Doubao 1.5 Pro Max vs Doubao 1.5 Pro Reasoning: which model should you choose?
We compared Doubao 1.5 Pro Max and Doubao 1.5 Pro Reasoning on price, context window and 12 benchmarks. Doubao 1.5 Pro Reasoning has the stronger average benchmark score; Doubao 1.5 Pro Reasoning is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis.
Doubao 1.5 Pro Max
Doubao 1.5 Pro Max is a multimodal model from ByteDance. It offers a 400,000-token context window, costs $14.93 per million input tokens and $73.69 per million output tokens, and averages 81.2 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $14.93 / 1M
- Output
- $73.69 / 1M
- Context
- 400,000
- Avg score
- 81.2
- Open weights
- No
Doubao 1.5 Pro Reasoning
Doubao 1.5 Pro Reasoning is a multimodal model from ByteDance. It offers a 128,000-token context window, costs $14.56 per million input tokens and $58.10 per million output tokens, and averages 81.6 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $14.56 / 1M
- Output
- $58.10 / 1M
- Context
- 128,000
- Avg score
- 81.6
- Open weights
- No
Specification comparison
| Spec | Doubao 1.5 Pro Max | Doubao 1.5 Pro Reasoning | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input price / 1M | $14.93 | $14.56 | B |
| Output price / 1M | $73.69 | $58.10 | B |
| Context window | 400,000 | 128,000 | A |
| Max output | 4,096 | 16,384 | B |
| Average score | 81.2 | 81.6 | B |
| Arena Elo | 1447.5 | 1439.2 | A |
| Open weights | No | No | Tie |
Benchmark comparison
Doubao 1.5 Pro Max wins 6, Doubao 1.5 Pro Reasoning wins 6, and 0 benchmarks are tied. The table shows the modelled score for each model and the gap.
| Benchmark | Doubao 1.5 Pro Max | Doubao 1.5 Pro Reasoning | Gap | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | 81.1 | 81.8 | 0.7 | Doubao 1.5 Pro Reasoning |
| GPQA Diamond | 76.1 | 78.1 | 2.0 | Doubao 1.5 Pro Reasoning |
| SWE-bench Verified | 70.7 | 69.7 | 1.0 | Doubao 1.5 Pro Max |
| HumanEval | 84.0 | 87.4 | 3.4 | Doubao 1.5 Pro Reasoning |
| MATH-500 | 85.3 | 85.1 | 0.2 | Doubao 1.5 Pro Max |
| AIME 2025 | 80.4 | 81.4 | 1.0 | Doubao 1.5 Pro Reasoning |
| LiveCodeBench | 73.5 | 73.9 | 0.4 | Doubao 1.5 Pro Reasoning |
| IFEval | 90.2 | 88.7 | 1.5 | Doubao 1.5 Pro Max |
| TruthfulQA | 84.4 | 82.3 | 2.1 | Doubao 1.5 Pro Max |
| HellaSwag | 87.8 | 90.7 | 2.9 | Doubao 1.5 Pro Reasoning |
| MMMU | 79.3 | 78.1 | 1.2 | Doubao 1.5 Pro Max |
| Arena Elo | 1447.5 | 1439.2 | 8.3 | Doubao 1.5 Pro Max |
Price analysis
On a blended 3:1 input-to-output basis, Doubao 1.5 Pro Max costs about $29.62 per million tokens and Doubao 1.5 Pro Reasoning costs about $25.45. Doubao 1.5 Pro Reasoning is roughly 14% cheaper than Doubao 1.5 Pro Max. At high volume, that gap compounds quickly, so price should carry real weight unless the quality difference is decisive.
Doubao 1.5 Pro Max has the larger context window at 400,000 tokens, compared with 128,000 for Doubao 1.5 Pro Reasoning. That matters for long documents, large codebases and multi-step agent traces.
Verdict
Across 12 shared benchmarks, Doubao 1.5 Pro Max wins 6, Doubao 1.5 Pro Reasoning wins 6, and 0 are tied. On the index average, Doubao 1.5 Pro Reasoning leads Doubao 1.5 Pro Max by 0.4 points (81.6 versus 81.2).
The price picture favours Doubao 1.5 Pro Reasoning. The context picture favours Doubao 1.5 Pro Max. Those two dimensions often matter more than a few benchmark points once a model is good enough for the task.
If you need a single default, start with Doubao 1.5 Pro Reasoning for quality-sensitive work, and check whether its price holds at your expected volume before committing.
Choose Doubao 1.5 Pro Max if
- You need the larger 400,000-token context window.
Choose Doubao 1.5 Pro Reasoning if
- You want the higher average benchmark score in this index.
- Unit cost matters and you want the cheaper blended price.
- You need the larger 16,384-token output limit.
- The workload needs multi-step reasoning.
FAQ
Is Doubao 1.5 Pro Max better than Doubao 1.5 Pro Reasoning?
On the index average, Doubao 1.5 Pro Reasoning leads Doubao 1.5 Pro Max by 0.4 points (81.6 versus 81.2). The better choice depends on price, context and your task. Doubao 1.5 Pro Max wins 6 benchmarks, Doubao 1.5 Pro Reasoning wins 6.
Which is cheaper, Doubao 1.5 Pro Max or Doubao 1.5 Pro Reasoning?
Doubao 1.5 Pro Reasoning is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis at about $25.45 per million tokens, versus $29.62 for Doubao 1.5 Pro Max.
Which has the larger context window?
Doubao 1.5 Pro Max has the larger context window at 400,000 tokens. Doubao 1.5 Pro Reasoning has 128,000 tokens.
Are these models open weights?
Doubao 1.5 Pro Max is proprietary; Doubao 1.5 Pro Reasoning is proprietary.
Which should I choose for production?
If you need a single default, start with Doubao 1.5 Pro Reasoning for quality-sensitive work, and check whether its price holds at your expected volume before committing.