README

Seedream 5.5 API for Stable Multi-Turn Image Editing

Seedream 5.5 is ByteDance Seed's new image creation model. ByteDance says it can edit the same image round after round without color shifts in unedited areas, generate assets with transparent backgrounds, and render lighting, skin and small text more precisely.

What's New in Seedream 5.5

ByteDance Seed released Seedream 5.5 on November 9, 2026, describing it as a multimodal image generation model with greater creativity and more precise execution. Below are the upgrades ByteDance highlights.

Stable Multi-Turn Editing

ByteDance says Seedream 5.5 preserves unedited regions at the pixel level, eliminates color shifts in those areas and reduces detail loss across successive edits. According to ByteDance, this supports continued work on the same image across 100 rounds of editing.

Precise Changes to Small Details

In ByteDance's demo of 100 successive edits on one person, small items such as rings and eyeglass frames were still edited precisely. In a separate interior example, a moved box kept its perspective and occlusion coherent.

Native Transparent Backgrounds

According to ByteDance, Seedream 5.5 directly generates images with an alpha channel, including full and partial transparency, from text descriptions or reference images, so assets can be used without separate background removal or edge cleanup.

Reusable Characters and Styled Text Assets

ByteDance shows character assets reused as references across scenes while keeping their defining features and textures, and a reference image's brushwork, colors and materials applied to chosen text to produce transparent text assets.

More Realistic Lighting, Materials and Skin

According to ByteDance, Seedream 5.5 produces more natural-looking lighting, materials, and skin textures while reducing excessive gloss and overexposure. ByteDance also reports fewer blotchy textures in some images.

Clearer Complex Characters and Small Text

Seedream 5.5 renders complex character shapes and densely arranged small text more accurately, according to ByteDance, whose examples include an English newspaper-style page and a Chinese infographic.

Seedream 5.5 Compared With Seedream 5.0 Pro

Results from ByteDance's own evaluation on its internal MagicArena platform, scored by experienced evaluators across six use cases.

Measure	ByteDance's own evaluation
Use cases tested	E-commerce, marketing, film and television, gaming, office productivity, fashion design
Quality scores and usability rates	Improved across all six use cases versus Seedream 5.0 Pro
Usability rates in film and television and office productivity	More than twice those of Seedream 5.0 Pro
Pairwise preference (GSB) versus the previous version	Positive in all four comparisons, reaching +55.62% for realism in image-to-image tasks
Severe text corruption rate	Fell to 0.4%
Minor text corruption rate	Fell to 1.7%

Seedream 5.5 Specifications

What ByteDance has announced, plus details reported by early API providers. Kie.ai's own parameter names will be listed when the API is connected.

Specification	Seedream 5.5
Developer	ByteDance Seed
Released	November 9, 2026
Capabilities (per ByteDance)	Text to image, multi-turn image editing, images with full or partial transparency
Output resolution tiers	1K, 1.5K and 2K, as reported by early API providers
Aspect ratios	Including 1:1, 4:3, 3:4, 16:9, 9:16, 3:2, 2:3 and 21:9, as reported by early API providers
Reference images for editing	Up to 10, as reported by early API providers
Output formats	PNG or JPEG; transparent (RGBA) output requires PNG, as reported by early API providers
Layer decomposition	A separate option that splits an image into a base image and transparent layers, as reported by early API providers
Kie.ai parameters	Listed when the API is connected on Kie.ai

What You Can Build With Seedream 5.5

Iterative Image Editing Tools

Let your users refine one image step by step, changing a product, an accessory or an object's position. ByteDance says Seedream 5.5 preserves unedited regions while reducing detail loss across successive edits.

Design Assets With Transparent Backgrounds

ByteDance says Seedream 5.5 can generate images with full or partial transparency from text descriptions or reference images, without separate background removal. Early API providers report transparent output as a PNG option; Kie.ai has not yet connected the API.

E-Commerce and Marketing Visuals

E-commerce and marketing are among the use cases where ByteDance reports improved quality scores and usability rates over Seedream 5.0 Pro, alongside more natural lighting and material textures.

Text-Heavy Layouts

Generate visuals that require complex character shapes and densely arranged small text, an area where ByteDance reports reduced severe and minor text corruption rates in its evaluation.

Seedream 5.5 on Kie.ai

Availability

ByteDance says it is rolling out Seedream 5.5 across its own products and its Volcano Engine Ark cloud platform. The model is not yet available on Kie.ai; this page will list its parameters once the API is connected.

Build With Existing Seedream Models Today

You can start building today with Seedream 5.0 Flash and Seedream 5.0 Pro, which are already live on Kie.ai.

One Key Across the Kie.ai Market

All models in the Kie.ai market use the same authentication method: an Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY header with the key from your Kie.ai API Key Management page. Your account has one credit balance that all generation services draw from, and you can check it with the Get Remaining Credits API.

Nothing to Host

Kie.ai provides its models as an API; there are no GPUs or model weights to manage.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the main features of Seedream 5.5?

According to ByteDance, Seedream 5.5 introduces more consistent multi-turn editing that preserves unedited regions, native generation of images with transparent backgrounds, more natural lighting, materials, and skin textures, and more accurate rendering of complex characters and dense small text.

Can I keep editing the same image over many rounds?

ByteDance states that the model supports continued editing on the same image across many successive rounds, keeping unedited regions intact at the pixel level, eliminating color shifts in those areas, and reducing detail loss.

Can Seedream 5.5 create images with transparent backgrounds?

Yes. According to ByteDance, the model directly generates images with an alpha channel, including full and partial transparency, from text descriptions or reference images without separate background removal or edge cleanup.

Does Seedream 5.5 render text accurately?

According to ByteDance, Seedream 5.5 renders complex character shapes and densely arranged small text more accurately than before. ByteDance's examples include an English newspaper-style page and a Chinese infographic.

Can I use reference images with Seedream 5.5?

Yes. ByteDance says Seedream 5.5 can create assets from text descriptions or reference images and reuse a character as a reference across scenes.

How does Seedream 5.5 compare with Seedream 5.0 Pro?

In ByteDance's internal MagicArena evaluation, Seedream 5.5 achieved higher quality scores and usability rates than Seedream 5.0 Pro across every use case tested, from e-commerce to fashion design. See the comparison table on this page for ByteDance's published figures.

Is there a Seedream 5.5 Pro?

ByteDance has stated that a Pro version of the Seedream 5.5 series will follow, without announcing a release date.

Is the Seedream 5.5 API available on Kie.ai?

Not yet. ByteDance says it is rolling out Seedream 5.5 across its own products and its Volcano Engine Ark cloud platform, and Kie.ai has not connected the API. In the meantime, you can build with Seedream 5.0 Flash or Seedream 5.0 Pro on Kie.ai.

How much will the Seedream 5.5 API cost on Kie.ai?

Pricing for Seedream 5.5 is not listed yet. Check the pricing card on this page for billing details when the model becomes available on Kie.ai.

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