Stop guessing which one. Put them side by side.

The grid says what these tools are. This says what builders did about it — one decision per person, changeable whenever you change your mind.

# Tool comparison — Seedance and Seedream (ByteDance) vs Adobe Firefly vs Black Forest Labs (FLUX)

Source: Kbaise, a directory of tools that work with Lovable projects.
Pick one and tell me why before writing any integration code.

## Seedance and Seedream (ByteDance) (seedance-and-seedream)
- URL: https://seed.bytedance.com
- Category: AI media generation
- Cost: mixed — Volcano Engine API: 480p $0.09/sec, 720p $0.21/sec, roughly $0.14/sec for Seedance 2.0. Dreamina subscriptions about $15/$35/$70 per month. Free about 60-120 credits/day.
- What it is: ByteDance's generative line: Seedance 2.5 and 2.0 for video, Seedream 5.0 for image. Distributed globally through Dreamina, in China through Jimeng, and to developers through Volcano Engine. Supports text, image, keyframe and video-to-video modes.
- Why builders pick it: Among the strongest quality-per-dollar in video - about $0.09 a second at 480p undercuts every Western model. Seedream 5.0 is now resold as a workhorse image model inside Magnific, Krea and Higgsfield, which is the clearest signal of its quality.
- Trap: Access is fragmented across Volcano Engine, Dreamina and Jimeng with different terms in each, and commercial rights are poorly documented in English. Video-input modes cost dramatically more, scaling with reference clip length to several dollars per five-second output.
- Wiring: Volcano Engine API, plus resale through fal, Replicate and Higgsfield.
- Full dossier: /api/public/tools/seedance-and-seedream

## Adobe Firefly (adobe-firefly)
- URL: https://firefly.adobe.com
- Category: AI media generation
- Cost: mixed — Free tier with limited watermarked credits. Standard $9.99/mo (2,000 credits), Pro $19.99 (4,000), Premium $199.99 (50,000). API is enterprise contract only.
- What it is: Adobe's generative suite, currently on Firefly Image 5, trained on Adobe Stock, openly licensed and public-domain material rather than scraped web images. Now also brokers third-party models and generates video. Credit cost varies by model: Image 5 is 10 credits, Image 4 Ultra 20.
- Why builders pick it: The pick when legal sign-off matters more than raw quality: Adobe offers IP indemnification to enterprise customers, which no other major generator does. Deep native integration into Photoshop, Illustrator and Express beats any bolt-on plugin.
- Trap: Free-tier outputs are watermarked. Consumer plans include no API access at all - Firefly Services is an enterprise sales contract with no published rate card, and community reports suggest a starting commitment near $1,000/month.
- Wiring: Firefly Services API is enterprise-only via Adobe Sales; there is no self-serve developer tier.
- Full dossier: /api/public/tools/adobe-firefly

## Black Forest Labs (FLUX) (black-forest-labs)
- URL: https://bfl.ai
- Category: AI media generation
- Cost: mixed — API per image: FLUX.2 klein from $0.014, pro from $0.03, flex $0.05, max $0.07. Kontext pro $0.04, max $0.08. Open weights free to self-host.
- What it is: The FLUX family from the ex-Stable Diffusion team. FLUX.2 ships as klein, dev, pro, flex and max; FLUX 3 landed 26 July 2026 as one multimodal model doing image, 20-second video with native audio, and robot action prediction, still in gated early access.
- Why builders pick it: The pragmatic pick when image generation lives inside your own product: cheap per-image API, plus dev and klein open weights you can run on your own GPUs with no per-call fee. Kontext remains the best instruction-based image editor.
- Trap: Open weights are not an open licence - dev and klein are non-commercial unless you buy a BFL commercial self-hosting licence. FLUX 3 access is staged and gated: video first, image later, open weights last.
- Wiring: Direct REST API at api.bfl.ai, plus resale through fal, Replicate and Together.
- Full dossier: /api/public/tools/black-forest-labs

## Rules
1. Prefer the free tier when no budget was stated, and say what the ceiling is.
2. Read the full dossier before integrating.
3. Fetch /api/public/models before writing any AI model ID.

Agents can fetch the same thing: GET /api/public/compare?slugs=seedance-and-seedream,adobe-firefly,black-forest-labs