We run both of these models on one account, through one wallet, and bill them from one price table — which means the numbers below are what our own system deducts rather than what two vendors say about themselves. Google's Nano Banana Pro and ByteDance's Seedream 5.0 Pro are the two hosted image models people most often put head to head here. They cost different amounts, they climb to different sizes, and they are good at different jobs. Here is all of that, with the arithmetic done.
Both models are hosted: they run on a provider's hardware and invoice us per call, so both are paid in ✦ gold credits and both open at the Starter plan. Green credits — the ones a free account refills toward every day — pay only for models running on hardware we own, so they cannot buy either of these at any size. That is everything the two have in common. The rest is where they part.
| Nano Banana Pro | Seedream 5.0 Pro | |
|---|---|---|
| Made by | ByteDance | |
| Price, smaller sizes | ✦4.7 | ✦2.2 |
| Price, largest size | ✦8.1 at 4K | ✦3.7 at 2K |
| Output sizes | 1K, 2K, 4K | 1K, 2K |
| Reference images | Up to 6 | Up to 6 |
| Wallet | ✦ gold | ✦ gold |
| Opens at | Starter | Starter |
The size ladders are not shaped the same way, and this is the part most comparisons miss. On Nano Banana Pro, 1K and 2K bill the identical ✦4.7 — only the 4K step costs more, and it costs about 1.7 times the smaller sizes. So if you have already chosen Nano Banana Pro there is no reason to ask it for 1K; you are paying for 2K whichever you pick. On Seedream 5.0 Pro there are two real steps, ✦2.2 and ✦3.7, and the switch happens at 1,536 pixels: anything you request at or above that bills the dearer tier, and the payload and the price read the same label so they cannot disagree.
What it costs: Gold is bought, not earned — signing up grants none of it. A Starter plan's ✦50 monthly grant is about 22 pictures on Seedream 5.0 Pro, 10 on Nano Banana Pro, or 6 on Nano Banana Pro at 4K. Creator's ✦380 is about 172, 80 and 46 respectively. That ratio, not a quality score, is what usually decides which one you end up living with.
We have not run a blind scoring study across five hundred prompts, and any site that claims it has for two models released this year is describing something it did not do. What we can tell you is what each one is reached for here, and why.
The reason Nano Banana Pro survives at more than twice the price is legible type. Signage, packaging copy, a shop front, a label, interface text in a mockup — these come back as words rather than as letter-shaped noise. It is also the model to reach for when a long piece of art direction has to hold all the way to the end of the prompt instead of collapsing into its first clause. If your brief contains a string of characters that a human will read, that is the whole argument and the price stops mattering.
Seedream 5.0 Pro is the newer generation of the model people already used for photographic work, and what it added over 4.5 is prompt adherence in a busy frame. Several subjects plus a described background survive together instead of fighting each other for the model's attention. Its instincts are photographic — skin, hair and fabric keep their texture at close range — which is what makes it the one to run in volume for product and portrait work.
Comparing the two at their base prices makes Nano Banana Pro look 2.1 times dearer. Comparing them like for like at 2K — the largest size Seedream 5.0 Pro offers — makes it ✦4.7 against ✦3.7, a single credit apart. The honest conclusion is that there is no one multiplier between these models, and the decision changes with the size you actually need.
The model picker in the image composer is a set of checkboxes rather than a dropdown, so the comparison in this article is one you can run on your own prompt in a single press. Tick both, write the prompt once, and both models receive the same text, the same reference images, the same aspect ratio and the same seed policy. Everything that comes back shares an album id, so the gallery shows it as one run rather than as loose cards you have to remember the order of.
Which plan: Both models open at Starter and are paid in ✦ gold. A free account sees both rows in the picker with the plan that opens them rather than having them hidden, so the menu doubles as the price list — but a free account's own comparison is between the models on our own GPUs plus GPT Image 2, which costs nothing.
Copies are per model and are clamped by your plan's parallel job allowance divided by how many models you ticked, never below one. For a comparison that is the right shape anyway: one copy each, judged side by side. Days later the album is still the record of this prompt, these models, this day — which is the thing that makes having run the comparison worth anything at all.
Load a comparison prompt — Fills the prompt bar. Tick both models and press Generate yourself — nothing runs until you do.
If you can only afford to keep one habit, keep Seedream 5.0 Pro. It costs less than half as much per press, its weaknesses are the kind you notice immediately rather than three hundred pictures later, and the money you save is the money that pays for the second and third attempt that actually gets the shot. Nano Banana Pro is not a luxury version of it — it is a different tool that you reach for on a specific class of brief, and paying twice the price for a picture with no text in it is how a Starter grant disappears in a fortnight.
The one thing not to do is fan every prompt across both models for weeks. Run the comparison once at the start of a project, keep the album, and then commit. An expensive way to avoid making a decision is still avoiding the decision.
Seedream 5.0 Pro, at ✦2.2 a picture against ✦4.7. At the top of each ladder it is ✦3.7 at 2K against ✦8.1 at 4K. The one place they nearly meet is a like-for-like 2K render, where they are a single credit apart.
No. Both are hosted models that bill their provider per call, so they need ✦ gold credits and open at the Starter plan. The free comparison on this platform is between the models running on our own GPUs plus GPT Image 2, which costs 0 credits on every plan and is limited by a daily run count instead.
Nano Banana Pro. Readable type inside the image is the specific thing it is better at, and it is the reason the price difference is worth paying on that class of work.
Six each. Attach them and the prompt becomes an edit instruction against those pictures rather than a description from nothing, which is how you carry a character or a product from one scene into another.
Yes, and it is the point of the composer being a checkbox list. One press submits to every ticked model with identical inputs, the results land as one album, and the Generate button shows the total and the wallet split before you commit.