DeepSeek made its name offering far cheaper AI services than its pricier western competitors, but the cheap ride appears to be at an end. The company has started telling customers to prepare for significant price rises with the advent of its latest model. With the announcement of DeepSeek V4 Pro, the company is raising its API pricing fourfold. The company said it’s adopting a new peak and off-peak pricing to “allocate resources more reasonably.”

Starting on August 16, the DeepSeek V4 Pro model will cost $3.96 for 1 million output tokens at peak hours, more than four times the current rate of $0.87. It will cost you half that amount ($1.98) during off-peak hours. Meanwhile, the DeepSeek V4 Flash model will set you back $1.32 for 1 million output tokens (from $0.28) during peak hours and $0.66 during off-peak. 

To be fair, the current API pricing was supposed to be just a promotion ending on May 31. DeepSeek announced that month that it was going to make the discounted prices permanent, but it ultimately decided to proceed with the price hikes. 

Even though DeepSeek will soon cost four times more, its V4 models are still a lot more affordable than many of its competitors. Kimi K3, a model by Chinese company Moonshot, costs $15 per 1 million output tokens. OpenAI’s most advanced model, GPT-5.6 Sol, costs $30 for 1 million output tokens. However, its low cost offering, GPT-5.6 Luna, costs $1.20, less than the DeepSeek V4 Flash at peak hours.