· reAPI Team
Jimeng (即梦) vs the Seedance API: App Credits or Per-Second Pricing
Jimeng (即梦) is ByteDance's Chinese creative app for Seedance 2.5. How its membership and credit pricing compares with paying per second through the Seedance API.
Jimeng (即梦AI) is ByteDance's Chinese-language creative app, and one of the places its Seedance 2.5 video model is available. ByteDance's Seed team named Jimeng AI, alongside Doubao Pro, as a rollout destination when it announced Seedance 2.5 on July 31, 2026.[1] If you already subscribe to Doubao Pro (豆包专业版), check there first, since the same announcement names it as a destination. In the app you pay through a membership and credits. Through an API you pay per generated second or per token, with no subscription.
Which is cheaper depends on how you work. This guide sets out what Jimeng shows publicly, what the official and third-party Seedance APIs charge, and how to choose, using figures checked on November 4, 2026.
What Jimeng is
Jimeng runs at jimeng.jianying.com. Its home page offers far more than one video model: an Agent mode that takes ideas, scripts or reference uploads and offers preset skills, plus a short-drama studio, a canvas, mark-and-edit changes to a frame, local re-shoots of a video segment, "智能超清" (enhance resolution, up to 8K), a 3D director's stage and a rendering plugin for Blender and Maya.[2]
Outside China, ByteDance's official Seedance 2.5 page now sends consumers to Dola, at dola.com, and developers to the BytePlus playground and API.[3] For how ByteDance's other names relate, see who makes Seedance 2.5.
Jimeng pricing as shown on its home page
Plans and credit prices appear only after login. The public home page carried this promotional banner on November 4, 2026:[2]
双11产能开仓 | SD2.5单秒抄底价年卡￥0.16，季卡￥0.24 | 全年月月赠积分！最高得10万积分/月，再多得3个月会员
In English: for the Singles' Day sale, Seedance 2.5 costs as little as ¥0.16 per second on an annual membership and ¥0.24 on a quarterly one, with monthly bonus credits of up to 100,000 and three extra months of membership. A separate button says memberships are "低至4.5折", up to 55% off.
Read those as "as low as" marketing figures. The banner does not state the resolution, duration or input type behind ¥0.16, and an annual card is paid upfront. Treat it as a best case to compare against, not a quote for your clip.
Seedance API prices for comparison
On the API side, per-second prices are published for each resolution:
| Route | 480p | 720p | 1080p | How you pay |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Volcengine Ark (ByteDance, China) | ¥0.67/s | ¥1.51/s | ¥3.74/s | Ark account, billed by token |
| reAPI standard tier | $0.119/s | $0.267/s | $0.643/s | Credit balance, per second |
| TokLab | $0.1026/s | $0.2307/s | $0.5672/s | Credit balance, per second |
Volcengine's figures are its own worked examples for a 5-second 16:9 clip, derived from 70 yuan per million tokens; it charges only for videos that generate successfully.[4] All rows are for requests without video input. reAPI and TokLab rates are from their pricing pages.[5][6] The dollar and yuan rows use different currencies, so compare them at the exchange rate you actually pay.
Set against Volcengine's own list price, the app's best-case ¥0.16 per second is far lower than the ¥0.67 Ark example at 480p. That gap is the point of a membership: you commit money upfront and receive cheaper seconds, as long as you use them.
Paying less per second with draft mode
Both ByteDance's API and reAPI offer a draft workflow for Seedance 2.5 that changes the cost of iteration. On Volcengine, a draft task is billed as a 480p video, and the final video generated from that draft is billed separately at the target resolution, with the draft video itself not counted toward the final's input.[4] reAPI's documentation describes the same idea: render a cheap 480p draft first and pay for 1080p only once the take is right.[7]
The arithmetic favors it whenever you discard takes. If you would otherwise generate three 1080p attempts to keep one, three 480p drafts plus one final cost far less than three 1080p renders at reAPI's rates above: about 3 × $0.119 + $0.643 = $1.00 per second of finished clip, against 3 × $0.643 = $1.93, or roughly half the cost. Jimeng's in-app tools, such as re-shooting only part of a clip, serve a similar purpose inside the app.[2]
When the app wins and when the API wins
Our view, based on how the two are sold:
- Choose the app if a person makes each video by hand, wants the Agent, editing and re-shoot tools, and generates enough every month to use up a membership. The headline per-second price is lowest there.
- Choose an API if software generates the videos, if volume is irregular, or if you need to control cost per request. You pay only for what you generate, and a failed generation is not charged on Volcengine.[4]
- Outside mainland China, ByteDance's model page points to Dola for consumers and BytePlus for the API, and third-party APIs bill in dollars.[3]
FAQ
Is Jimeng available outside China?
Jimeng is a Chinese-language app. For international users, ByteDance's Seedance 2.5 page links consumers to Dola and developers to BytePlus.[3]
Does Jimeng have an API?
We found no public developer API for the Jimeng app. ByteDance's official API for the same model is on Volcengine's Ark platform as doubao-seedance-2.5, and on BytePlus internationally.[4][3]
How long can a Seedance 2.5 video be?
On the API, a single Seedance 2.5 request produces 4 to 30 seconds of video with generated audio, at 480p, 720p or 1080p, according to reAPI's model page, and TokLab's documentation lists the same 4-to-30-second range.[5][6] We could not check the length options inside the Jimeng app, because its generation screen requires a login.
Is Jimeng free?
The home page shows membership offers and asks you to log in before generating; it does not list a free generation allowance publicly.[2]
Choosing between Jimeng and the Seedance API
For hands-on creators in China who will spend a membership's credits, Jimeng's promoted per-second price is hard to beat. For products, pipelines and occasional use, paying per second through an API avoids upfront commitment. Seedance 2.5 on reAPI bills per second from one balance, with text, image and reference modes on a single endpoint, and our cheapest Seedance 2.5 comparison lists more API providers side by side. Whichever you pick, compare Jimeng's offer against the clip you will actually make.
References
- ByteDance Seed. One-take Creation, Flexible Referencing: Introducing Seedance 2.5. July 31, 2026. Retrieved November 4, 2026 from seed.bytedance.com
- Jimeng AI (即梦AI). Home page. Retrieved November 4, 2026 from jimeng.jianying.com/ai-tool/home
- ByteDance Seed. Seedance 2.5 model page. Retrieved November 4, 2026 from seed.bytedance.com/en/seedance2_5
- Volcengine. Ark model pricing: doubao-seedance-2.5. Retrieved November 4, 2026 from docs.volcengine.com/docs/ark/model-pricing
- reAPI. Seedance 2.5 model page. Retrieved November 4, 2026 from reapi.ai/models/seedance-2-5
- TokLab. Seedance 2.5 per-second pricing. Retrieved November 4, 2026 from toklab.ai
- reAPI. Seedance 2.5 API reference: draft mode. Retrieved November 4, 2026 from reapi.ai/docs/seedance-2-5