Chinese AI company DeepSeek has revised its API pricing structure again. It announced the change on its official X account on the night of August 13 (KST).
The announcement follows the release of the new V4 lineup. The gist is a two-tier peak and off-peak pricing structure.
When It Takes Effect and Which Hours Count
The new pricing applies from 16:00 UTC on August 16, which is 1 a.m. KST on August 17.
Peak hours are 01:00-04:00 and 06:00-10:00 UTC. Converted to Korea time, the peak windows are 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. Everything else is off-peak.
How Much It Goes Up
| Model | Item | Old price | New peak | New off-peak |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| V4-Flash | Output, per 1M tokens | $0.28 | $1.32 | $0.66 |
| V4-Flash | Input (cache miss), per 1M tokens | $0.14 | $0.44 | - |
| V4-Pro | Blended, per 1M tokens | $0.87 | $3.96 | About $1.98 |
| V4-Pro | Input (cache miss), per 1M tokens | $0.435 | $1.32 | - |
Foreign outlets such as PYMNTS and Reuters (as cited by Investing.com) reported that, depending on the item, increases range from a minimum of 50% to more than 1,100%.
Why Change It Now
DeepSeek said only briefly that it was "to allocate resources more rationally." The common reading among outlets is that time-of-day pricing is an incentive design meant to shift developers' workloads to quieter hours.
PYMNTS summarized it as a structure in which peak-hour prices rise up to 4 times the old rates.
Separate Your Peak-Hour Work First
For batch jobs, meaning work that doesn't need a real-time response, it pays to bunch them into off-peak hours (in Korea time, 7 p.m. to 10 a.m. the next day, and 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.).
If you run a real-time service that overlaps peak hours, check your dashboard ahead of time, because your bill after August 17 could rise by 4 times or more.
Check the Pricing Details in the Official Docs
That is as far as the numbers confirmed from DeepSeek's official post and foreign press reports go. The following needs further confirmation.
- Which exact token item the "up to 1,100% increase" applies to needs to be rechecked after DeepSeek updates its official price list.
- There was no separate notice about whether the same applies to enterprise customers on existing contracts or committed-rate plans.
If your team uses the DeepSeek API, the right order is to reschedule your workloads before 1 a.m. KST on August 17.