Last updated: August 23, 2026
Figuring out how to access Seedance is harder than it should be. ByteDance ships its AI video models under several product names, Jimeng and Doubao inside China and Dreamina and CapCut outside it, and the API lives on two first-party clouds plus a growing list of third-party hosts. Which door you can use depends on where you live and whether you want a consumer app or a developer endpoint.
This guide lays out every working route as of August 2026, with the versions each route exposes, what it costs, and the catches. Every figure comes from ByteDance’s documentation, providers’ published pricing pages, or cited reporting, and we flag where sources disagree.
The current flagship, Seedance 2.5, launched on July 31, 2026 on Jimeng AI and Doubao Pro, with API access following on BytePlus ModelArk (ByteDance Seed blog). Seedance 2.0, with its Fast and Mini tiers, remains the version you will meet on most third-party platforms.
- Inside China, Jimeng and Doubao are the consumer routes; Jimeng registers by phone number, and both carry Seedance 2.5, with Doubao limiting it to paid Pro tiers.
- Outside China, Dreamina is the broadest consumer option: a CapCut account, 225 free daily credits, and Seedance 2.5, 2.0 and 2.0 Mini, with US access since August 2026.
- BytePlus ModelArk is the international first-party API, but its terms exclude the United States; fal, Replicate, Runway, OpenRouter and WaveSpeed fill the gap.
- ByteDance’s own apps and its first-party API block uploads containing real human faces; third-party hosts do not document their policy.
Table of contents
How to access Seedance: every route at a glance
“Free?” means you can generate something without paying, not that free output is watermark-free or full resolution. Billing units range from credits and tokens to dollars per second.
| Route | Region | Seedance versions | Free? | Cost basis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jimeng web / app | Mainland China; phone sign-up | 2.0, 2.5 | Yes: queue, watermark, 720p cap | Membership tiers plus credits (RMB) |
| Doubao / Doubao Pro | Mainland China | 2.0; 2.5 on Pro Enhanced and Premium | 2.0 test quotas at launch; 2.5 paid | Doubao Pro plans (RMB) |
| Dreamina | Global, including the US | 2.5, 2.0, 2.0 Mini | Yes: 225 daily credits | Credits; subscriptions (USD) |
| CapCut AI video | Subscriber rollout by region | 2.0, 2.5 | Free daily credits where enabled | Pro / Ultra credits per second |
| TikTok Symphony | TikTok for Business | 2.0; 2.5 for select advertisers | 2.0 open to logged-in business users | Advertiser platform |
| Volcano Ark API | Mainland China | 2.0 series, 2.5 | Pay-as-you-go | RMB per million tokens |
| BytePlus ModelArk API | 185 countries; excludes US, India, mainland China, Russia | 1.0 Pro through 2.5 | Trial tokens; USD 30 to activate 2.x | USD per million tokens |
| fal | Not stated | 1.x through 2.5 | Pay-as-you-go | USD per 1,000 tokens |
| Replicate | Not stated | 1.x through 2.5 | Pay-as-you-go | USD per output second |
| Together AI | Not stated | 1.0 Lite, 1.0 Pro, 2.0; 2.5 “launching soon” | Pay-as-you-go | Flat USD per video |
| Runway API | Not stated | 2.0 series, 2.5 | Pay-as-you-go | Credits per second (USD 0.01 each) |
| OpenRouter | Not stated | 2.0 | Pay-as-you-go | USD per million tokens |
| WaveSpeed | Not stated | 2.0, 2.5 | Pay-as-you-go | USD per 5 seconds, prorated |
Consumer access inside China
Method 1: Jimeng (即梦AI) web and app
Jimeng is ByteDance’s consumer creative app at jimeng.jianying.com. Seedance 2.0 went live there on February 12, 2026, and Seedance 2.5 arrived on July 31, 2026. ByteDance’s stated path: open Jimeng on the web, choose Video Generation, select Seedance 2.5.
Registration is a one-tap phone-number sign-up. Free accounts queue, carry a watermark and top out at 720p; at the Seedance 2.0 launch, reporting described queues of more than 1,000 people with three-hour waits. ByteDance publishes no fixed free quota, and secondary guides disagree on daily sign-in credits.
Membership has basic, standard and premium tiers, and pricing moved repeatedly in 2026. According to 21jingji’s April 2026 reporting, annual fees set at 329, 949 and 2,599 yuan on March 4 were raised on April 8 to 379, 1,449 and 3,099 yuan, premium monthly credits were cut to 5,870, and a 15-second VIP-accelerated video rose to about 210 credits; other trackers cite different figures, and Jimeng publishes no static price page. The China App Store listing shows a 79-yuan membership and credit packs from 50 to 150 yuan.
Method 2: Doubao and Doubao Pro
Doubao is ByteDance’s consumer AI assistant. Seedance 2.0 entered gray-box testing in the Doubao app on February 11, 2026, free for the domestic users included, with 10 video quotas per day and two consumed per generation. Secondary guides report that registration generally requires a mainland China (+86) number.
Seedance 2.5 reached Doubao Pro on July 31, 2026, but only on the Enhanced and Premium tiers, not Standard and not the free app. Doubao Pro launched in June 2026 at 68 yuan per month for Standard, 200 for Enhanced and 500 for Premium, with verified students paying 38 yuan. The path mirrors Jimeng: open Doubao Pro, choose Video Generation, select Seedance 2.5. Prices and quotas are whatever the purchase page displays.
Consumer access outside China
Method 3: Dreamina (CapCut account)
Dreamina at dreamina.capcut.com is the international consumer front end and, for most readers outside China, the simplest answer to how to access Seedance. Its terms require a CapCut account for some services, with a general minimum age of 13, and the Seedance 2.5 rollout targets subscriber accounts belonging to people over 16. The homepage lists Seedance 2.5, 2.0 and 2.0 Mini.
Dreamina provides 225 free daily credits for image and video creation, and says they can be used to test Seedance 2.5 before subscribing (Dreamina creator guide). Free exports may include a watermark depending on settings, resolution and model; paid tiers remove it. A three-day launch promotion of four queue-free Seedance 2.5 generations has ended.
Seedance 2.0 is described as live globally on Dreamina. Seedance 2.5 launched on July 31, 2026, with rollout to Europe, Asia, the Middle East and South America announced for the following week, and a post on Dreamina’s X account in early August 2026 announced US availability. Dreamina cautions that availability, plans and offers vary by market; see our regional availability tracker for a country-by-country view.
The steps: sign in with a CapCut account, choose AI video, pick a Seedance model, add a prompt and references, and check the in-app cost preview, since Dreamina publishes no credit-per-second rates. As of Dreamina’s August 19, 2026 pricing page, promotional monthly plans are listed at $5 (Standard, 1,575 credits), $11 (Pro, 3,885 credits) and $42 (Max, 8,645 credits), or $73, $168 and $335 per year, but plan names and prices are promotional and region-dependent.
Dreamina’s per-second estimates put Seedance 2.5 at about $0.097 per second on the annual Advanced plan, roughly $2.91 for a 30-second clip, against $0.046 to $0.055 for Seedance 2.0. Paid plans also add higher-resolution output and smoother video up to 60 FPS, which Dreamina lists as an app feature rather than a model spec.
Method 4: CapCut AI video
CapCut builds Seedance into its AI Video and Video Studio features, gated to paying subscribers and rolled out by region. Seedance 2.0 arrived first for paid users in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brazil and Mexico, then expanded on March 25, 2026 to Africa, South America and the Middle East, on March 28 to Europe, on March 31 to Japan, and on April 7 to the United States, with clips up to 15 seconds.
Seedance 2.5 was announced on July 31, 2026 to start rolling out the following week for subscriber accounts over 16 across Europe, Asia, the Middle East and South America; the US was not listed at launch. CapCut’s feature page says 2.5 appears as a selectable model as it becomes available in your region, and that CapCut Pro unlocks 4K output and a 180-second Long Video Mode; on CapCut PC, Pro and Ultra members pay through credits billed by the second. The page also mentions free daily credits, which reads as credits inside an enabled account and region, not open access.
Method 5: TikTok Symphony for advertisers
Per ppc.land’s reporting, Symphony Creative Studio with Dreamina Seedance 2.0 became generally available to all logged-in TikTok for Business users on May 13, 2026, with every video labeled as AI-generated and invisibly watermarked. Symphony with Seedance 2.5 started rolling out on August 3, 2026 to select paid advertisers in select markets.
TikTok pairs the route with C2PA Content Credentials and policies against unauthorized use of likeness or intellectual property. Seedance 2.0 is open to logged-in TikTok for Business users; 2.5 is limited to select paid advertisers.
Developer access through APIs
ByteDance runs two first-party clouds, Volcano Engine Ark for mainland China and BytePlus ModelArk for everyone else, and third-party hosts resell the models with their own pricing units. Our Seedance API overview covers request formats; here the focus is getting in the door.
Method 6: Volcano Engine Ark (China)
Seedance 2.0 appeared in the Volcano Ark experience center on launch day under model ID doubao-seedance-2-0-260128. Volcano Engine launched the Seedance 2.5 API on August 7, 2026, listed at 70 yuan per million tokens without video input and 42 yuan with it. Reporting put Seedance 2.0 at 720p at 46 and 28 yuan, with a 15-second clip consuming roughly 308,880 tokens, about 1 yuan per second.
Ark’s terms license the service only within mainland China, require Volcano Engine’s prior written permission for commercial use, and treat playground output as experience content that cannot be claimed as your IP, unlike output from direct API calls.
Method 7: BytePlus ModelArk (international)
BytePlus ModelArk is the international twin of Ark and the most complete first-party API, with seven Seedance model IDs from seedance-1-0-pro-250528 through dreamina-seedance-2-5-260628. Seedance 2.5 runs in the ap-southeast-1 region, and the API reference says the model is fully available.
Geography is the catch. BytePlus’s availability page lists roughly 185 countries and regions, including Japan, the UK, Canada, Australia and South Korea, but not the United States, India, mainland China, Russia or Ukraine (BytePlus international availability). The video-generation terms state outright that BytePlus Model Services are not available in the United States, and versions under the same model card may differ by country.
To activate any Seedance 2.x model you need an account balance, AI Savings Plan or Seedance resource pack of at least USD 30, and up to USD 30 stays locked while a model instance is active. New accounts get a free inference quota, documented as 500k tokens per model in Free Tokens Only Mode, while the site header advertises a 2 million-token trial, so the exact allowance for 2.x is unclear.
| ModelArk model | USD per million tokens (no video / with video input) | 5-second 16:9 example (USD) |
|---|---|---|
| Seedance 2.5, 480p or 720p | 10.70 / 6.40 | 0.514 (480p), 1.156 (720p) |
| Seedance 2.5, 1080p | 11.7 / 7.0 | 2.843 |
| Seedance 2.0, 480p or 720p | 7.0 / 4.3 | 0.35 (480p), 0.76 (720p) |
| Seedance 2.0, 1080p | 7.7 / 4.7 | 1.87 |
| Seedance 2.0, 4K | 4.0 / 2.4 | 3.89 |
| Seedance 2.0 Fast | 5.6 / 3.3 | 0.28 (480p), 0.60 (720p) |
| Seedance 2.0 Mini | 3.5 / 2.1 | 0.18 (480p), 0.38 (720p) |
Only successful generations are billed. The watermark parameter defaults to false, so API output carries no visible watermark unless you opt in, although ModelArk embeds C2PA Content Credentials by default on the 2.0 series. For setup on both clouds, see our Volcengine and BytePlus developer guide.
Method 8: Third-party API hosts
If BytePlus will not serve your country, at least six third-party hosts carry Seedance. None of the provider pages cited here publishes a regional exclusion list, which makes them the practical option for US developers. Each exposes a different slice of the model: fal caps Seedance 2.5 at 720p, for example, while ModelArk offers 1080p.
| Host | Seedance models | Published pricing | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| fal | 1.x through 2.5 | 2.0 about $0.3034/s at 720p; Fast about $0.2419/s; 2.5 $0.0214 per 1K tokens (about $0.4730/s at 720p) | 2.0 live since April 9, 2026; 2.5 at 480p or 720p |
| Replicate | 1.x through 2.5 | 2.0: $0.08/s (480p), $0.18/s (720p), $0.45/s (1080p), $1/s (4K); 2.5: $0.1028/s (480p), $0.2312/s (720p) | Per output second; video input costs more |
| Together AI | 1.0 Lite, 1.0 Pro, 2.0, 2.5 | $0.14, $0.57, $0.16 and $0.115 per video | 2.5 page says “launching soon” |
| Runway API | seedance2, seedance2_fast, seedance2_mini, seedance2_5 | 2.0: 36 credits/s (480p/720p), 40 (1080p), 150 (4K); 2.5: 20/30/68 credits per output second at 480p/720p/1080p | Credits $0.01; 2.5 added August 7, 2026 |
| OpenRouter | 2.0 | $7.00 per million tokens; $4.30 with video input | Listed April 15, 2026 |
| WaveSpeed | 2.0, 2.5 | 2.0: $0.60 per 5 s at 480p, 2x/5x/10x for 720p/1080p/4K; 2.5: $0.90 per 5 s (480p), $1.80 (720p) | Prorated per second |
Because the units differ, compare on a concrete job rather than a headline rate. Our cost calculator converts tokens, credits and per-second prices into a dollar figure, and the provider pricing comparison walks through the math.
Which route should you use?
For a first look without paying, Dreamina is the obvious pick outside China, and Jimeng’s free tier does the same job inside it; more options are in our guide to using Seedance without paying. For programmatic use, BytePlus ModelArk has the fullest feature set and offers Seedance 2.5 at up to 1080p (Runway’s API also lists a 1080p tier); fal and Replicate expose 480p and 720p; WaveSpeed publishes prices only for 480p and 720p. In the US or India, the third-party hosts are the practical choices. TikTok advertisers can use Symphony.
Honest limitations and caveats
Real faces are blocked on ByteDance’s own routes. BytePlus’s API reference states that Seedance 2.5 and the 2.0 series do not support direct uploads of reference images or videos containing real human faces; CapCut restricts the same capability, and Dreamina’s X account has said the system blocks such creatives. The third-party provider pages cited here do not state a face-upload policy. ModelArk’s workarounds are your own recent face-containing outputs, a preset digital character library, or authorized real-person assets.
Regional gaps are structural. BytePlus excludes the US and India by policy, Volcano Ark is licensed for mainland China only, Jimeng registers by phone number, and secondary guides report Doubao generally requires a mainland China (+86) number. CapCut’s 2.5 rollout omitted the US at launch, and its Seedance 2.0 4K announcement listed nine regions without the US or Japan.
Prices move, and sources disagree. Jimeng changed pricing and credit allowances twice between March and April 2026, and trackers report different numbers. Dreamina’s plans are promotional and region-dependent. Together AI lists Seedance 2.5 at $0.115 per video while its model page says “launching soon,” so treat that route as pending.
Resolution claims depend on the surface. Dreamina markets cinematic 4K for Seedance 2.5, yet BytePlus’s API reference caps 2.5 at 1080p and fal at 720p; 4K is an official option only for Seedance 2.0. Treat consumer-app 4K as an app feature, as our Seedance 2.5 guide explains.
Usage rights differ by route. Dreamina’s terms say the services are generally for private, non-commercial use, even though its marketing says paid tiers grant commercial rights. Jimeng’s paid agreement bars using paid services for profit except where a specific service allows it. BytePlus lets you own your output but forbids removing watermarks or credentials. Read the commercial-use breakdown before selling what you make.
Finally, this article describes what ByteDance and its partners have published, not hands-on testing. Queues, credit costs and rollouts change without notice, so confirm on the checkout or activation screen for your own account.
Frequently asked questions
Can I access Seedance from the United States?
Yes, through consumer apps and third-party APIs. A post on Dreamina’s X account in early August 2026 announced Seedance 2.5 availability for US users, and CapCut added Seedance 2.0 for US subscribers on April 7, 2026. The first-party BytePlus ModelArk API is not available in the United States under its terms, so US developers use fal, Replicate, Runway, OpenRouter or WaveSpeed instead.
Is there a free way to access Seedance?
Dreamina gives every account 225 free daily credits and lets you try Seedance 2.5 with them, although free exports may carry a watermark. Jimeng has a free tier with queues, watermarks and a 720p cap. BytePlus ModelArk offers a free token quota for new accounts, but activating any Seedance 2.x model still requires a USD 30 balance, savings plan or resource pack.
Which routes give API access to Seedance 2.5?
As of August 2026, Seedance 2.5 is callable on BytePlus ModelArk as dreamina-seedance-2-5-260628, on Volcano Engine Ark since August 7, 2026, and on fal, Replicate, Runway and WaveSpeed. Together AI lists a price but marks the model as launching soon. Resolution varies by host: ModelArk and Runway list up to 1080p, while fal, Replicate and WaveSpeed expose 480p and 720p.
Can I upload a photo of myself as a reference?
Not directly on ByteDance’s own apps or its first-party API. BytePlus documents that Seedance 2.5 and the 2.0 series do not support uploading reference images or videos containing real human faces, and Dreamina and CapCut apply the same block; third-party hosts do not document their policy. ModelArk allows reuse of your own recent face-containing outputs, preset digital characters, or authorized real-person assets as alternatives.
Access to Seedance is wide but uneven: the version, resolution and price behind each door vary by country and platform. For the broader picture, see our complete Seedance 2.5 guide, the explainer on which site is the real Seedance website, and the API access and pricing roundup.
Sources: ByteDance Seed blog; BytePlus ModelArk documentation; Dreamina, CapCut and TikTok for Business pages; cited Chinese-language reporting; and provider pricing pages.
