Seed-OSS is a series of open-source large language models developed by ByteDance's Seed team, designed specifically for powerful long-context processing, reasoning, agents, and general capabilities. Among this series, Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct is an instruction-tuned model with 36 billion parameters that natively supports ultra-long context lengths, enabling it to process massive documents or complex codebases in a single pass. This model is specially optimized for reasoning, code generation, and agent tasks (such as tool usage), while maintaining balanced and excellent general capabilities. A notable feature of this model is the "Thinking Budget" functionality, which allows users to flexibly adjust the inference length as needed, thereby effectively improving inference efficiency in practical applications.
ByteDance-Seed/Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct vs kimi-k3
Output tokens cost $0.53 per million on ByteDance-Seed/Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct and $15.00 per million on kimi-k3. Input tokens cost $0.20 per million on ByteDance-Seed/Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct and $3.00 per million on kimi-k3. Cached input tokens are billed at $0.20 per million on ByteDance-Seed/Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct and $0.30 per million on kimi-k3. Context lengths are 256,000 tokens on ByteDance-Seed/Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct and 1,048,576 tokens on kimi-k3. Time to first token (TTFT) measured on AIHubMix is 2.8s on ByteDance-Seed/Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct and 12.9s on kimi-k3. Measured output throughput is 36.9 tok/s on ByteDance-Seed/Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct and 18.8 tok/s on kimi-k3.
Kimi K3 is Kimi’s flagship model for long-horizon coding and end-to-end knowledge work, with a 1M-token context window and industry-leading intelligence.
Pricing & Specifications
Prices are per million tokens. Time to First Token and throughput are rolling averages measured on AIHubMix.
Promotional prices show the discounted rate; see each model page for promotion windows.
Activity Past 30 Days
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Performance Past 3 Days
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Throughput (tok/s)
TTFT (s)
Uptime (%)
Cost calculator
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Monthly = daily × 30. Discounted rates applied where a promotion is active.
FAQ
Which is cheaper: ByteDance-Seed/Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct, kimi-k3?
ByteDance-Seed/Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct: $0.53/M output tokens; kimi-k3: $15.00/M. Use the cost calculator above to estimate your own workload.
Which responds faster?
ByteDance-Seed/Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct: 2.8s time to first token measured on AIHubMix; see the live performance charts above for how each model behaves across the day.
How large is each context window?
ByteDance-Seed/Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct accepts 256,000 and kimi-k3 accepts 1,048,576 input tokens. Maximum output per request is 32,000 tokens on ByteDance-Seed/Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct and 1,048,576 tokens on kimi-k3.
Which one generates tokens faster?
ByteDance-Seed/Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct at 36.9 tok/s and kimi-k3 at 18.8 tok/s, measured as output throughput on AIHubMix — a separate metric from time to first token.
What inputs and capabilities does each model support?
ByteDance-Seed/Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct accepts text and image input and supports function calling and structured outputs; kimi-k3 accepts text, image and video input and supports thinking, function calling and structured outputs.
Can I call ByteDance-Seed/Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct and kimi-k3 with the same API key?
Yes. AIHubMix serves every model on this page behind one OpenAI-compatible endpoint, so switching between them is a one-line change to the model field — no second account, key or SDK.
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