For developers and businesses who want to integrate DeepSeek’s intelligence into their own applications, we offer a robust API with extremely affordable usage-based pricing. The DeepSeek API gives you direct access to our models (including the latest DeepSeek-V3 chat model and the DeepSeek-R1 “reasoning” model) so you can build custom chatbots, AI assistants, analytics tools, and more – all backed by DeepSeek’s engine. Here are key points about our API and pricing:
- Pay-As-You-Go Pricing: The API has no monthly subscription fee – you simply pay for the text you process, measured in tokens. Our rates are remarkably low. For the standard DeepSeek chat model, the cost is roughly $0.27 per 1M input tokens and $1.10 per 1M output tokens under standard pricing. (To put that in perspective, 1 million tokens is about 750,000 words of text – so just $1.10 for the AI to generate ~750k words!). The advanced reasoning model (DeepSeek-R1) is slightly higher but still only ~$0.55 per 1M input and $2.19 per 1M output tokens. These rates are a small fraction of what other AI APIs charge. For example, OpenAI’s GPT-4 API costs about $30 for 1M input tokens and $60 for 1M output tokens – DeepSeek’s equivalent is literally cents, not tens of dollars. We bill based on actual usage, and there are no minimum fees and no lock-in. You can top up your account with credit as needed, and the costs are deducted from that balance as you make requests. This granular billing ensures you only pay for what you use, and it scales smoothly whether you’re doing a small pilot or serving millions of requests.
- Volume Discounts & Off-Peak Savings: Our pricing model includes automatic discounts during off-peak hours. Specifically, requests made during UTC 16:30–00:30 enjoy up to 50-75% lower prices. That means if you schedule non-urgent workloads (like batch processing jobs) during those off-peak times, you’ll pay half (for the chat model) or even just a quarter (for the R1 model) of the standard rates. We encourage developers to take advantage of these lower-cost windows for cost optimization. Additionally, DeepSeek does context caching – if identical inputs are sent multiple times, we don’t charge full price repeatedly but a much reduced “cache hit” rate. All these measures make the API extremely cost-effective for heavy use. If you’re a startup or indie developer worried about API costs ballooning, DeepSeek’s pricing gives you peace of mind to scale.
- High Limits and No Throttling: We impose no strict rate limits on API usage by default. The system is built to handle high throughput, and we won’t arbitrarily cap your requests per minute as long as your usage abides by fair use and your balance is positive. (In comparison, many providers have fixed RPM limits or require special approval for higher rates.) In practice, if our servers experience very high load, your requests might queue briefly but will not be rejected – the API will keep the connection open and stream responses as they’re ready. This means your integration can scale to enterprise volumes without hitting a hard ceiling. Whether you need to process 10 requests per day or 10,000 requests per minute, DeepSeek can accommodate it (with proper provisioning on our side – for consistently massive volumes, we’ll work with you to ensure smooth scaling).
- Full-Featured and Developer-Friendly: The DeepSeek API offers similar functionalities to OpenAI’s and other leading AI APIs. You can choose between the fast chat model (for general conversations and quick responses) and the deep reasoner model (for complex tasks that benefit from step-by-step thinking). Features such as function calling, JSON structured outputs, multi-turn conversations, and more are supported. We provide SDKs and documentation to get you started quickly. The API is a RESTful JSON endpoint compatible with OpenAI’s API format, making it easy to switch or integrate if you’ve used OpenAI or Anthropic APIs before. With our platform, developers have the flexibility to build custom chatbots, integrate AI assistants into Slack/Discord, analyze documents programmatically, or power any AI-driven workflow. And unlike closed platforms, if needed you could even run the model on-premises (using our open source weights) – but most will find our hosted API more convenient and still highly cost-efficient.
Getting Started with the API: It’s free to sign up for a developer API key. Every account typically comes with a small trial credit. After that, you can pay per use at the rates described, by topping up your account (via credit card or other supported payment methods). There’s a usage dashboard to monitor your costs in real time. For more details, check out our API pricing documentation and developer guide. With DeepSeek’s API, you get the best of both worlds: cutting-edge model performance and industry-low pricing. It’s an ideal choice for developers looking to add AI capabilities to their apps without incurring huge bills.