Seed 1.6 vs Nova Pro

Side-by-side benchmark comparison across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, and math workflows.

Seed 1.6 is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 65 to 38. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Seed 1.6's sharpest advantage is in multimodal & grounded, where it averages 79.6 against 41.1. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MMMU-Pro, 80 to 37.

Seed 1.6 is the reasoning model in the pair, while Nova Pro is not. That usually helps on harder chain-of-thought-heavy tests, but it can also mean more latency and more token spend in real use. Seed 1.6 gives you the larger context window at 256K, compared with 128K for Nova Pro.

Quick Verdict

Pick Seed 1.6 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Nova Pro only becomes the better choice if you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model.

Agentic

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

62.3

Nova Pro

33.3

63
Terminal-Bench 2.0
31
67
BrowseComp
39
58
OSWorld-Verified
32

Coding

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

42.4

Nova Pro

17.2

64
HumanEval
33
46
SWE-bench Verified
19
38
LiveCodeBench
14
46
SWE-bench Pro
20

Multimodal & Grounded

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

79.6

Nova Pro

41.1

80
MMMU-Pro
37
79
OfficeQA Pro
46

Reasoning

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

74.5

Nova Pro

46.3

69
SimpleQA
39
69
MuSR
37
86
BBH
63
77
LongBench v2
51
78
MRCRv2
51

Knowledge

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

56.4

Nova Pro

34.2

73
MMLU
41
72
GPQA
40
70
SuperGPQA
38
68
OpenBookQA
36
75
MMLU-Pro
53
11
HLE
4
68
FrontierScience
41

Instruction Following

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

87

Nova Pro

66

87
IFEval
66

Multilingual

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

83.4

Nova Pro

60.4

88
MGSM
61
81
MMLU-ProX
60

Mathematics

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

75.9

Nova Pro

48.6

72
AIME 2023
41
74
AIME 2024
43
73
AIME 2025
42
68
HMMT Feb 2023
37
70
HMMT Feb 2024
39
69
HMMT Feb 2025
38
71
BRUMO 2025
40
82
MATH-500
59

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Seed 1.6 or Nova Pro?

Seed 1.6 is ahead overall, 65 to 38. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MMMU-Pro, where the scores are 80 and 37.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Seed 1.6 or Nova Pro?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 56.4 versus 34.2. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Seed 1.6 or Nova Pro?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 42.4 versus 17.2. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Seed 1.6 or Nova Pro?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 75.9 versus 48.6. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Seed 1.6 or Nova Pro?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 74.5 versus 46.3. Inside this category, MuSR is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Seed 1.6 or Nova Pro?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 62.3 versus 33.3. Inside this category, Terminal-Bench 2.0 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, Seed 1.6 or Nova Pro?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 79.6 versus 41.1. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, Seed 1.6 or Nova Pro?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 87 versus 66. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Seed 1.6 or Nova Pro?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 83.4 versus 60.4. Inside this category, MGSM is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 12, 2026

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