# DeepSeek API pricing: V4.1 Flash, V4 Pro, off-peak hours and cache

What each DeepSeek model costs per token, when the half-price hours are, how cache hits work, the limits, and how it compares with Claude and OpenAI.

Published 2026-10-29 by Richard Kaminsky and Mitchell Lipyansky, the co-founders of Poly. Canonical: https://usepoly.co/deepseek-api-pricing
Poly is a multiplayer AI coding workspace: a shared room where your team works with one AI agent, together. Free to start: https://usepoly.co/

**DeepSeek's API has two models. DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (`deepseek-flash`) costs $0.30 per million input tokens and $1.20 per million output, and DeepSeek V4 Pro (`deepseek-v4-pro`) $1.32 and $3.96. Input the cache has already seen costs $0.006 on Flash and $0.044 on Pro. Outside peak hours, which are 01:00 to 04:00 and 06:00 to 10:00 UTC on weekdays, everything is half price, which covers the whole US working day. Both models have a 1M-token context, and there's no subscription: you top up a balance and pay per token.** Its web search and page-fetch tools cost $0.75 per 1,000 calls.

## Key takeaways

- **V4.1 Flash:** $0.30 input, $1.20 output, $0.006 cached; off-peak $0.15, $0.60, $0.003.
- **V4 Pro:** $1.32 input, $3.96 output, $0.044 cached; off-peak $0.66, $1.98, $0.022.
- **Off-peak:** everything outside 01:00–04:00 and 06:00–10:00 UTC on weekdays, plus weekends and Chinese public holidays.
- **Limits:** 2,500 requests at once on Flash and 500 on Pro per account; raising them is free on request.
- **Claude Code:** works through DeepSeek's Anthropic-compatible endpoint, billed at these prices.

*DeepSeek API prices per million tokens, from DeepSeek's pricing page, October 29, 2026.*

| Model | Input, cache hit | Input, cache miss | Output | Off-peak |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (deepseek-flash) | $0.006 | $0.30 | $1.20 | Half: $0.003 / $0.15 / $0.60 |
| DeepSeek V4 Pro (deepseek-v4-pro) | $0.044 | $1.32 | $3.96 | Half: $0.022 / $0.66 / $1.98 |
| Search or Fetch API | — | — | $0.75 per 1,000 calls | Same |

## How much does the DeepSeek API cost?

From DeepSeek's pricing page ([DeepSeek](https://api-docs.deepseek.com/quick_start/pricing/)), per million tokens:

- **DeepSeek V4.1 Flash** (`deepseek-flash`, the October 17 build): input $0.30 on a cache miss, $0.006 on a cache hit; output $1.20.
- **DeepSeek V4 Pro** (`deepseek-v4-pro`, the August 13 build): input $1.32 on a miss, $0.044 on a hit; output $3.96.

Both think by default, and thinking tokens bill as output. The context window is 1M tokens and a reply can run to 384,000 tokens. DeepSeek cut prices when V4.1 Flash arrived on September 10, 2026, and left them unchanged with the October 17 update. The old `deepseek-chat` and `deepseek-reasoner` names stopped working on July 24, 2026.

## When are DeepSeek's off-peak hours?

Since August 16, 2026, DeepSeek charges half price outside peak hours: "Off-peak rates are half of the peak rates." Peak is **01:00 to 04:00 and 06:00 to 10:00 UTC, Monday to Friday**. Everything else is off-peak, including weekends and Chinese public holidays.

In US time, peak is 9 p.m. to midnight and 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. Eastern on weeknights (an hour earlier in winter), so a US team working daytime hours pays the off-peak rate nearly all the time. Europe's morning overlaps the second peak window.

## How does DeepSeek's cache pricing work?

When a request starts with text DeepSeek has recently seen, that part bills at the cache-hit rate: $0.006 per million on Flash, 2% of the normal input price. Coding agents resend the whole conversation on every step, so most of their input is cache hits; on DeepSeek that makes long sessions very cheap. There's no separate charge for writing to the cache.

## What else does the DeepSeek API charge for?

- **Search and Fetch APIs:** $0.75 per 1,000 successful requests each.
- **Free credit:** DeepSeek's terms mention a free quota without an amount; granted balance is used before money you've topped up.
- **Rate limits:** 2,500 concurrent requests on Flash and 500 on Pro per account. Above that you get HTTP 429, and DeepSeek raises limits free on request ([DeepSeek](https://api-docs.deepseek.com/quick_start/rate_limit)).

## How does DeepSeek compare with Claude and OpenAI on price?

Per million input and output tokens:

- **DeepSeek V4.1 Flash:** $0.30 and $1.20, half off-peak.
- **Claude Haiku 5.5** and **GPT-6 Luna:** $0.10 and $0.50 each, cheaper per token than DeepSeek Flash at peak.
- **DeepSeek V4 Pro:** $1.32 and $3.96.
- **Claude Sonnet 5.5** and **GPT-6.1 Sol:** $2 and $10.
- **Claude Opus 5.5:** $4 and $20. **GPT-6 Astra:** $10 and $50.

The token price isn't the whole cost. On Vals AI's Terminal-Bench 4.0 run, a task cost $0.54 on V4.1 Flash, $3.31 on V4 Pro and $13.20 on Claude Opus 5.5, but the DeepSeek models solved far fewer tasks: 31.8% and 14.1% against 65.2% ([DeepSeek V4 vs Claude](/deepseek-v4-vs-claude)). Full price lists: [Claude API pricing](/claude-api-pricing), [OpenAI API pricing](/openai-api-pricing).

## Can you use the DeepSeek API with Claude Code?

Yes. Point Claude Code at `https://api.deepseek.com/anthropic` with `ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL`, put your DeepSeek key in `ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN`, and DeepSeek recommends `deepseek-flash[1m]` as the model ([DeepSeek](https://api-docs.deepseek.com/quick_start/agent_integrations/claude_code)). Any model name beginning `claude-opus` is billed as V4 Pro, and other Claude names as Flash. DeepSeek documents Codex, OpenCode and other agents the same way. Anthropic doesn't support running Claude Code on another provider.

## Where does your data go?

DeepSeek's privacy policy says it stores personal data in China and uses input to improve its models, with an opt-out by email; its API terms don't say whether API data is used ([DeepSeek](https://cdn.deepseek.com/policies/en-US/deepseek-privacy-policy.html)). The US has ordered DeepSeek products out of federal civilian agencies, published October 20, 2026. The models' weights are MIT-licensed, so running them on your own servers or a cloud provider avoids DeepSeek's API, at that provider's prices. More in [DeepSeek V4 vs Claude](/deepseek-v4-vs-claude).

## Models without an API account

Poly (usepoly.co) doesn't offer DeepSeek. It runs Claude, GPT, Grok and Muse for a team in one shared room, billed as credits per person with no API keys, and every account starts with free models from each lab. [What is Poly?](/what-is-poly)

## Common questions

**How much does the DeepSeek API cost?**

DeepSeek V4.1 Flash costs $0.30 per million input tokens and $1.20 per million output; DeepSeek V4 Pro costs $1.32 and $3.96. Cached input is $0.006 and $0.044, and everything is half price off-peak.

**When is DeepSeek off-peak?**

Everything outside 01:00 to 04:00 and 06:00 to 10:00 UTC on weekdays, plus weekends and Chinese public holidays. Off-peak prices are half the peak prices, which covers the US working day.

**Is the DeepSeek API free?**

No. It is pay as you go from a topped-up balance. DeepSeek's terms mention a free quota without an amount, and its open-weight models are free to download and run yourself under the MIT license.

**What happened to deepseek-chat and deepseek-reasoner?**

They were retired on July 24, 2026. The current API names are deepseek-flash, for V4.1 Flash, and deepseek-v4-pro, for V4 Pro, and both can think or answer directly.

**Is DeepSeek cheaper than Claude?**

Than Sonnet and Opus, yes, by roughly 7 to 17 times per token. Claude Haiku 5.5, at $0.10 and $0.50 per million, is cheaper per token than DeepSeek V4.1 Flash at peak.

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