{"eid":"deepseek","name":"DeepSeek API","domain":"deepseek.com","resolved_by":"domain","topics":["compute","inference","storage"],"n_records":3,"best_vorder":3,"review":null,"aliases":["DeepSeek API","DeepSeek Files API","deepseek.com"],"records":[{"rid":"compute/deepseek-api","card":{"rid":"compute/deepseek-api","eid":"deepseek","topic":"compute","slug":"deepseek-api","provider":"DeepSeek API","url":"https://api-docs.deepseek.com/quick_start/pricing/","domain":"deepseek.com","category":"inference API","tier":null,"verdict":"paid-only","vorder":3,"grp":"paid","confidence":"documented","binding":"volume-quota","identity_kind":"email","identity_basis":"stated","needs_card":0,"needs_phone":0,"needs_id":0,"needs_institution":0,"country":null,"crypto":null,"interfaces":null,"egress_metered":null,"per_object_bytes":null,"retention_days":null,"verified_at":"2026-10-22T00:00:00.000Z","verified_basis":"live","checked_on":"2026-10-22","stale_on":"2026-11-21","n_evidence":3,"usd_month":null,"usd_per_tb_month":null,"summary":"No free grant on the vendor's own pricing page. deepseek-flash is USD 0.15 per 1M input tokens on a cache miss and USD 0.60 per 1M output off-peak, doubling ...","duplicate_of":null,"n_unknown":10},"record":{"topic":"compute","slug":"deepseek-api","provider":"DeepSeek API","url":"https://api-docs.deepseek.com/quick_start/pricing/","category":"inference API","free_tier":{"stated":"No free grant on the vendor's own pricing page. deepseek-flash is USD 0.15 per 1M input tokens on a cache miss and USD 0.60 per 1M output off-peak, doubling at peak; cache hits cost USD 0.003 per 1M off-peak. The concurrency limit is 2,500 for deepseek-flash and 500 for deepseek-v4-pro, at account level, and 'There is no additional cost for capacity expansion'. Context is 1M tokens with 384K maximum output.","unit":"none","metered_on":"wall-clock","source_url":"https://api-docs.deepseek.com/quick_start/pricing/","read_on":"2026-10-22","notes":"none"},"per_object_cap":{"stated":"not applicable","bytes":null,"source_url":"https://api-docs.deepseek.com/quick_start/pricing/","notes":null},"retention":{"stated":"not applicable","days":null,"source_url":"https://api-docs.deepseek.com/quick_start/pricing/","notes":null},"egress":{"terms":"not stated","metered":false,"free_allowance":null,"price_per_tb":null,"source_url":"https://api-docs.deepseek.com/quick_start/pricing/"},"interface":["unknown"],"interface_detail":"inferred from the tooling the provider documents; not probed","tooling":"not stated","chaining":"the off-peak window is the chain that matters: at USD 0.15 per 1M input and 2,500 concurrency a weekend batch is the cheapest job in this class and needs no free tier at all.","limits":[{"kind":"volume-quota","value":"nothing binds but the balance: 2,500 concurrent requests is the highest concurrency in this class, about eight times Cloudflare's 300 requests a minute, so the only ceiling is the prepaid balance and USD 0.15 per 1M input makes a large job cheap rather than free.","source":"https://api-docs.deepseek.com/quick_start/pricing/"}],"limits_note":"nothing binds but the balance: 2,500 concurrent requests is the highest concurrency in this class, about eight times Cloudflare's 300 requests a minute, so the only ceiling is the prepaid balance and USD 0.15 per 1M input makes a large job cheap rather than free.","binding":"volume-quota","binding_note":"nothing binds but the balance: 2,500 concurrent requests is the highest concurrency in this class, about eight times Cloudflare's 300 requests a minute, so the only ceiling is the prepaid balance and USD 0.15 per 1M input makes a large job cheap rather than free.","identity_cost":{"kind":"email","detail":null,"country":null},"reliability_note":"no reliability event recorded","confidence":"documented","evidence":[{"url":"https://api-docs.deepseek.com/quick_start/pricing/","date":"2026-10-22","proved":"'1M INPUT TOKENS (CACHE MISS) OFF-PEAK $0.15 PEAK $0.3' and '1M OUTPUT TOKENS OFF-PEAK $0.6 PEAK $1.2' for deepseek-flash, quoted"},{"url":"https://api-docs.deepseek.com/quick_start/rate_limit/","date":"2026-10-22","proved":"'Concurrency Limit 2500' for deepseek-flash, 'calculated at the account level', quoted"},{"url":"https://api-docs.deepseek.com/quick_start/pricing/","date":"2026-10-22","proved":"peak hours are '01:00 - 04:00 and 06:00 - 10:00 UTC, Monday through Friday', so every other hour including weekends is off-peak, quoted"}],"verdict":"paid-only","verified_at":"2026-10-22T00:00:00.000Z","notes":"Arithmetic, labelled estimate: a 100M-input-token batch at the off-peak cache-miss rate is USD 15 and finishes in hours at 2,500 concurrent requests, where Groq's 200K TPD free lane would need 500 days for the same input. The free 5M-token signup grant that tutorials still describe does not appear on the vendor's pricing page, which prices every model and names no grant; a third-party test on 2026-08-31 reported granted_balance 0.00 and a 402 on the first call, which is reported and not my measurement. Identity on the international lane is an email address.","extras":{"wave2":{"class":"cheapest-paid","free_tier_kind":"none","shape":{"vcpu":null,"ram_gib":null,"gpu_class":null,"gpu_count":null}}}},"claims":[{"path":"$.free_tier.stated","kind":"free-quota","num":null,"unit":null,"per":null,"currency":null,"usd":null,"fx_date":null,"parse":"unparsed"},{"path":"$.limits[0].value","kind":"limit:volume-quota","num":300.0,"unit":"requests","per":"minute","currency":null,"usd":null,"fx_date":null,"parse":"ok"}],"unknown":[["$.egress.metered","egress-unknown"],["$.egress.terms","not-stated"],["$.identity_cost.detail","process"],["$.interface","interface-unknown"],["$.per_object_cap.notes","process"],["$.per_object_cap.stated","not-applicable"],["$.reliability_note","none-observed"],["$.retention.notes","process"],["$.retention.stated","not-applicable"],["$.tooling","not-stated"]],"history":[],"drift":[]},{"rid":"inference/deepseek-api","card":{"rid":"inference/deepseek-api","eid":"deepseek","topic":"inference","slug":"deepseek-api","provider":"DeepSeek API","url":"https://api-docs.deepseek.com/","domain":"deepseek.com","category":"inference endpoint, paid","tier":null,"verdict":"paid-only","vorder":3,"grp":"paid","confidence":"documented","binding":"none","identity_kind":"card","identity_basis":"stated","needs_card":1,"needs_phone":0,"needs_id":0,"needs_institution":0,"country":null,"crypto":null,"interfaces":"rest","egress_metered":0,"per_object_bytes":null,"retention_days":null,"verified_at":"2026-10-22T04:32:00.000Z","verified_basis":"live","checked_on":"2026-10-23","stale_on":"2026-11-22","n_evidence":1,"usd_month":null,"usd_per_tb_month":null,"summary":"no free tier observed on the documentation read","duplicate_of":null,"n_unknown":2},"record":{"topic":"inference","per_object_cap":{"stated":"not applicable: an inference endpoint stores nothing for the caller"},"retention":{"stated":"not applicable"},"egress":{"terms":"the response is the payload; no separate egress term is published","metered":false},"interface":["rest"],"tooling":"any OpenAI-compatible client; curl against POST {base}/chat/completions","chaining":"pairs with an agent as the cheapest paid per-token route; the scarce link is the prepaid balance, not a rate","limits":[],"slug":"deepseek-api","provider":"DeepSeek API","url":"https://api-docs.deepseek.com/","category":"inference endpoint, paid","free_tier":{"stated":"no free tier observed on the documentation read","unit":"none","metered_on":"none","source_url":"https://api-docs.deepseek.com/quick_start/pricing","read_on":"2026-10-22"},"endpoint":"https://api.deepseek.com","identity_cost":{"kind":"card","detail":"an API key from the platform; a card on the account","country":null},"reliability_note":"the legacy model names deepseek-v4-flash and deepseek-v4-flash-vision-exp are retired and their requests are now served by DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-1017 at the Flash price","confidence":"documented","confidence_note":"the model naming and the retirement are documented from the page read today. The per-token rate did not render on any route, so no rate is carried. verified_at is the instant its evidence URLs were fetched on 2026-10-22, read from the fetch log, not typed.","evidence":[{"url":"https://api-docs.deepseek.com/quick_start/pricing","date":"2026-10-22","proved":"the served models are deepseek-flash and deepseek-v4-pro; deepseek-flash is served by DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-1017; the legacy names are accepted but their models are retired and billed at the Flash price; OpenAI and Anthropic compatible base URLs"}],"verdict":"paid-only","verified_at":"2026-10-22T04:32:00.000Z","notes":"The rate itself is third-party until a page rendering it is read.","binding":"none","limits_note":"no rate or quota binds: the gate is access, not allowance"},"claims":[{"path":"$.free_tier.stated","kind":"free-quota","num":null,"unit":null,"per":null,"currency":null,"usd":null,"fx_date":null,"parse":"unparsed"}],"unknown":[["$.notes","partly-held"],["$.retention.stated","not-applicable"]],"history":[],"drift":[]},{"rid":"storage/deepseek-files-api","card":{"rid":"storage/deepseek-files-api","eid":"deepseek","topic":"storage","slug":"deepseek-files-api","provider":"DeepSeek Files API","url":"https://api-docs.deepseek.com/guides/files_api","domain":"deepseek.com","category":"Chinese LLM platform /v1/files","tier":null,"verdict":"fails-egress","vorder":5,"grp":"rejected","confidence":"reported","binding":"per-object-cap","identity_kind":"email","identity_basis":"stated","needs_card":0,"needs_phone":0,"needs_id":0,"needs_institution":0,"country":null,"crypto":null,"interfaces":null,"egress_metered":0,"per_object_bytes":67108864,"retention_days":0,"verified_at":"2026-10-21T00:00:00.000Z","verified_basis":"inherited","checked_on":"2026-10-21","stale_on":"2026-11-04","n_evidence":6,"usd_month":null,"usd_per_tb_month":null,"summary":"25 GiB per user, 10,000 files, 64 MiB per file. Permanent if `expires_after` is omitted; otherwise 1 hour – 30 days.","duplicate_of":null,"n_unknown":5},"record":{"topic":"storage","slug":"deepseek-files-api","provider":"DeepSeek Files API","url":"https://api-docs.deepseek.com/guides/files_api","category":"Chinese LLM platform /v1/files","free_tier":{"stated":"25 GiB per user, 10,000 files, 64 MiB per file. Permanent if `expires_after` is omitted; otherwise 1 hour – 30 days.","unit":"GiB","metered_on":"unstated","source_url":"https://api-docs.deepseek.com/guides/files_api","read_on":"2026-10-21","notes":null},"per_object_cap":{"stated":"64 MiB per file","bytes":67108864,"source_url":"https://api-docs.deepseek.com/guides/files_api","notes":"not stated"},"retention":{"stated":"25 GiB per user, 10,000 files, 64 MiB per file. Permanent if `expires_after` is omitted; otherwise 1 hour – 30 days","days":0,"source_url":"https://api-docs.deepseek.com/guides/files_api","notes":"not stated"},"egress":{"terms":"Files API itself is free; only inference tokens are billed. No egress fee documented.","metered":false},"interface":["unknown"],"interface_detail":"OpenAI-compatible POST /files, and an Anthropic-compatible /anthropic/v1/files; also list/retrieve/delete","tooling":"openai-python with base_url https://api.deepseek.com; curl multipart; ai-sdk deepseek provider ships a file store","chaining":"25 GiB is per *user*, not per project — no obvious multiplicative axis except more accounts. Image-only format restriction (JPEG/PNG/GIF/WebP, sniffed from content) makes it a picture store rather than a blob store.","limits":[{"kind":"per-object-cap","value":"64 MiB per file","source":"https://api-docs.deepseek.com/guides/files_api"}],"limits_note":"per-object-cap 64 MiB. Upload must complete within 10 minutes. Count cap 10,000 files. `purpose` must be `user_data`. Omit `expires_after` for permanence — '少写一个参数，文件就永久留在他服务器上' (omit one parameter and the file stays on their server forever).","identity_cost":{"kind":"email","detail":"email","country":null},"reliability_note":"NO DOWNLOAD. The endpoint set is upload/list/retrieve-metadata/delete — there is no content-download route, and the docs describe retrieval as metadata only ('Retrieving file information returns metadata; it is not a request for the model to read the image'). 25 GiB of write-only image storage. Also: DeepSeek's platform forces phone binding on first login for some account classes (`platform.deepseek.com/mobile_verification` — 'please bind your phone number upon first login'), while international email+password signup is reported to work. Uncertain, hence medium.","confidence":"reported","confidence_note":"One page read moves it to documented.","evidence":[{"url":"https://api-docs.deepseek.com/guides/files_api","date":"2026-10-21","proved":"'A single file may be at most 64 MiB'; 'expires_after[seconds] … between 3600 and 2592000. Omit both expires_after fields to keep the file permanently'; supported formats JPEG/PNG/GIF/WebP only"},{"url":"https://www.datastudios.org/post/deepseek-file-uploading-supported-file-types-maximum-size-limits-upload-rules-and-document-readi","date":"2026-10-21","proved":"'25 GiB of stored files per user; up to 10,000 stored files'"},{"url":"https://news.cnyes.com/news/id/6584205","date":"2026-10-21","proved":"'單個文件最大 64 MiB，每個用戶最多存 25 GiB、10000 個文件 … 不設定有效期則可以一直保留'"},{"url":"https://linux.do/top?page=395","date":"2026-10-21","proved":"'DeepSeek 上线 Files API，每用户 25 GiB 永不过期！… 仅支持图片格式，单文件限制 64 MiB' (author @Tealina, 2026-08-21)"},{"url":"https://chat-deep.ai/docs/deepseek-api-file-upload/","date":"2026-10-21","proved":"'Retrieving file information returns metadata; it is not a request for the model to read the image'"},{"url":"https://api.deepseek.com/files","date":"2026-10-21","proved":"PROBE: curl -D - -> 401, Content-Length 31, body 'Authentication Fails (governor)' — live, ELB + CloudFront fronted"}],"verdict":"fails-egress","verified_at":"2026-10-21T00:00:00.000Z","notes":"25 GiB per user, 10,000 files, 64 MiB per file. Permanent if `expires_after` is omitted; otherwise 1 hour – 30 days.","extras":{"dead_end":{"failure_class":"retention","why":"25 GiB per user, 10,000 files, 64 MiB per file. Permanent if `expires_after` is omitted; otherwise 1 hour – 30 days.","retry_when":null,"first_recorded":"2026-10-21"}},"binding":"per-object-cap","binding_note":"the per-object cap sets the shard size and therefore the object count; it bounds the total more tightly than any headline quota"},"claims":[{"path":"$.free_tier.stated","kind":"free-quota","num":25.0,"unit":"GiB","per":null,"currency":null,"usd":null,"fx_date":null,"parse":"ok"},{"path":"$.limits[0].value","kind":"limit:per-object-cap","num":64.0,"unit":"MiB","per":null,"currency":null,"usd":null,"fx_date":null,"parse":"ok"}],"unknown":[["$.extras.dead_end.retry_when","process"],["$.free_tier.notes","process"],["$.interface","interface-unknown"],["$.per_object_cap.notes","not-extracted"],["$.retention.notes","not-extracted"]],"history":[],"drift":[]}]}