MiniMax H3 Image vs Seedream 5.5

Arena's text-to-image, text-rendering, and image-edit boards of November 7, 2026, list neither model yet, so there are no blind votes to compare them by, only what each maker says.

MiniMax released MiniMax H3 Image on November 10, 2026 and says it goes beyond the familiar "AI look", with intricate detail and lifelike realism. It also calls its instruction following the strongest among open-source models. Both are the maker's own claims, not independent votes.

ByteDance released Seedream 5.5 on November 9, 2026 and tuned it for realism: skin, light, and materials closer to a real photograph, with less of the excess gloss and overexposure image models often add.

MiniMax's showcase for MiniMax H3 Image includes text with reasoning behind it: logic puzzles in Chinese and in English, worked through and solved on the board. Arena's text-rendering board does not list MiniMax H3 Image yet, so there is no independent score for its lettering.

ByteDance reports that Seedream 5.5 sets dense small text and complex characters more accurately than earlier Seedream models, and Arena's text-rendering board does not list it yet either.

MiniMax H3 Image makes and edits images in the same model, and on Mage it takes up to 16 input images at once. MiniMax's own showcase composes an empty room and a set of furniture pieces, each its own reference image, into one furnished living room, and turns an untextured grey render of a scene into a photographic film still.

ByteDance built Seedream 5.5 for long editing sessions: it keeps the parts of an image you did not ask to change at the pixel level, so colors do not drift and detail does not wear away from one round to the next, and its launch demo runs one portrait through 100 successive edits. On Mage it takes up to 10 input images and follows points and boxes placed on an image.

MiniMax built MiniMax H3 Image to render its full size directly, with no upscaler, at about the same pixel count in every aspect ratio. On Mage that full size is 4K, and 2K is there for quicker drafts.

Seedream 5.5 renders up to 2K. Both offer the same 9 aspect ratios on Mage, from 9:21 to 21:9.

MiniMax H3 Image starts at 15 Gems (about $0.015) per image on Mage and runs unlimited from the Pro plan. Seedream 5.5 starts at 24 Gems (about $0.024) per image on Mage and runs unlimited from the Pro plan.

MiniMax H3 Image's starting price and unlimited plan are for 2K: 4K images cost more Gems and run unlimited from a higher plan, and each input image you attach adds to the price. On Seedream 5.5, too, each input image you attach adds to the price.