Seedream 5.5 vs Nano Banana: 15 Edits, What Changed
ByteDance says Seedream 5.5 keeps the rest of your picture the same after a hundred edits. I gave four models the same 15 edits and measured what else changed: Seedream 5.5 6.8%, Nano Banana Pro 44.2%. What you'll learn: → What ByteDance launched → The 15-edit race, and a fairer test → See-through PNGs, small text, and a blind realism test → ByteDance's own numbers, and what X found → What it costs, and which model for which job My tests (10 Nov 2026, one run each, list prices; Seedream 5.5 through WaveSpeedAI, a reseller; Nano Banana Pro is Gemini 3 Pro Image; GPT Image 2.6 on high) • 15 edits in a row on a desk picture I made with GPT Image 2. Untouched area changed by edit 15: Seedream 5.5 6.8%, GPT Image 2.6 41.4%, Nano Banana Pro 44.2%, Seedream 5.0 Pro 83.8%. With a mask, GPT Image 2.6: 59.7% (black patches). Colour shift (delta-E): Seedream 5.5 5.0, 5.0 Pro 22.7. Lower is better. • Each edit ends with "Keep everything else in the picture exactly the same." 1. Change the colour of the small dark green desk mat at the top right of the desk to bright red. 2. Put a plain white coffee mug on top of the brown leather notebook at the lower right of the desk. 3. Replace the woven wicker waste-paper basket on the floor at the lower left with a shiny red metal bin of the same size. 4. Put a small green plant in a white pot on the desk at its top left corner, left of the computer. 5. Put a pair of black reading glasses on the large green desk mat, near its lower left corner. 6. Turn the computer's screen on, showing a few lines of green text on black. 7. Put a yellow pencil on the large green desk mat, in the middle of it. 8. Change the colour of the leather notebook under the mug to dark blue. 9. Hang a small framed landscape painting on the wall above the right half of the desk. 10. Remove the white coffee mug from the notebook. 11. Put a small stack of three books on the floor under the desk, between the two sets of drawers. 12. Change the metal handles on the left set of drawers to shiny silver. 13. Put a black smartphone on the red desk mat at the top right. 14. Put a red apple on the large green desk mat, near its right edge. 15. Stick a yellow sticky note on the frame of the computer's screen, with the number 020 written on it in thick black marker. • Glass bottle, no background: real see-through PNGs from Seedream 5.5 and GPT Image 2.6 only. • Café menu in English and Spanish, 49 words: all four right. • Blind realism key (8:20): A GPT Image 2.6, B Seedream 5.0 Pro, C Nano Banana Pro, D Seedream 5.5. My pick: B. • One see-through picture cost me $0.02 (Seedream 5.5), $0.05 (GPT Image 2.6), $0.14 (Nano Banana Pro). Honest trade-offs: one run each, one picture, small sizes: a sample. 15 edits, not a hundred. I tested Nano Banana Pro, not the Nano Banana 2.1 ByteDance compared against. Edits and menus checked by eye. Timestamps 0:00 Seedream 5.5 vs Nano Banana: the result 0:56 What ByteDance launched 1:20 The 15-edit race 2:47 Colour drift and a fairer test 4:12 Test 2: a see-through file 4:55 Test 3: small text in two languages 5:35 Test 4: a blind realism test 5:58 Where ByteDance's numbers come from 6:45 What people found on X 7:38 Price, and where to use it 8:20 Verdict: which model for which job 8:56 Recap Numbers used (checked 10 Nov 2026) • ByteDance's own tests: a 100-edit demo, severe text corruption 0.4%, its MagicArena vs GPT Image 2.5 and Nano Banana 2.1 (which wins realism in edits, -6.18%). https://seed.bytedance.com/en/blog/more-realistic-images-more-stable-editing-across-100-rounds-introducing-seedream-5-5 • BytePlus: "over 80 rounds of clean edits". https://ai.byteplus.com/lumina/en/image/seedream-5-5 • Tech Times: no drift metric, no public blind-vote score yet. https://www.techtimes.com/articles/330349/20261110/bytedance-seedream-55-ai-image-editor-claims-100-edits-without-drift-publishes-no-drift-data.htm • Resellers: WaveSpeedAI $0.02 at 1k https://wavespeed.ai/models/bytedance/seedream-v5.5 · Atlas Cloud $0.02 https://www.atlascloud.ai/models/seedream-5.5 • Rollout in Jimeng and Doubao: https://the-decoder.com/bytedances-seedream-5-5-promises-pixel-stable-image-editing-across-100-rounds-without-color-drift/ · API this week (Chinese press): https://sspai.com/post/118854 • X: 52 of 144 posts with media repeated the same lines (my count). From X (their tests, not mine): https://x.com/dotey/status/2119823986603299193 https://x.com/swiat_ai/status/2119850095726444802 https://x.com/alisaqqt/status/2119805701300408634 (not independent: builds an image API platform) https://x.com/saidbek_dx/status/2119893647244308702 https://x.com/higgsfield_ai/status/2119845862910439710 (a reseller) AI narration; the presenter is my HeyGen avatar. Which letter did you pick in the blind test? Tell me in the comments. Follow Mervin Praison for more AI news, explained simply. #Seedream #Seedream55 #NanoBanana #ByteDance #AIImage
