DeepSeek Pricing: What You Actually Pay in 2026
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash costs $0.30 input / $1.20 output per 1M tokens at peak hours and DeepSeek V4 Pro costs $1.32 / $3.96, against $2.50 / $15 for GPT-5.4, $2 / $10 for Claude Sonnet 5 and $0.75 / $3.75 for Gemini 3.8 Flash. Off-peak, DeepSeek charges half. Peak is 01:00-04:00 and 06:00-10:00 UTC on weekdays; all other hours, weekends and Chinese public holidays are off-peak. V4 Flash is retired: the API name is now deepseek-flash, served by V4.1 Flash, and the old name deepseek-v4-flash is billed at the Flash price. That makes DeepSeek one of the strongest low-cost API options for coding, extraction, classification and high-volume agent loops. It is not the automatic choice for every production system: reliability, data handling, latency and operational support still matter.
DeepSeek pricing options
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (deepseek-flash)
$0.30 in / $1.20 out per 1M tokens at peak; $0.15 / $0.60 off-peakBest for routine generation, extraction, classification and cost-sensitive agent steps; 1M-token context, up to 384K output tokens.
DeepSeek V4 Pro
$1.32 in / $3.96 out per 1M tokens at peak; $0.66 / $1.98 off-peakBest for harder reasoning and coding tasks where V4.1 Flash fails acceptance tests; still under GPT-5.4 or Claude Sonnet 5 list prices.
Cached input
Cache hits $0.006 (V4.1 Flash) or $0.044 (V4 Pro) per 1M tokens at peak; half off-peakBest for repeated prefixes, stable system prompts and large reused context.
Developer platform
No consumer seat requiredBest for products and automations that need direct API access rather than a chat subscription.
Recommendation
Use DeepSeek as a measured low-cost route, not as a blind universal default. Test representative tasks, record acceptance rate and keep a fallback model for failures.
Cost examples
A useful estimate includes input tokens, output tokens, retries, rejected responses and human review. Cheap token pricing can still produce expensive outcomes when the task requires repeated correction. At list price, 1M input plus 1M output tokens cost $1.50 on DeepSeek V4.1 Flash at peak ($0.30 + $1.20), $5.28 on V4 Pro ($1.32 + $3.96), $4.50 on Gemini 3.8 Flash, $12 on Claude Sonnet 5 and $17.50 on GPT-5.4. Off-peak, the DeepSeek figures halve to $0.75 and $2.64. At peak, V4 Pro costs a little more than Gemini 3.8 Flash. Compare DeepSeek with GPT-5.4, Claude Sonnet 5 and Gemini 3.8 Flash using the same prompt set and acceptance tests. DeepSeek pricing checked 2026-10-27 at api-docs.deepseek.com.
Frequently asked questions
Is DeepSeek cheaper than GPT and Claude?
Yes on list price: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash is $0.30 input / $1.20 output per 1M tokens at peak and V4 Pro is $1.32 / $3.96, with both half price off-peak, versus $2.50 / $15 for GPT-5.4 and $2 / $10 for Claude Sonnet 5. The correct comparison is still total cost per accepted task, including retries, latency and human review.
What workloads suit DeepSeek best?
V4.1 Flash suits high-volume extraction, classification, drafting and routine agent tool calls; V4 Pro suits coding assistance and harder reasoning where Flash fails acceptance tests.
When should I avoid DeepSeek?
Avoid automatic adoption where enterprise support, data residency, regulatory controls or provider-specific integrations are mandatory.
How do cached tokens affect cost?
DeepSeek caches repeated prefixes automatically. A cache hit costs $0.006 per 1M tokens on V4.1 Flash and $0.044 on V4 Pro at peak, against $0.30 and $1.32 for a miss. Measure your actual cache hit rate.
Should DeepSeek replace every premium model?
No. Route routine work to cheaper models and retain a premium escalation path for tasks that fail quality thresholds.