to-video pipeline runs inside Seedream Studio, so you go from text prompt to moving video without switching tools.
It depends on the model. Seedream 5 Pro is tuned for design intelligence (up to 2720×1530), Seedream 5 Lite goes up to 3072px, and Seedream 4.5 outputs native 4K — up to 3840×3840 — without upscaling. Print-ready and commercial-grade in 16:9, 1:1, and 9:16 aspect ratios.
Yes — all paid plans include full commercial rights. Use your generations for ads, film concepts, social media, client work, and print materials.
Seedream leads on photorealism, text rendering, and native resolution (4K vs 2K). Midjourney leads on artistic stylization and creative variation. See our full comparison for a detailed breakdown.
Create with Seedream 5
Photorealistic images and video from text. No design skills needed. Start free.