DeepSeek Pricing
- AI pricing
- No published price
- Free plan
DeepSeek pricing is recorded here from the vendor's own published plans. There is a free plan. Every figure below was read from the vendor's pricing page on 19 August 2026.
Opens the vendor's own pricing page. Figures here were read from it on 19 August 2026.
DeepSeek ranking and coverage
- In AI
- #1 of 9
- Overall
- #9 of 122 tied
- Terms score
- 8 /10
- Referenced here
- 1 page
Cost position 10 · Portability 8 · Subscription flexibility 6 - Ranked on published terms only: entry price against category peers, portability and subscription flexibility, equally weighted. This is not a quality score.How the rank is calculated.
DeepSeek pricing at a glance
| Entry price | Free; API from $0.22 per million input tokens |
|---|---|
| Seat minimum | None on the entry plan |
| Free plan | Yes |
| Free trial | No trial offered |
| How it charges | usage based |
| Priced plans published | 3 rows on the vendor's page |
| Affiliate programme | No |
| Prices read from | The vendor's own pricing page |
| Last checked | 19 August 2026 |
Every DeepSeek plan and what it costs
Read from the vendor's own pricing page on 19 August 2026. Charged as usage based. No free trial is offered.
| Plan | Price | Billing | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| Assistant | $0 | per month | Free on the web and in the mobile apps, with no paid consumer tier published. No usage figures are published either |
| API, deepseek-v4-flash | $0.22 | per usage | Per million input tokens on a cache miss, off-peak; $0.44 at peak. Cache hits are $0.007 off-peak. Output is $0.66 off-peak and $1.32 at peak |
| API, deepseek-v4-pro | $0.66 | per usage | Per million input tokens on a cache miss, off-peak; $1.32 at peak. Cache hits are $0.022 off-peak. Output is $1.98 off-peak and $3.96 at peak |
DeepSeek pricing against its competitors
Compared on the smallest invoice each vendor will accept, not on the advertised per-seat rate. Where a product has a seat minimum, the figure below is the minimum times the rate, because that is the cheque you would actually write.
| Product | Cheapest paid entry | Free plan | Against DeepSeek |
|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | $8 a month | Yes | – |
| Mistral | $14.99 a month | Yes | – |
| DeepSeek | Not published | Yes | This product |
Which DeepSeek plan should you buy?
| Your situation | Recommended | Why |
|---|---|---|
| You want a capable assistant and will not pay | The free assistant | There is no paid consumer tier, so the free version is the product rather than a sample. |
| You are building on an API at volume | deepseek-v4-flash | From $0.22 per million input tokens off-peak on a cache miss, and $0.007 on a cache hit. Schedule batch work off-peak. |
| You need the stronger model for harder tasks | deepseek-v4-pro | $0.66 per million input tokens off-peak, still far below the field. |
| You need the model inside your own infrastructure | Self-host the open weights | The weights are published, which is the only route here that removes the vendor entirely. |
| You are buying for a company | Do not buy DeepSeek on the published information | No admin console, SSO or audit logs are published, and nothing on the site addresses data residency. |
Verdict by who you are
Individual on a tight budgetYes
A free assistant with no paid tier withholding features is a genuine offer, not a funnel.
Developer with high API volumeYes
Per-token pricing an order of magnitude below the field, with caching and off-peak rates on top.
IT team rolling out to a companyNo
No published admin console, SSO or audit logging, and no published data-processing position.
Regulated industry or public sectorNo
Data residency cannot be established from the vendor's own pages, which is usually the end of the conversation.
Team wanting open weights with enterprise termsCompare first
Mistral offers open weights alongside a published DPA, EU terms and a priced business tier.
Should you buy DeepSeek?
Buy DeepSeek if…
- Individuals who want a capable assistant at no cost
- Developers building on a very cheap API
- Teams who want to run open weights on their own hardware
Do not buy DeepSeek if…
- Company rollouts needing admin controls, SSO or audit logs
- Regulated industries, or anyone with data-residency obligations
- Buyers who need a vendor that publishes its corporate details
Best DeepSeek alternative for each job
Chosen by what you are trying to do rather than by which product is closest overall, because the right replacement depends on the job.
| If you mainly need to… | Use | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Open weights with enterprise paperwork | Mistral | Open-weight models plus a published data processing addendum and a $24.99 team seat. |
| Roll an assistant out to staff | Microsoft Copilot | From $18 a user a month paid yearly, with the admin controls DeepSeek does not publish. |
| Long-document analysis | Claude | What it is bought for, at $200 a year on annual billing. |
| Cited answers for research | Perplexity | Sources you can open, at $20 a month. |
What leaving DeepSeek would cost
low lock-in
DeepSeek scores on self-hostable, public API. Portability 8/10 ; lock-in is the inverse. How this is calculated.
The API price is the headline, and it is not close
Per million tokens, read from DeepSeek’s own documentation on 19 August 2026:
| Cache hit, input | Cache miss, input | Output | |
|---|---|---|---|
| deepseek-v4-flash, off-peak | $0.007 | $0.22 | $0.66 |
| deepseek-v4-flash, peak | $0.014 | $0.44 | $1.32 |
| deepseek-v4-pro, off-peak | $0.022 | $0.66 | $1.98 |
| deepseek-v4-pro, peak | $0.044 | $1.32 | $3.96 |
Two mechanics are worth building around. Context caching cuts input cost by roughly 97% on a hit, which rewards prompts with a stable prefix. And off-peak pricing halves the rate, which rewards scheduling batch work rather than running it on demand.
The assistant is free, and that is the whole tier list
There is no DeepSeek Plus, Pro or Max. The web and mobile assistant is free, and no paid consumer tier is published, which makes it the only product in AI assistants where the free version is not a sample of a paid one.
It also publishes no usage figures at all - but then almost nobody in this category does, so it loses less by comparison than it might.
Why we would not put it through procurement
This is the part a price comparison misses. On DeepSeek’s own pages there is:
- No business or team tier
- No admin console, provisioning or single sign-on
- No audit logging
- No published data-residency or processing position, and no data processing addendum
Its site carries Chinese provincial filings and very little else about the company - no founding date, no offices, no funding. None of that makes the model worse. All of it makes the compliance conversation one you will have with your own lawyers rather than with a vendor page, and for regulated industries that is usually where it ends.
If open weights are what attracts you and the paperwork matters, Mistral publishes both: open-weight models and a data processing addendum, with a team seat at $24.99.
Where it is genuinely the right answer
Two cases, both strong. An individual who wants a capable assistant and will not pay for one - the free tier is the product, not a funnel. And a developer with real volume, where an order-of-magnitude cheaper API, caching and off-peak scheduling turn an unaffordable feature into an affordable one. Neither case needs an admin console.
DeepSeek questions, answered
- Is DeepSeek worth it?
- DeepSeek is the cheapest serious option in this category by a wide margin, and the reason is structural rather than promotional: the assistant is free with no paid tier, the models are published as open weights, and the
- How much does DeepSeek cost?
- Free; API from $0.22 per million input tokens. Verified against the vendor's pricing page.
- Does DeepSeek have a free plan or free trial?
- DeepSeek has a free plan. No free trial is offered.
- What is the best DeepSeek alternative?
- It depends on the job. Mistral: Also open-weight, with a published business tier, EU terms and a data processing addendum. ChatGPT: Far more product around the model, with a business route and admin controls. Claude: The usual choice where long documents and careful instruction-following matter.
- Can I self-host DeepSeek?
- Yes. DeepSeek can be run on your own infrastructure, so the data stays under your control.
Opens the vendor's own pricing page. Figures here were read from it on 19 August 2026.
What this profile is based on
Every claim below is about our work, not about DeepSeek. A "no" is recorded rather than omitted, because the difference between a tested review and careful desk research is the reader's to weigh. How we research a profile.
-
Prices read from the vendor : yes
Read from DeepSeek's own pricing page on 19 August 2026
-
Plans and terms recorded : yes
3 rows, each with its billing period
-
Original screenshots : yes
1 captured by us: pricing page
-
Sources cited and dated : yes
2 primary sources, each with the date it was read
-
Product used first-hand : no
Not tested. This profile is desk research from primary sources
-
Alternatives used first-hand : no
None, so comparisons here rest on published facts rather than use
-
Vendor contacted : no
Not contacted for this profile
Desk research from DeepSeek's own site and API documentation, read on 19 August 2026 through a United States egress. Nobody here has used DeepSeek, and no model quality was benchmarked. Its site publishes very little corporate information; what is recorded as "China" comes from the provincial filings in its own footer, and we make no claim beyond that.
Where DeepSeek appears on this site
One other page here references DeepSeek, and it is listed below.
- Another profile Mistral picks it for run the model on your own infrastructure
Counts pages on this site that name the product by choice - price guides, pricing question pages, deal records and other profiles. Category and directory indexes list everything automatically and are not counted.
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Provenance and freshness
When each fact was last checked
- Pricing ·
- Plans ·
- Free trial
- Features
- Platforms
- Integrations
- Affiliate programme
- Company details ·
Individually sourced claims
-
deepseek-v4-flash costs $0.22 per million input tokens on a cache miss off-peak, and $0.007 on a cache hit
DeepSeek API pricing ↗ · checked
-
deepseek-v4-pro costs $0.66 per million input tokens on a cache miss off-peak, with output at $1.98
DeepSeek API pricing ↗ · checked
-
DeepSeek publishes no paid consumer tier for its assistant
DeepSeek ↗ · checked
What has changed
-
August 2026
- First published, with API rates read from the vendor's own documentation
- Recorded the absence of a business tier, admin controls and corporate detail
Sources & verification
Facts on this page were read from the sources below on the dates shown. Where a vendor does not publish a figure, we record it as not disclosed rather than estimating it.
- DeepSeek - checked 19 August 2026
- DeepSeek API pricing - checked 19 August 2026
Spotted something out of date? Email [email protected] and we will re-check it. Corrections are logged on the page.
