DeepSeek API Pricing: Free Credits, Limits & China Setup
DeepSeek is a leading Chinese AI lab offering high-performance open-source LLMs. April 2026 V4 release: V4-Pro (1.6T params, 49B active) and V4-Flash (284B params, 13B active), both with 1M token context and thinking/non-thinking modes. Very competitive API pricing with V4-Pro at 25%-of-list through 2026-05-31, then the announced 1/4-of-list pricing basis. $5 free credits on signup, compatible with OpenAI and Anthropic API formats.
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DeepSeek free tier, pricing, API limits, and alternatives
Quick answer: DeepSeek API is one of the lowest-cost China-access AI APIs, with signup credits, a 50 requests/day free-trial-style limit in our tracker, V4-Pro/V4-Flash pricing, and OpenAI-compatible setup.
🎁 Free Tier
Daily Limit: 50 requests/day
| Model | Context | Limit | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| DeepSeek-V4-Pro | 1000k | Rate limited | Released April 2026, 1.6T param MoE (49B active), 1M context, thinking/non-thinking modes |
| DeepSeek-V4-Flash | 1000k | Rate limited | Lightweight V4, 284B params (13B active), 1M context, excellent value |
| DeepSeek-V3 | 64k | 50 RPD | Previous flagship, still available |
| DeepSeek-R1 | 64k | 50 RPD | Reasoning model, strong at math/code |
🔑 Free API
Free Credits: $5
Rate Limit: 2 RPM
$5 free credits on signup, pay-as-you-go after. V4-Pro has a 25%-of-list pricing window through 2026/05/31, then moves to the announced 1/4-of-list pricing basis; cache-hit price is reduced to 1/10. Verify final billing in the console. V4-Flash $0.14/M input, $0.28/M output