# What is Seedance 2.0, and what is it good for?

**Short answer:** Seedance 2.0 is ByteDance's video model that generates picture and sound together from text, image, audio and video inputs, offered as a hosted model with cheaper Fast and Mini tiers. It is good for story work with recurring characters: every film we have released, 4 hours of series and several features, was rendered on it.

URL: https://arc.katechon.technology/answers/what-is-seedance-2-0
Updated: 2026-10-18

## What ByteDance says it is

Seedance 2.0 adopts a unified multimodal audio-video joint generation architecture that supports text, image, audio and video inputs, and accepts images, audio and video as references. (Source: ByteDance Seed, Seedance 2.0, https://seed.bytedance.com/en/seedance2_0, checked 2026-10-18)

## What it is good for, from our productions

- **Series with a recurring cast.** [Blood Sun: The Fall of Kratos](https://arc.katechon.technology/films/blood-sun) (45 episodes) and [High Note](https://arc.katechon.technology/films/high-note) (40 episodes, about 5 core characters) held their faces across episodes with reference sheets on every shot.
- **Long films.** [The Fall of Kalak](https://arc.katechon.technology/films/the-fall-of-kalak): 427 shots, 13 characters and 21 locations, rendered in one day.
- **Dialogue.** On Fast at 16:9, dialogue came through essentially word-perfect in [The Emperor's Pleasure Court](https://arc.katechon.technology/films/the-emperors-pleasure-court).
- **Volume on a budget.** Most of our series ran on Mini at 720p; our first five series averaged $2.26 per finished minute in video.

## Where it struggles

- It can invent a voice-over on near-empty shots, such as a black frame; give those shots an ambience-only sound note.
- Colour words land where you put them: "cold blue shade on her face" painted a character's skin blue. Keep colour on the environment, not on skin.
- Output moderation blocks faces that look like real celebrities (Atlas returns error 1012004, "may be related to copyright restrictions"); recast the face rather than rewriting the shot.
- About 1 in 15 Fast clips failed once and passed on retry in one of our series.

## Tiers and prices

List prices quoted 2026-10-17:

| Tier | Resolutions in Arc | List USD/s at 720p | Arc credits for a 10 s 720p clip |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Seedance 2.0 | 480p, 720p, 1080p | $0.243 | 751 |
| Seedance 2.0 Fast | 480p, 720p | $0.194 | 226 |
| Seedance 2.0 Mini | 480p, 720p | $0.121 | 94 |

Model prices on this page are Atlas Cloud list prices quoted 2026-10-17 with its free /calculate endpoint, as published in our [AI video price index](https://arc.katechon.technology/ai-video-price-index). Seedance costs the same with audio on or off. (Source: Atlas Cloud model catalog and /calculate list prices, https://www.atlascloud.ai/models, checked 2026-10-17)

## How to use it

1. Use it through an app that hosts it, such as Arc, or through a model API provider.
2. Make a reference image for each character and location first, then attach them to every shot.
3. Write one action and one line of dialogue per shot, 4–15 seconds long in Arc.
4. Draft on Mini, check the takes, and re-render only the shots that need more detail on Fast or the full model.

## Where Katechon Arc fits

Arc is built on Seedance 2.0, Fast and Mini: you plan episodes, build references, storyboard and render in one project, with the credit cost shown before each clip.

Arc does not give raw API access to Seedance, and it does not offer Seedance 2.5; use a model API provider for either.

## People also ask

### Is Seedance 2.0 free?

No. Every second is billed through API providers and apps that host it, though some apps include trial credits.

### Is Seedance 2.0 open source, and can you run it locally?

ByteDance's Seedance 2.0 page offers no model weights or download, so it is used as a hosted model; we know of no official way to run it locally.

### Is Seedance 2.0 censored?

Hosted Seedance applies content moderation to inputs and outputs. In our productions the most common block was a character face that resembled a real celebrity.

## Related answers

- [Seedance 2.0 vs Seedance 2.0 Mini vs Fast: what is the difference?](https://arc.katechon.technology/answers/seedance-2-0-vs-seedance-2-0-mini-vs-fast): They are three tiers of the same model: Seedance 2.0 is the full model and the only one at 1080p, Fast is cheaper and quicker, and Mini is…
- [How much does Seedance 2.0 cost?](https://arc.katechon.technology/answers/how-much-does-seedance-2-0-cost): Seedance 2.0 listed at $0.243/s at 720p and $0.547/s at 1080p on 2026-10-17, so a 10-second 720p clip is about $2.43.
- [Seedance 2.0 vs Kling 3.0 vs Veo 3.1: which should you use?](https://arc.katechon.technology/answers/seedance-2-0-vs-kling-3-0-vs-veo-3-1): For long series on a budget, Seedance 2.0 and its cheaper Fast and Mini tiers, which rendered every film we have released; for short…
- [Why do AI video generations fail or get blocked?](https://arc.katechon.technology/answers/why-do-ai-video-generations-fail-or-get-blocked): Three different things look like a failure: transient job errors that pass on retry, content moderation that blocks an input or an output,…
- [Seedance 2.0 vs Seedance 2.5: is the upgrade worth the price?](https://arc.katechon.technology/answers/seedance-2-0-vs-seedance-2-5): Seedance 2.5 is ByteDance's newer model, released on July 31, 2026, and on 2026-10-17 it listed at $0.377/s at 720p against $0.243/s for…

## Sources

- ByteDance Seed, Seedance 2.0: [seed.bytedance.com/en/seedance2_0](https://seed.bytedance.com/en/seedance2_0), checked 2026-10-18
- Atlas Cloud model catalog and /calculate list prices: [www.atlascloud.ai/models](https://www.atlascloud.ai/models), checked 2026-10-17