Seedream 5 Lite or 4.5: both 5 cents on Sume, and v4 is 4 cents

Seedream 5.0 Lite and Seedream 4.5 both bill 5 cents per image on Sume, and Seedream 4.0 bills 4 cents. All three edit, and all three take up to 4 images per call. With equal price and the same ratio list, the catalog gives no cost reason to prefer the older 4.5 row over 5.0 Lite.

What the catalog shows

Sume bills the catalog list price multiplied by 1.25 and rounded up to the next cent. List prices are $0.035 for 5.0 Lite, $0.04 for 4.5 and $0.026 for 4.0. The 5.0 Lite list is lower than 4.5, but both round up to 5 cents once the 1.25 multiple is applied, so the billed price is the same.

How to decide

Sume does not publish a quality comparison between the Seedream generations, so the decision is a test: render the same 20 prompts on both and compare. That costs $1.00 per model.

Seedream 4.0 is the only one of the three that lists auto as a ratio, which matches the source on edits. The two newer rows list 9 fixed ratios, including 4:5, 9:16, 16:9 and 3:2. If you need an auto-match edit on Seedream, use 4.0, or send the ratio explicitly.

For 10,000 images the 1-cent gap between 4.0 and the others is $100, which is the only price argument for the older row.

• Cheapest of the three: Seedream 4.0, 4 cents.
• Newest: Seedream 5.0 Lite, 5 cents, the same as 4.5.
• None list quality tiers or resolution tiers in the catalog.

Practical pick

Default to 5.0 Lite for new work and keep 4.0 for high-volume jobs where a cent matters.

Cost for a real job

A 12-image grid costs 48 cents on 4.0 and 60 cents on the two 5-cent rows. A 500-image seasonal set costs $20 on 4.0 and $25 on the others. The difference only matters at scale, so spend your testing budget on picture quality rather than on a cent. Because all three accept references, you can reuse one prompt and one reference set across rows to compare fairly.

Ask the live catalog before you commit, since a price can move: GET /v1/images/models/{model_id}/endpoints returns a pricing line with cost_usd for the row, and that is the number Sume charges.