Volcengine Ark 火山方舟 (ByteDance)
ByteDance's model platform for Doubao Seed, DeepSeek, GLM and more
Overview
Volcengine Ark (火山方舟) is ByteDance's model-as-a-service platform for Doubao Seed and third-party models such as DeepSeek and GLM, with fine-tuning, managed agents, a ¥40 Coding Plan and a credit-based Agent Plan. Sold internationally as BytePlus ModelArk, with a Malaysian data region.
Pricing
Pricing shown for reference only. These figures reflect RECATOOLS research as of 1 Oct 2026 and may be out of date or incomplete. This is not financial or purchasing advice — always confirm the current price on the provider’s official website before making any decision.
- Doubao Seed 2.1 Pro ¥6 in / ¥30 out per M
- Doubao Seed 2.1 Lite ¥0.8 / ¥2.7
- 500,000 free tokens per model
- Doubao, DeepSeek, GLM, Kimi, MiniMax
- Claude Code, Cursor and TRAE support
- Not for general API calls
- Same models as Lite
- 5x Lite usage
- Per-model credit rates
- Agent and multimodal models
- Video generation included
- Per-model credit rates
What you can produce with Volcengine Ark 火山方舟 (ByteDance)
- OpenAI-compatible API, plus Anthropic-compatible plan endpoints
- Doubao Seed model family (text, vision, speech, image, video)
- Third-party models (DeepSeek, GLM; Kimi and MiniMax via plans)
- Fine-tuning, evaluation and managed agent hosting
- Ark CLI for Claude Code, Cursor and TRAE
- Coding Plan and credit-based Agent Plan subscriptions
- International version (BytePlus ModelArk) with a Johor, Malaysia region
Ark's biggest asset is breadth at low prices: ByteDance's Doubao Seed models sit next to DeepSeek and GLM behind OpenAI-compatible APIs, with small models from ¥0.2 per million input tokens and 500,000 free tokens per model to start. The Coding Plan is genuinely cheap at ¥40 a month — ¥9.9 for the first two months until November — but it is for individual developers inside coding tools, not general API use, and Volcano Engine says it will suspend keys used otherwise. Kimi and MiniMax are only reachable through the Coding and Agent Plans. Pricing is granular per model, so check the current list rather than older reviews, which quote models no longer sold. Onboarding on the Chinese site is Chinese-first, but the international BytePlus ModelArk version runs from Singapore with data in Johor, Malaysia, which makes it a realistic option for Southeast Asian teams.
What we found
Volcengine Ark (火山方舟) is the model platform of ByteDance's Volcano Engine cloud: inference, fine-tuning, evaluation and agent hosting for ByteDance's own Doubao Seed models alongside third-party models such as DeepSeek V4 and GLM-5.3, behind OpenAI-compatible APIs. The line-up turns over fast — today's flagship is Doubao Seed 2.1, and the Doubao 1.5 and Seed 1.6 models quoted in older reviews are no longer on the price list. Ark now promotes its own command-line tool for wiring its models into Claude Code, Cursor and TRAE, and hosts managed agents billed by runtime.
Pay-as-you-go pricing is per million tokens and set per model: Doubao Seed 2.1 Pro costs ¥6 for input and ¥30 for output, 2.1 Lite ¥0.8 and ¥2.7, and the smallest 2.0 Mini starts at ¥0.2 for input, with some models charging more for longer contexts and DeepSeek V4.1 Flash cheaper off-peak. Batch and low-priority inference cost about half. New users get 500,000 free tokens per model, and an optional mode pauses service when those run out so nothing is charged.
Two subscriptions sit on top. The Coding Plan costs ¥40 a month (Lite) or ¥200 (Pro, with five times Lite's usage) for use inside AI coding tools, and a promotion until 8 November 2026 cuts the first two months to ¥9.9 or ¥49.9. It is meant for individual developers and may not be used for general API calls; Volcano Engine warns that misuse can lead to suspension. The Agent Plan, launched in May 2026, sells monthly credits from ¥40 to ¥1,000, with each model consuming credits at its own fixed rate; video generation needs the ¥500 tier or above. Kimi and MiniMax models are available only through these plans, not pay-as-you-go.
Outside China, ByteDance sells the same platform as BytePlus ModelArk from Singapore, with a data region in Johor, Malaysia, and another in Dublin — so Southeast Asian teams have a local option rather than routing through mainland China.
Compiled by RECATOOLS from public sources: vendor documentation and pricing, code repositories and published reporting.
About this listing
This entry was compiled from publicly available data including Volcengine Ark 火山方舟 (ByteDance)'s official website, press releases, documentation, and reputable third-party publications. RECATOOLS is not affiliated with Volcengine Ark 火山方舟 (ByteDance) unless explicitly stated.
Third-party AI tools update their pricing, features, availability, and policies frequently. Information here may be outdated by the time you read this — we make reasonable efforts to keep listings current, but cannot guarantee absolute accuracy.
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