DeepSeek raises API prices up to 1,100% as it launches V4-Pro model

DeepSeek will raise its application-programming-interface (API) prices by as much as 1,100% under a new peak/off-peak billing structure that takes effect August 16, 2026, according to the Chinese AI lab’s official pricing page. The new rates start at 16:00 UTC, the same day DeepSeek launched DeepSeek-V4-Pro, a 1.6-trillion-parameter model.

Under the new rates, DeepSeek-V4-Pro peak output rises to $3.96 per million tokens, up from a flat $0.87, while off-peak output is set at $1.98. Peak hours run 01:00-04:00 and 06:00-10:00 UTC. The increases reportedly range from about 50% to 1,100% depending on the model, token type, and time of day.

The move inverts the low-price strategy that made DeepSeek a disruptive force in the API market. Time-of-day pricing pushes cost-sensitive workloads into off-peak windows and rewards heavy cache use, a structure closer to how cloud providers meter capacity than the flat token rates most AI vendors advertise.

DeepSeek paired the hike with DeepSeek-V4-Pro, a mixture-of-experts model with a 1-million-token context window, adjustable reasoning effort, and support for OpenAI’s Responses API format. The pricing and the launch finalize a price-increase warning DeepSeek issued around August 6.

Whether developers absorb the change or route around it is the open question. DeepSeek’s appeal has rested heavily on undercutting US rivals; a 1,100% peak premium narrows that gap on exactly the workloads that run during business hours.