DeepSeek API pricing per 1M tokens, 7 routes

According to APITariff, DeepSeek API pricing on 2026-10-05 still bills two rates for every token: a peak rate, and an off-peak rate at 50% of it. The rates on DeepSeek’s pricing page match the 2026-09-17 reading. deepseek-flash costs $0.30 input and $1.20 output per 1M tokens at peak. deepseek-v4-pro costs $1.32 and $3.96. OpenRouter moved instead. Its deepseek-v4-pro slug reads $0.2088 input and $0.4176 output on 2026-10-05, 87.0% below its reading of $1.60 and $3.20 on 2026-09-15. At 1,000,000 calls of 1,000 input and 300 output tokens, OpenRouter’s slug bills $334.08, against $1,254 at DeepSeek’s off-peak rate and $2,508 at its peak rate. kie.ai lists one DeepSeek model in APITariff’s feed, deepseek-v4.1-flash, and bills $262.50 for the same 1,000,000 calls.

Last updated 2026-10-05 · 2 models on DeepSeek’s page · 11 DeepSeek slugs on OpenRouter, 1 on kie.ai · sources: DeepSeek pricing page and change log, APITariff fetch of OpenRouter and kie.ai, 2026-10-05.

DeepSeek API pricing per 1M tokens

DeepSeek lists 2 models on its pricing page, read 2026-10-05, with the same six rates as on 2026-09-17. Both have a 1M-token context window and a 384K-token maximum output.

Model	Field	Off-peak $/1M	Peak $/1M
deepseek-flash (DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash)	Input, cache hit	0.003	0.006
deepseek-flash	Input, cache miss	0.15	0.30
deepseek-flash	Output	0.60	1.20
deepseek-v4-pro (DeepSeek-V4-Pro-0813)	Input, cache hit	0.022	0.044
deepseek-v4-pro	Input, cache miss	0.66	1.32
deepseek-v4-pro	Output	1.98	3.96

2 of 2 listed models shown. Source: DeepSeek Models & Pricing, read 2026-10-05.

The page states the schedule in one line: “Peak hours are 01:00 - 04:00 and 06:00 - 10:00 UTC, Monday through Friday, excluding Chinese public holidays.” Saturdays, Sundays and Chinese public holidays are off-peak for all 24 hours. The page also says deepseek-v4-flash and deepseek-v4-flash-vision-exp are retired names, and that calls to them are served by DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash at the Flash price. DeepSeek’s change log announces the retirement in its entry dated 2026-09-10.

How much does the DeepSeek API cost per month?

Computed from the rates read 2026-10-05, 100,000 calls a month of 1,000 input and 300 output tokens cost $33 on deepseek-flash off-peak and $250.80 on deepseek-v4-pro at peak, the lowest and highest of the six rows in the table. If traffic spreads evenly over the week, 20.8% of it lands at peak, an upper bound because Chinese public holidays are off-peak all day. That puts 1,000,000 calls at $399 on deepseek-flash and $1,515 on deepseek-v4-pro.

Model and rate	10k calls	100k calls	1M calls
deepseek-flash, off-peak	$3.30	$33	$330
deepseek-flash, even traffic	$3.99	$39.88	$399
deepseek-flash, peak	$6.60	$66	$660
deepseek-v4-pro, off-peak	$12.54	$125.40	$1,254
deepseek-v4-pro, even traffic	$15.15	$151.53	$1,515
deepseek-v4-pro, peak	$25.08	$250.80	$2,508

Computed from the first table. Workload: 1,000 input tokens at the cache-miss rate plus 300 output tokens per call. The token calculator takes your own token counts.

Timing is the only discount on the cache-miss rate. A batch started after 10:00 UTC and finished before 01:00 UTC, or any run on a weekend, pays the off-peak rate on every token, which is $1,254 less per 1,000,000 deepseek-v4-pro calls than the same run at 07:00 UTC on a Tuesday.

What does a cache hit save on DeepSeek?

At peak on 2026-10-05, a cached input token costs $0.006 per 1M on deepseek-flash against $0.30 for a cache miss, a factor of 50. On deepseek-v4-pro it is $0.044 against $1.32, a factor of 30. With every input token cached, 1,000,000 deepseek-flash calls at peak cost $366, because the 300 output tokens per call still bill $360.

Is the DeepSeek API free?

The DeepSeek pricing page read 2026-10-05 lists no free tier and no promotion, and the lowest listed rate is $0.003 per 1M cached input tokens on deepseek-flash off-peak. None of the 11 DeepSeek slugs fetched from OpenRouter on 2026-10-05 lists a price of $0, and the lowest paid input price is $0.112 per 1M tokens on deepseek-v4.1-flash:batch.

APITariff never ranks a $0 price as the cheapest. The models that do list $0 on other providers are counted in Free AI API: 17 Models at $0 and Their Limits.

Did DeepSeek increase its API prices?

DeepSeek’s change log, read 2026-10-05, announces peak and off-peak pricing in an entry dated 2026-08-13: off-peak at half the peak rate, effective 16:00 UTC on 2026-08-16. A Reddit thread in r/DeepSeek reports a price increase effective the same date. The change log prints no old prices, so none are printed here, and APITariff ran its first fetch on 2026-09-02, so it holds no DeepSeek reading from before 2026-08-16.

An entry dated 2026-09-10 says that with the release of DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash “API prices have been reduced accordingly”, and that DeepSeek-V4-Pro stays available after 2026-09-14 with billing unchanged.

DeepSeek pricing on OpenRouter: one slug, 9 prices

OpenRouter’s DeepSeek rows do not track DeepSeek’s rate card: on 2026-10-05 its deepseek-v4-pro reads $0.2088 input against DeepSeek’s $0.66 off-peak. We fetched OpenRouter’s model list 25 times between 2026-09-02 and 2026-10-05 and counted the deepseek-v4-pro slug in 16 of those fetches, at 9 different prices, ranging from $0.2088 input and $0.4176 output on 2026-10-02 to $1.60 and $3.20 on 2026-09-15. The deepseek/ slug count reads 18 on 2026-09-17 and 11 on 2026-10-05.

OpenRouter slug	2026-09-17	2026-09-27	2026-10-02	2026-10-05
deepseek-v4-pro-0813	1.32 / 3.96	not listed	not listed	not listed
deepseek-v4-pro	1.60 / 3.20	0.348 / 0.696	0.2088 / 0.4176	0.2088 / 0.4176
deepseek-v4.1-flash	0.30 / 1.20	0.035 / 0.29	not listed	not listed
deepseek-v4.1-flash:batch	not listed	0.112 / 0.336	0.112 / 0.336	0.112 / 0.336
deepseek-v4-flash	0.0886 / 0.1772	0.0469 / 0.0938	0.042 / 0.084	not listed
deepseek-r1	0.70 / 2.50	0.70 / 2.50	0.70 / 2.50	0.70 / 2.50

6 of the 20 deepseek/ slugs seen in 25 fetches shown. Input / output in $ per 1M tokens. Source: APITariff fetch of openrouter.ai/models, fetches at 07:10, 08:42, 06:27 and 06:57 UTC. Not listed means the slug had no row in that fetch. Last readings of the delisted slugs: deepseek-v4-pro-0813 0.264 / 0.792 on 2026-09-26, deepseek-v4.1-flash 0.035 / 0.29 on 2026-09-27, deepseek-v4-flash 0.028 / 0.056 on 2026-10-03.

The first edition of this page took DeepSeek’s peak rate as the ceiling for an OpenRouter budget. That rule did not hold. OpenRouter’s deepseek-v4-pro read $1.60 input on 2026-09-15, which bills $2,560 at 1,000,000 calls against $2,508 at DeepSeek’s peak rate. OpenRouter’s slug carries no version suffix, and the suffixed deepseek-v4-pro-0813 has no row after 2026-09-26. We do not know whether the two serve the same weights or how OpenRouter sets its prices, so this page prints the readings and no cause. Price the workload at the row you will call, on the day you read it.

Which DeepSeek route costs least per 1,000,000 calls?

On 2026-10-05, at 1,000 input and 300 output tokens per call, the lowest bill among 7 routes is $212.80 per 1,000,000 calls on OpenRouter’s deepseek-v4.1-flash:batch row, then $262.50 on kie.ai and $330 on DeepSeek’s off-peak flash rate. OpenRouter’s batch terms were not fetched, so that first row may not match a synchronous call. For deepseek-v4-pro the lowest is OpenRouter at $334.08, against $1,254 off-peak at DeepSeek.

Route	Model	Input / output $/1M	Bill at 1M calls
OpenRouter	deepseek-v4.1-flash:batch	0.112 / 0.336	$212.80
kie.ai	deepseek-v4.1-flash	0.12 / 0.475	$262.50
DeepSeek, off-peak	deepseek-flash	0.15 / 0.60	$330
OpenRouter	deepseek-v4-pro	0.2088 / 0.4176	$334.08
DeepSeek, peak	deepseek-flash	0.30 / 1.20	$660
DeepSeek, off-peak	deepseek-v4-pro	0.66 / 1.98	$1,254
DeepSeek, peak	deepseek-v4-pro	1.32 / 3.96	$2,508

7 routes shown, sorted by bill. Computed from rates read 2026-10-05. Pro and Flash are different models, so the sort is by price and not by quality, and we did not fetch OpenRouter’s batch terms. The same workload on deepseek-r1 bills $1,450 on OpenRouter and $6,750 on Replicate, both from the engine fetch of 2026-10-05.

Is kie.ai cheaper than DeepSeek’s own API?

For deepseek-v4.1-flash, yes. kie.ai lists $0.12 input and $0.475 output per 1M tokens (kie.ai pricing page, the same price in all 12 fetches since 2026-09-24). That bills $262.50 per 1,000,000 calls of 1,000 input and 300 output tokens, 20.5% below DeepSeek’s off-peak flash bill of $330 and 60.2% below its peak bill of $660. The kie.ai price held through all 12 fetches, while OpenRouter’s deepseek-v4-pro slug read 9 prices in 16.

kie.ai is not the lowest route. OpenRouter’s batch row for the same model name bills $212.80, 18.9% below kie.ai, and kie.ai has no deepseek-v4-pro row in our feed, where OpenRouter reads $334.08. kie.ai is a reseller, and the kie.ai link at the end of this page is an affiliate link. We did not fetch kie.ai’s rate limits or refund terms.

What this page does not cover

For DeepSeek models our engine reads OpenRouter, kie.ai and Replicate, never DeepSeek’s own API, so the DeepSeek rates above come from its pricing page, read by hand on 2026-10-05. Not covered: other resellers, OpenRouter’s batch terms, speed, output quality and self-hosting cost.

The cheapest LLM API ranking places these rows among all text models. The Claude vs OpenAI comparison, the Grok API pricing guide and the Qwen API pricing guide run the same 1,000 plus 300 token workload on other providers, and the methodology page states how each fetch works.

Cite as: According to APITariff (apitariff.com/guides/deepseek-api-pricing/, read 2026-10-05).

Drafted with AI from APITariff’s own price data, checked and edited by a person. The chart is rendered from the tables above, not generated.

Change log

• 2026-09-17First edition. 2 models, rates read on DeepSeek's pricing page 2026-09-17.
• 2026-10-05Refresh. DeepSeek's rates re-read, unchanged. OpenRouter table rebuilt: deepseek-v4-pro now reads 0.2088 / 0.4176. Correction: the first edition set DeepSeek's peak rate as a ceiling for OpenRouter prices, and OpenRouter read above it on 2026-09-15. Added the DeepSeek change log, a 7-route bill table and the kie.ai row.