ByteDance Seedance 2 Mini is the cheapest and fastest model in the Seedance 2 family on VdoBloom: it caps output at 480p or 720p, but keeps the full 4–15 second duration ladder and all six aspect ratios, so a 4-second 480p clip costs 6 credits — about $0.30 — and a 15-second 720p clip costs 50 credits. That price gap is the entire reason to use it. Mini is not the model you render a finished hero spot with; it is the model you burn through twenty ideas on before you commit credits to a flagship render.

What Seedance 2 Mini is actually best at

Mini shares the family’s motion behaviour — camera moves, physics and subject coherence all read like its siblings. What ByteDance stripped out is resolution headroom. The flagship Seedance 2 reaches 1080p and 4K; Mini stops at 720p.

That makes it the right tool for four jobs in particular. First, prompt discovery: writing a video prompt is iterative, and Mini lets you run eight or ten variations for the credit cost of a single flagship clip. Second, animatics and previs — blocking a 21:9 sequence at 480p tells you whether the camera move works long before resolution matters. Third, bulk social b-roll, where a 9:16 clip is going to be viewed on a phone at small size anyway. Fourth, learning: every miss costs the least of any Seedance option in the catalog.

It carries VdoBloom’s MODERATE content label, the same as Seedance 2 and Seedance 2 Fast. Ordinary creative, commercial and lifestyle prompts pass. If your concept keeps getting refused, the flexible-tier models elsewhere in the catalog are the place to look, not Mini.

The real specs

These come straight from the model configuration, not from a spec sheet:

Durations: 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15 seconds — single-second steps, twelve options.
Resolutions: 480p and 720p only.
Aspect ratios: 16:9, 4:3, 1:1, 3:4, 9:16 and 21:9.
Inputs: text-to-video and image-to-video, with a separate, cheaper credit rate whenever a reference video is supplied.
Content tier: MODERATE.

The 21:9 option deserves a note: cinema-wide framing is usually reserved for expensive tiers, and having it at 480p means you can test a widescreen composition for well under a dollar, then re-run the winning prompt on the flagship at 4K.

Credit costs, tier by tier

One credit is $0.05 on the Lite plan ($15 for 300 credits), so the dollar column below is what a clip actually costs you at that rate. Annual billing and larger packs bring the per-credit price down further — see pricing for the current tiers.

Setting	Credits	Cost at $0.05/credit	What you get
480p, 4s	6	$0.30	Cheapest possible Seedance 2 test clip
480p, 5s	8	$0.40	Standard short social beat
480p, 8s	13	$0.65	Full scene block for an animatic
480p, 10s	16	$0.80	Long previs pass
480p, 15s	24	$1.20	Maximum length, draft quality
720p, 4s	13	$0.65	Usable short clip for feeds
720p, 5s	17	$0.85	The most common delivery setting
720p, 8s	26	$1.30	Publishable mid-length clip
720p, 10s	33	$1.65	Ten seconds at deliverable quality
720p, 15s	50	$2.50	Longest clip Mini will produce
480p, 5s, with reference video	5	$0.25	Discounted reference-video rate
720p, 10s, with reference video	20	$1.00	Same clip, reference video supplied

Two things stand out. A 720p clip costs roughly double the 480p clip of the same length — the ladder is almost perfectly linear in both duration and resolution, which makes budgeting trivial. And supplying a reference video is cheaper, not more expensive: 720p at 10 seconds drops from 33 credits to 20. If you already have footage to transform, always feed it in.

For scale: the flagship Seedance 2 at 720p for 5 seconds is 82 credits, and Seedance 2 Fast at the same setting is 50. Mini’s 17 is roughly a fifth of the flagship. Your 10 free signup credits cover a 480p 4-second clip plus a second short reference-video pass — enough to see the model behave before you pay anything. If you want to try the family without an account first, the free AI video generator page walks through it.

How to prompt Seedance 2 Mini well

Mini rewards the same prompt discipline as the rest of the family, with one adjustment: because output is 480p or 720p, fine texture detail is wasted specification. Skip “individual fabric fibres visible” and spend those words on motion instead.

A prompt that works here has four parts in this order: subject and appearance, the action with a verb that implies speed, the camera behaviour, and the lighting. Naming the camera move explicitly — slow push-in, locked-off frontal, tracking alongside, gentle orbit — is the single highest-leverage habit, because an unspecified camera is the most common cause of a clip that looks aimless. Keep to one action per clip; at 5 seconds there is no room for a sequence of beats, and asking for two makes the model rush both.

State what should not move, too: “the background stays static” is more reliable than hoping it will. For reusable starting points, the Seedance prompt library collects structures that already survive contact with this family.

A worked example

Say you need a 9:16 opener for a coffee brand. Start at 480p, 5 seconds, 9:16 — 8 credits, $0.40. Prompt: a ceramic cup of black coffee on a pale wooden counter, steam curling upward in a thin ribbon, slow push-in that stops just short of the rim, warm morning window light from the left, background softly out of focus and static.

Run it three times at different seeds: 24 credits total, $1.20. Pick the take where the steam behaves, then re-run that exact prompt at 720p, 5 seconds — 17 credits. Total spend to a deliverable clip: 41 credits, about $2.05. The same exploration done directly on the flagship would have cost 328 credits. If the final clip needs to be 4K, the winning prompt moves across to Seedance 2 unchanged, because the aspect ratios and duration ladder are identical across the family.

When to pick a different model instead

Choose the flagship Seedance 2 when the clip is the deliverable and it needs 1080p or 4K — upscaling a 720p render never matches a native one. Choose Seedance 2 Fast when you want the same 480p and 720p tiers with quicker turnaround and are willing to pay roughly three times Mini’s rate for it — 50 credits against 17 at 720p for 5 seconds. Choose Seedance 1.5 Pro when your prompt keeps tripping the MODERATE filter — the older generation carries a more permissive label and still reaches 1080p. And if your input is a single photograph rather than a text idea, a dedicated image animator such as V1 Lite I2V is a simpler and cheaper path than a full Seedance 2 render.

Credit prices in this family are adjusted when the upstream provider changes its rates, including limited-time promotional pricing. The cost for your exact duration and resolution is always shown in the generator before you spend anything — check it there, not here, if the number matters to your budget. Full specs live on the Seedance 2 Mini model page.

Frequently asked questions

Can Seedance 2 Mini output 1080p?

No. Mini is capped at 480p and 720p. For 1080p or 4K you need Seedance 2 itself, or Seedance 1.5 Pro for 1080p.

What is the cheapest clip Seedance 2 Mini can make?

A 4-second 480p clip at 6 credits, roughly $0.30 at the Lite rate. With a reference video supplied, a 4-second 480p pass drops to 4 credits.

Does Mini support vertical video for Reels and TikTok?

Yes. 9:16 and 3:4 are both available, along with 16:9, 4:3, 1:1 and 21:9 — the same six ratios as the rest of the Seedance 2 family.

Why does supplying a reference video cost less?

The upstream provider charges a lower rate when a reference clip is supplied than for text- or image-started generation, and VdoBloom passes that difference through. At 720p for 10 seconds it is 20 credits instead of 33.

Are Seedance 2 Mini clips watermarked?

Free-plan downloads carry a watermark. Any paid plan downloads watermark-free with commercial rights, at every resolution Mini supports.

Is a 15-second clip really one generation?

Yes. Duration is a single setting from 4 to 15 seconds in one-second steps, with no stitching required.

How to Use ByteDance Seedance 2 Mini: Specs, Credit Costs and Prompts