Doubao pricing, free plan and limits

Last updated: 2026-10-05

QuestMobile counted 382 million monthly users for Doubao in June 2026, the largest of any AI-native app in China. ByteDance's assistant covers chat, web search, voice calls, image and video generation, and a work mode that plans tasks and operates a PC. It runs on ByteDance's own models and is built for mainland China.

About Doubao

Doubao (豆包, Chinese for "bean bun") is the AI assistant app from ByteDance, the company behind TikTok and Douyin. It launched in August 2023 and is operated by Beijing Chuntian Zhiyun Technology; ByteDance's Seed 2.0 generation arrived in February 2026 (see Seed 2.0 Pro on HokAI). QuestMobile counted 382 million monthly active users for it in June 2026, up 172.1% on a year earlier, which put it first among China's AI-native apps, ahead of Qwen at 167 million and DeepSeek at 130 million.

Doubao started as a chat, search and creation app. You type, speak or point the camera at a question, and the App Store listing pitches everyday help such as cooking questions, trip planning, homework explanation and data analysis. It searches the web (the job Perplexity specialises in), explains or writes code, translates, and makes images and video with ByteDance's own Seedream 5.0 and Seedance 2.5 models (see Seedance 2.5 on HokAI). The paid plans run on the Doubao 2.1 series, and ByteDance names Seed 2.1 as the planning model in its work product (HokAI lists Seed 2.1 Turbo).

The newer half of the product is work mode. You state a goal, it plans the steps, then uses a browser, documents, spreadsheets and slides, and can run scheduled tasks. On a PC it works inside a virtual desktop that you can watch, pause or take over, and it plugs into Feishu, ByteDance's workplace suite, to read meeting notes and group chats. A third-party review on ai-bot.cn reported a large catalogue of skills and connectors. Other ByteDance products on HokAI include Trae for coding and CapCut for video editing.

Doubao is built for Chinese-language users inside mainland China. Opened from outside the mainland, doubao.com shows a region notice and points visitors to Dola, the international version. Readers outside China usually want a Western assistant instead, and the closest match on HokAI is ChatGPT, followed by Kimi. Google's Gemini and Anthropic's Claude are two further Western assistants listed on HokAI. Smart Match can narrow the choice to your task. The best AI chatbots guide ranks the Western options by job, and the AI chatbots category shows how the field is split between Chinese and Western apps. You can also browse other tools with a free tier or voice-enabled tools.

Screenshots

Pricing

The core app is free. Paid plans, sold in Chinese yuan since 24 June 2026, are Standard at 68 yuan a month (688 a year), Enhanced at 200 (2,048 a year) and Advanced, called Professional in the App Store, at 500 (5,088 a year). They raise the allowance for expert and work modes: Standard is described as more than five times the free quota, Enhanced as four times Standard and Advanced as ten times Standard.

Verified university students get Standard at 38 yuan a month during a six-month promotion. Subscriptions bought through Apple renew automatically. The dollar figures in the plan table are TechNode's May 2026 conversions, so treat them as approximate.

For a free alternative with a Western-friendly sign-up, Qwen keeps its consumer app free.

Key Features

• Work mode: Plans a goal into steps, then drives a browser, documents, spreadsheets and slides and runs scheduled tasks, with a PC virtual desktop the user can watch, pause or take over mid-task.
• Seedream 5.0 and Seedance 2.5 creation: Generates images, edits photos by voice command (background swaps, style changes) and makes video, with the desktop page naming Seedream 5.0 for images and Seedance 2.5 for video.
• Voice calls and live interpretation: Offers voice input, real-time voice calls and a live interpretation mode that speaks the translation in a voice close to the original speaker's, which the privacy policy says is not retained.
• Feishu connection: Work mode reads Feishu meeting conclusions and group chats to draft plans and weekly reports from a company's own context.
• Douyin-linked search and shopping: With a Douyin account linked, search results can come from Douyin and users can add products to a cart or place orders without leaving the app.
• Memory and voice cloning: A memory switch carries useful details between chats, and users can clone their own voice for the assistant after reading a short prompt aloud.

Pros

• ByteDance told Beijing Daily that features free before the paid launch stay free, so the change added quota tiers rather than taking things away.
• Work mode keeps a human in the loop: each step can be watched live, paused or taken over, which is a practical exit when an agent stalls.
• One review reports tasks keep running in the cloud with the PC switched off, so a long report job survives a closed laptop.
• The model line-up covers text, image and video under one account, so a Chinese-speaking user can skip separate image and video subscriptions.

Cons

• Mainland China only in practice: from outside, doubao.com shows a region notice and offers Dola instead, so international readers cannot rely on it.
• The personal edition may use de-identified chats and usage data for model training by default; opting out means turning off the help-improve-the-model setting under Privacy and permissions.
• It operates under China's 2023 interim generative AI rules, which RSF summarises as barring content that threatens national security and requiring support for socialist values, so political questions may be refused or answered with scripted lines.
• Paid quotas are published as multiples of one another, not as counts of tasks or messages, so you cannot price a heavy workload before buying.

Visit Doubao Official Website