DeepSeek pricing
How DeepSeek charges, what to know before you commit, and what you'd pay at your usage — next to what the alternatives would cost for the same thing.
How it charges
Checked 2026-10-03 on api-docs.deepseek.com ↗ · USD, list pricesIn short
Pay per token from a prepaid balance, with off-peak hours at half price and cache-hit input far cheaper.
- Free plan
- Yes
- Side project
- $2.70/mo deepseek-flash
- Growing
- $27/mo deepseek-flash
- Scaling
- $540/mo deepseek-flash
What the model leaves out
Peak-hour prices with cache-miss input (peak is 01:00–04:00 and 06:00–10:00 UTC, Monday–Friday). All other hours are half price (v4-pro $0.66 / $1.98, flash $0.15 / $0.60), and cache-hit input is far cheaper, so most workloads pay less than shown.
Before you commit
- Peak prices apply 01:00–04:00 and 06:00–10:00 UTC on weekdays; all other hours, weekends and Chinese public holidays are half price.
- Charges are deducted from a topped-up (or granted) balance, so you prepay rather than get billed afterwards.
- DeepSeek reserves the right to adjust prices and recommends checking the pricing page regularly.
- The legacy deepseek-v4-flash names are served by DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash and billed at the Flash price.
| Plan | Monthly fee | Input tokens per month | Output tokens per month |
|---|---|---|---|
| deepseek-v4-pro | None | $1.32 per million tokens | $3.96 per million tokens |
| deepseek-flash | None | $0.3 per million tokens | $1.2 per million tokens |
What you'd pay
deepseek-flash50 million tokens × $0.3 per million tokens + 10 million tokens × $1.2 per million tokens$27/mo
Cost as you grow
All LLM API pricing, compared →Which one fits your situation →