Is DeepSeek worth it in 2026?
Whether the app is free, what the API costs per million tokens at peak and off-peak hours, a worked 1,000-document job, and the catches in the fine print.
The quick answer
On price alone DeepSeek is worth it: the app is listed as free on the US App Store and Google Play, and the API’s deepseek-flash model costs $0.30 per million cache-miss input tokens and $1.20 per million output tokens at peak, and half those rates off-peak (DeepSeek pricing page, read October 19, 2026). A 1,000-document job of 2,000 input and 300 output tokens each costs $0.96 at peak and $0.48 off-peak on deepseek-flash, with every input token a cache miss. Prices depend on the UTC hour and the Chinese public holiday calendar, DeepSeek can change them, and this review checks price, not answer quality.
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On price, yes. DeepSeek is two price lists, not one. The chat app is listed as free in the US app stores, and the API is billed per token at different rates for peak and off-peak hours. One part that moves the bill is the clock: the same job costs twice as much in DeepSeek’s weekday peak window as outside it.
Every price here was read on DeepSeek’s own pages on October 19, 2026: the Models & Pricing page, the change log, the FAQ and the App Store and Google Play listings. This page checks price and limits as DeepSeek states them, not answer quality. For how your data is handled, read DeepSeek’s own privacy policy.
Academy data: our DeepSeek prompt pack holds 30 prompts and our DeepSeek tool page lists 2 tutorials, both at Intermediate level (counted October 19, 2026). The prices here come from DeepSeek’s own API docs page.
DeepSeek API prices per million tokens, read October 19, 2026
From DeepSeek’s Models & Pricing page, per 1M tokens. DeepSeek says off-peak is half the peak rate. Computed rows use the batch job below, with every input token a cache miss.
| Model and token type | Peak hours | Off-peak hours |
|---|---|---|
| deepseek-flash, input (cache hit) | $0.006 | $0.003 |
| deepseek-flash, input (cache miss) | $0.30 | $0.15 |
| deepseek-flash, output | $1.20 | $0.60 |
| deepseek-v4-pro, input (cache hit) | $0.044 | $0.022 |
| deepseek-v4-pro, input (cache miss) | $1.32 | $0.66 |
| deepseek-v4-pro, output | $3.96 | $1.98 |
| 1,000-document job on deepseek-flash (computed) | $0.96 | $0.48 |
| 1,000-document job on deepseek-v4-pro (computed) | $3.83 | $1.91 |
What you get
- ✓A Free app price: the US App Store lists the app at Free and Google Play shows no purchase price.
- ✓Off-peak is half price: at least 133 of the 168 hours in a week are off-peak, at half the peak rate.
- ✓Cheap cache hits: a hit costs 2% of a miss on Flash, and each response reports its hit tokens.
- ✓Low batch cost: the 1,000-document job costs under a dollar on Flash at peak, with every input token a miss.
- ✓No tiered plans: top-up balances do not expire and unused balances can be refunded, per DeepSeek’s FAQ.
The trade-offs
- ✕The clock sets the price: up to 35 peak hours a week double the rate, and the holiday dates are not listed on the pricing page.
- ✕Prices have moved: the change log shows new pricing from August 16, 2026 and reduced prices on September 10, 2026.
- ✕No free API tier is stated: the pricing page mentions a granted balance but not who receives one.
- ✕Thin app listings: neither store listing states a usage cap or how long the app stays free.
- ✕Pro has no vision and a lower concurrency limit: 500 requests per account against 2,500 on Flash.
Worth it if…
- →Someone who wants a chat assistant to try at no cost: the US App Store lists it as Free and Google Play shows no purchase price.
- →A developer with batch work, such as 1,000 documents, who can schedule runs into off-peak hours.
- →A team whose requests repeat a long shared prefix, because a cache hit costs a small fraction of a miss.
- →A builder who wants pay-as-you-go billing with no tiered plans and a balance that does not expire.
Skip it if…
- →You need one fixed price: the UTC hour, the holiday calendar and repricing all move the bill.
- →You need a published usage cap or end date for the free app. The store listings give neither.
- →You need vision on the Pro model, which DeepSeek lists as not supported.
- →You need the same price on every hour of the week.
Is the DeepSeek app free?
The store listings say yes. The US App Store listing shows the price as Free, and the Google Play listing shows an Install button and no purchase price (its listing data carries a price of 0). Both call the app DeepSeek’s “official AI assistant for free”. We read both on October 19, 2026.
Neither listing states a message cap or how long the app stays free, so this page promises neither. The Free label is a store price for the app, not a statement about the API, which is billed separately.
DeepSeek’s change log says the web and app models moved on October 17, 2026 to DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-1017, the version the API serves as deepseek-flash. The app, listed as free, is the way to try that version before you pay for API calls.
What does the DeepSeek API cost per million tokens?
The pricing page lists two API models: deepseek-flash, served by DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-1017, and deepseek-v4-pro, served by DeepSeek-V4-Pro-0813. Both list a 1M context length, a 384K maximum output and a thinking mode that is on by default. The one difference in the feature list is vision: Flash supports it and Pro does not.
Prices are per 1M tokens, split into cache-hit input, cache-miss input and output. Cost is tokens times price, taken from your topped-up balance or a granted balance, granted first. The FAQ says the API has a unified pricing standard and no tiered plans, that top-up balances do not expire and that unused balances can be refunded.
Pro costs 4.4 times as much as Flash on cache-miss input and 3.3 times on output, at peak and off-peak alike (computed). Start on Flash and move up only if your own results justify the multiple. No DeepSeek page we read says new accounts get free API credit, although the pricing page mentions a granted balance, so this page claims no free API tier.
When are DeepSeek’s peak hours?
DeepSeek defines peak as 01:00 to 04:00 and 06:00 to 10:00 UTC, Monday through Friday, excluding Chinese public holidays. Every other hour is off-peak, including weekends and Chinese public holidays in full, at half the peak rate. The change log announced the structure on August 13, 2026, effective 16:00 UTC on August 16, 2026.
That is 7 peak hours a weekday, so at most 35 of the 168 hours in a week, about 21%, are peak (computed). In Beijing time (UTC+8) the windows are 09:00 to 12:00 and 14:00 to 18:00. The pricing page does not list holiday dates, so check the Chinese public holiday calendar before a large run.
What does a 1,000-document batch job cost?
Assumption (ours, not DeepSeek’s): 1,000 documents, each 2,000 input tokens and 300 output tokens, with every input token a cache miss. That is 2 million input tokens and 0.3 million output tokens.
Multiply millions of tokens by the price per million. On deepseek-flash at peak, input costs 2 × $0.30 = $0.60 and output costs 0.3 × $1.20 = $0.36, a total of $0.96. Off-peak, every rate halves: 2 × $0.15 + 0.3 × $0.60 = $0.48, exactly half.
On deepseek-v4-pro the same job costs 2 × $1.32 + 0.3 × $3.96 = $3.828 at peak, about $3.83, and 2 × $0.66 + 0.3 × $1.98 = $1.914 off-peak, about $1.91. That is about 4 times the Flash total.
The cost scales in a straight line: 100,000 documents of the same size would cost $96.00 at peak and $48.00 off-peak on Flash (computed). Treat the 300-token output as a guess. Thinking mode is on by default, the Thinking Mode guide says the model writes a chain of thought before its answer, and the pricing page bills total input and output tokens. Run a sample and read the usage figures the API returns, as the token guide advises, before you budget.
What does a cache hit change?
A cache hit is input that repeats the start of an earlier request. DeepSeek turns context caching on by default: when a later request shares a prefix with an earlier one, that part is read from the cache and counts as a hit. DeepSeek’s caching guide says a prefix is saved only after it has been seen, so the first requests still miss. Each response reports prompt_cache_hit_tokens and prompt_cache_miss_tokens.
A hit costs 2% of a miss on Flash and about 3.3% on Pro, at peak and off-peak alike (computed from the table).
Hits are not guaranteed. DeepSeek calls the cache best-effort, says it cannot guarantee a 100% hit rate, and says unused caches are cleared, usually within a few hours to a few days. In our batch every document differs, so a shared instruction block is the part that could hit. If 500 of each request’s 2,000 input tokens were such a block and hit on every request, a best case, input would cost $0.453 at peak and $0.2265 off-peak. With the same output charge, the Flash job would total $0.813 and $0.4065, about $0.81 and $0.41.
Search and Fetch: what changes on November 1
DeepSeek also sells standalone Search and Fetch APIs at $0.75 per 1,000 successful requests each. Failed requests, empty search results and timeouts are not billed, and the count setting does not change the price. The Search & Fetch guide has the full rules.
When you use the API through DeepSeek Harness, Claude Code or Codex, the server-side tool calls already hit these APIs. DeepSeek’s pricing page said those calls were free of charge when we read it on October 19, 2026, and that per-request billing for them starts at 00:00 Beijing time on November 1, 2026. Its V4.1 Flash 1017 launch post gives the same moment as 16:00 UTC on October 31.
Limits and catches in the fine print
Concurrency. The limit is 2,500 concurrent requests per account on Flash and 500 on Pro, and going over it returns HTTP 429. DeepSeek says a higher limit can be requested at no additional cost, on its rate limit page.
Moving prices. The change log shows peak and off-peak pricing from August 16, 2026 and reduced prices with the V4.1 Flash release on September 10, 2026. The pricing page says DeepSeek reserves the right to adjust prices, so a number here is a dated reading, not a quote.
Moving model names. The older names deepseek-v4-flash and deepseek-v4-flash-vision-exp still work, but their models are retired and requests are served and billed as Flash. The change log calls that routing temporary, so use deepseek-flash. On September 10, 2026 DeepSeek also said it would keep serving V4 Pro past September 14, 2026 and give notice of any change.
Where DeepSeek fits next to other options
If you want a free chat assistant, DeepSeek is one of several. Our reviews of Mistral Le Chat and Grok cover two other free-tier chat apps, and the ChatGPT vs DeepSeek comparison covers features. This review prices DeepSeek alone, so use each other vendor’s own pricing page for its per-token rates.
To learn the tool, start with the prompt pack and the tutorials. The two tutorials were published in April 2025 and cover DeepSeek R1, so they predate the current model names.
The verdict
On price alone, DeepSeek is worth it. The app is listed as free in the US app stores, and a 1,000-document job costs under a dollar on deepseek-flash at peak and half that off-peak, using DeepSeek’s cache-miss rates. Start with the free app on a real task, then price a 100-document sample on the API before you scale.
The caveats: the bill depends on the UTC clock and the Chinese holiday calendar, DeepSeek has repriced its API since August, the app listings promise no cap and no end date, and nothing here measures answer quality. Re-read the pricing page the day you commit, since these numbers are DeepSeek’s as of October 19, 2026.
Better alternatives?
If it is not the right fit, these are worth a look.
deepseek-v4-pro
The second model on the same price list. It costs 4.4 times as much as Flash on cache-miss input and does not support vision.
Mistral Le Chat
Another free-tier chat assistant. Our review covers its plans and limits.
Grok
Another free-tier chat assistant. Our review covers its plans and what the paid tier adds.
ChatGPT
Our head-to-head covers how the two compare on features. This review covers DeepSeek’s own price list.
Frequently asked questions
Is DeepSeek free to use?▾
The app is listed at Free on the US App Store and with no purchase price on Google Play, read October 19, 2026, and both listings call it the official AI assistant for free. Neither states a usage cap or an end date. The API is separate and is billed per token.
How much does the DeepSeek API cost per million tokens?▾
On deepseek-flash, per million tokens: cache-hit input $0.006, cache-miss input $0.30 and output $1.20 at peak, then $0.003, $0.15 and $0.60 off-peak. On deepseek-v4-pro: $0.044, $1.32 and $3.96 at peak, then $0.022, $0.66 and $1.98 off-peak. Source: DeepSeek’s pricing page, read October 19, 2026.
When are DeepSeek’s peak hours?▾
Peak is 01:00 to 04:00 and 06:00 to 10:00 UTC, Monday through Friday, excluding Chinese public holidays. All other hours are off-peak at half the peak rate, so a week has at most 35 peak hours.
Does DeepSeek have a free API?▾
No DeepSeek page we read states a free API tier or free credit for new accounts. The pricing page mentions a granted balance, used before a topped-up balance, but not who receives one. Top-up balances do not expire and unused balances can be refunded.
How much does a batch job cost on DeepSeek?▾
For 1,000 documents of 2,000 input and 300 output tokens each, all cache misses, deepseek-flash costs $0.96 at peak and $0.48 off-peak, and deepseek-v4-pro about $3.83 and $1.91. The token counts are our assumption, so measure a sample first.