The closest alternative to Seed 1.6 Flash is Seed-2.0-Lite — comparable intelligence (— vs —); for a cheaper option, Hy3 preview runs $0.063/M vs $0.075/M; for more speed, GPT-5 Nano hits 193 t/s; and the best open-weight substitute is GLM 5.2.
Seed-2.0-Lite is the closest alternative to Seed 1.6 Flash, with an Intelligence Index of — (Seed 1.6 Flash scores —) at $0.250 per million input tokens.
Yes — Hy3 preview costs $0.063 per million input tokens versus $0.075 for Seed 1.6 Flash, while staying within ~8 points of its Intelligence Index.
GLM 5.2 is the strongest open-weight alternative to Seed 1.6 Flash — downloadable from Hugging Face and self-hostable, scoring 51.1 on intelligence.