Seed 1.6 vs Z-1

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 47. 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 50.5. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MMMU-Pro, 80 to 46.

Seed 1.6 is the reasoning model in the pair, while Z-1 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 Z-1.

Quick Verdict

Pick Seed 1.6 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Z-1 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

Z-1

42.2

63
Terminal-Bench 2.0
39
67
BrowseComp
49
58
OSWorld-Verified
41

Coding

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

42.4

Z-1

26.7

64
HumanEval
44
46
SWE-bench Verified
33
38
LiveCodeBench
22
46
SWE-bench Pro
30

Multimodal & Grounded

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

79.6

Z-1

50.5

80
MMMU-Pro
46
79
OfficeQA Pro
56

Reasoning

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

74.5

Z-1

54.8

69
SimpleQA
50
69
MuSR
48
86
BBH
74
77
LongBench v2
56
78
MRCRv2
57

Knowledge

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

56.4

Z-1

42.7

73
MMLU
52
72
GPQA
51
70
SuperGPQA
49
68
OpenBookQA
47
75
MMLU-Pro
64
11
HLE
6
68
FrontierScience
51

Instruction Following

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

87

Z-1

80

87
IFEval
80

Multilingual

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

83.4

Z-1

72.7

88
MGSM
74
81
MMLU-ProX
72

Mathematics

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

75.9

Z-1

60.9

72
AIME 2023
52
74
AIME 2024
54
73
AIME 2025
53
68
HMMT Feb 2023
48
70
HMMT Feb 2024
50
69
HMMT Feb 2025
49
71
BRUMO 2025
51
82
MATH-500
73

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Seed 1.6 or Z-1?

Seed 1.6 is ahead overall, 65 to 47. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MMMU-Pro, where the scores are 80 and 46.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Seed 1.6 or Z-1?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 56.4 versus 42.7. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Seed 1.6 or Z-1?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 42.4 versus 26.7. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Seed 1.6 or Z-1?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 75.9 versus 60.9. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Seed 1.6 or Z-1?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 74.5 versus 54.8. Inside this category, MuSR is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Seed 1.6 or Z-1?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 62.3 versus 42.2. 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 Z-1?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 79.6 versus 50.5. 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 Z-1?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 87 versus 80. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Seed 1.6 or Z-1?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 83.4 versus 72.7. Inside this category, MGSM is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 12, 2026

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