Tencent Hy Image (HunyuanImage 混元生图) vs Qwen-Image vs Doubao Image 豆包图像 (Seedream) vs Wenxin Assistant 文心助手 (formerly Ernie Bot)
A side-by-side look at scores, pricing and features — with RECATOOLS' ASEAN-aware verdict for each.
Tencent Hy Image (HunyuanImage 混元生图)
Tencent's 80B open-weight image model, plus an API-only Hy Image 3.5 p...
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Qwen-Image
Alibaba's open-source 20B MMDiT image foundation model under Apache 2....
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Doubao Image 豆包图像 (Seedream)
ByteDance's Seedream image generation inside the Doubao app
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Wenxin Assistant 文心助手 (formerly Ernie Bot)
Baidu's free ERNIE-powered assistant, which absorbed the Ernie Bot sit...
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| RECATOOLS Score | 6.4 / 10 | 8 / 10 | 6.3 / 10 | 6.8 / 10 |
| Capability | — | |||
| Value for money | — | |||
| Ease of use | — | |||
| ASEAN readiness | — | |||
| API quality | — | |||
| Pricing | Freemium | Open Source | Freemium | Freemium |
| Free tier | HunyuanImage 3.0 weights free to self-host under Tencent's community licence (excludes EU, UK and South Korea); consumer use in Tencent's Yuanbao app | Older line Apache 2.0 — the newest Qwen-Image-2.1 is research-only under the Qwen Research Licence | Image creation and editing free in the Doubao app (region-gated outside mainland China); paid Pro plans add quota | Wenxin Assistant is free for individuals; Baidu says all of its features are free, with no paid tier |
| Paid from | $0.024/image (Hy Image 3.5 preview API, up to 2K, Tencent Cloud International) | Usage-based via Alibaba Cloud (DashScope) and third-party hosted APIs. | Seedream API from $0.018/image (BytePlus); Doubao Pro from ¥68/month | ¥4 per million input tokens (ERNIE 5.1 on Qianfan, prompts up to 32K) |
| Has API | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Open source | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Free to use | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Users | — | — | — | ~200 million monthly active users (2026) |
| Founded | 2024 | — | 2023 | 2023 |
| Maker | Tencent | Alibaba | ByteDance | Baidu, Inc. |
| Verdict | HunyuanImage 3.0 is one of the most capable image models you can download, with strong Chinese-language prompt handling and editing variants, and the per-image API for Hy Image 3.5 preview is inexpensive.It is not open s... |
What this is for: Open-source text-to-image generation and editing with standout multilingual text rendering, strong for posters and Chinese/English typography. Who this is for: Developers, researchers, and studios want... |
Doubao's image creation runs on ByteDance's Seedream models and is especially good at Chinese prompts and Chinese text inside images. Basic use is free in the app, and the API is cheap: BytePlus lists Seedream 5.0 Flash... |
Wenxin Assistant gives individuals free access to Baidu's current ERNIE models with search built in, and Task Engine 2.0 makes it more of an agent than a chatbot. ERNIE 5.0 and 5.1 have ranked first among Chinese models... |
| Full review → | Full review → | Full review → | Full review → |
Comparisons cover up to 4 tools. Scores are RECATOOLS editorial assessments; verify current pricing on each vendor's site.