DeepSeek confirms peak/off-peak pricing, effective Aug 16, 2026
DeepSeek confirmed peak/off-peak API pricing effective 2026-08-16: peak rates run roughly 3-12x today's flat prices, off-peak rates roughly 1.5-2.5x.
Flat per-token rates with an unspecified 'significant increase expected' footnote (first seen 2026-08-11)
Peak/off-peak billing: V4-Flash cache-miss input $0.22 off-peak / $0.44 peak (was $0.14 flat); V4-Pro cache-miss input $0.66 off-peak / $1.32 peak (was $0.435 flat); peak hours 01:00-04:00 and 06:00-10:00 UTC
Three days after DeepSeek’s Models & Pricing page first warned of an unspecified “significant” price increase, the company published the actual rate card. Starting at 16:00 UTC on August 16, 2026, DeepSeek API pricing splits into peak and off-peak windows — peak hours are 01:00–04:00 and 06:00–10:00 UTC, with all other hours off-peak at exactly half the peak rate.
The increases are steep and uneven across line items. DeepSeek-V4-Flash cache-miss input rises from a flat $0.14/1M to $0.22/1M off-peak and $0.44/1M peak; output rises from $0.28/1M to $0.66/1M off-peak and $1.32/1M peak. The biggest relative jump is on cache-hit input — DeepSeek’s cheapest and most aggressively marketed rate — which moves from $0.0028/1M to $0.007/1M off-peak (2.5x) and $0.014/1M peak (5x) on V4-Flash, and from $0.003625/1M to $0.022/1M off-peak and $0.044/1M peak (over 12x) on the higher-capacity V4-Pro model. No grace period or legacy-rate opt-out has been published.
The same capture also showed DeepSeek-V4-Pro reaching feature parity with V4-Flash on the Responses API (previously V4-Pro-only support was pending) and picking up a dated build tag, DeepSeek-V4-Pro-0813.
DeepSeek replaced its vague "significant price increase" footnote with a concrete time-of-use rate card: peak-hour rates (01:00-04:00 and 06:00-10:00 UTC) roughly 3-11x current per-token prices depending on the line item, with off-peak rates at half of peak, effective 16:00 UTC on 2026-08-16. V4-Flash cache-miss input moves from a flat $0.14 to $0.22 off-peak / $0.44 peak; V4-Pro cache-miss input moves from a flat $0.435 to $0.66 off-peak / $1.32 peak. DeepSeek-V4-Pro also picked up a dated build suffix (-0813) and gained Responses API support, reaching feature parity with V4-Flash.