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New DeepSeek Pricing Published (Peak and Off-Peak)

5 points by mittermayr ↗ HN
See here: https://api-docs.deepseek.com/quick_start/pricing/

Peak pricing is twice the price, or, off-peak is half the price.

Peak hours are 01:00 - 04:00 and 06:00 - 10:00 UTC (all other hours are off-peak)

-- V4 FLASH NOW -----------------

Off-peak: $0.007 (cache hit), $0.22 (miss), $0.66 (out)

Peak: $0.014 (cache hit), $0.44 (miss), $1.32 (out)

-- V4 FLASH OLD vs NEW (OFF-PEAK) -----------------

Cache hit: $0.0028 vs $0.007 (+250%)

Cache miss: $0.14 vs $0.22 (+157%)

Output: $0.28 vs $0.66 (+235%)

-- V4 PRO -----------------

Off-peak: $0.022 (cache hit), $0.66 (miss), $1.98 (out)

Peak: $0.044 (cache hit), $1.32 (miss), $3.96 (out)

-----------------

Once the page gets updated and lost in time, to compare, the same page from August 1, 2026: https://web.archive.org/web/20260801170952/https://api-docs.deepseek.com/quick_start/pricing/

6 comments

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sixtyj
DeekSeek did a strategic b2c mistake. It is always easier to start with higher prices and give discounts than go opposite way (=raise).

But people get used to higher prices. Or they churn out.

For hobby projects there can be local or free models. There are also some caching techniques.

alxcls
Well I could have done without the improvement if it meant keeping the prices low, might have to find a better model for cheap inference
cheesecakegood
I guess it’s not unexpected per se, but the peak hours are solidly Chinese daytime work hours with an extended lunch break, and hitting a bit of Europe’s morning. But no American peak hours, unless you count after-work hobby coding (6-9 pm Pacific?) which tells you indirectly a bit that American adoption is not a major driver of revenue for them. Or that the after-work ‘hobbyist’ is the main audience, which is also plausible.
NullifyNAN
Thank you for old vs new comparison
cryptolobster
DeepSeek was already pretty cheap compared to OpenAI and else, but now with peak pricing, it's not as straightforward. GPT-4o mini is $0.15/$0.60 per 1M tokens, while DeepSeek V4 Flash off-peak is $0.22/$0.66. So still cheaper, but the gap is narrowing. But is it worth it for the end user?..