DeepSeek R1 API pricing

By the aitokensai editors · Verified 2026-11-14 Sources: DeepSeek API docs

DeepSeek's reasoning model. Available at listed at platform rate (no published official USD price).

USD, standard tier. Rate read from the live rate config on 2026-11-14. DeepSeek publishes no USD list price for this model, so nothing here is cross-checked against one — this is a gateway rate, not a discount.

Specifications

What DeepSeek R1 costs at your volume

Calculated at $0.2899 input / $1.1596 output per 1M tokens, 4.0× apart on this model, assuming a 5:1 input-to-output ratio. That ratio is the single largest source of error in this table: resend-heavy workloads drift well past it, and at 4.0× the correction is not linear. The cost calculator takes the actual figures.

What DeepSeek R1 is for

$0.2899 per million input tokens puts DeepSeek R1 low enough that volume stops being the first question. This is a model you can point at thousands of calls a day and not think about: summarisation at scale, autocomplete, extraction pipelines, tier-one filtering in front of a stronger model.

Two honest limits. At 4.0×, output is still the majority of the bill, so this is not the cheapest option for genuinely long generation. And at this price the saving from staying cheap is small — escalating a hard case to a flagship costs pennies next to the cost of getting it wrong.

Where DeepSeek R1 sits in the index

DeepSeek R1 is 87 of 231 on input rate and 85 of 231 on output rate. A gap of 2 places, because on this model the output rate is 4.0× the input rate, level with the index median of 4.0× An output-heavy workload therefore leaves it almost where it started, which is why the cheapest model per input token is routinely not the cheapest per task. Percentile is the share of the 231 models in this index that cost more than DeepSeek R1.

On an agent mix the lowest blended rate in the same index is Gemma2 9B It at $0.01 per 1M tokens (about 94).2× less than this model at the same ratio. Across the whole index, sorting by input price alone moves a model by as much as 77 places; on DeepSeek R1 specifically the shift is 2 — which is what the re-ranked index exists to show.

DeepSeek R1 is 87 of 231 across every model in the index; the comparison that usually settles a choice is DeepSeek's own lineup further down.

DeepSeek R1 among DeepSeek's 4 models

DeepSeek R1 is the 3rd cheapest of DeepSeek's 4 models in this index at $0.2899 per 1M input tokens. The range inside that group runs from DeepSeek V4.1 Flash at $0.15 to DeepSeek V4 Pro at $0.66, a spread of 4×, and this one sits at 1.9× the group's cheapest tier.

On input rate alone, stepping up to DeepSeek V4 Pro costs 2.3× the input rate and dropping to DeepSeek V4 Flash cuts it by 24%. Both measured at 2026-11-14, the same check as every other rate on this page.

Full DeepSeek range, including models outside this shortlist: DeepSeek rate index.

Similarly priced alternatives

Blended comparison (input + output per 1M). Price is one axis, these are the three closest to DeepSeek R1 in blended rate, not interchangeable substitutes for it.

Calling DeepSeek R1

The identifier you send is DeepSeek-R1. Copy it exactly, because a mismatch returns a model error rather than a connection error, which sends most people to debug the wrong thing. Everything else is a base URL argument, DeepSeek R1's own SDKs work unchanged.

from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(base_url="https://aicomp.ai/v1", api_key="sk-...")

resp = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="DeepSeek-R1",
    messages=[
        {"role": "system", "content": "Answer in one short paragraph."},
        {"role": "user", "content": "Explain what changed in this release."},
    ],
    max_tokens=300,
)

# prompt_tokens / completion_tokens 是真实账单的唯一依据 —— 记下来，别猜
print(resp.usage.prompt_tokens, resp.usage.completion_tokens)

Log the usage object on every call, not just while you are optimising. On DeepSeek R1 output costs 4.0× what input costs, so the same monthly token count bills very differently depending on how much of it comes back as output — measure your own split before extrapolating from the headline input rate, because rates move with vendor promotions.

Setting it up

Pointing an existing integration at DeepSeek R1 is a base URL change, not a rewrite. Pick your tool:

• Claude Code — set the base URL via environment variables
• Cursor — override the API endpoint in settings
• OpenAI / Anthropic SDK — one base_url argument
• Python (sync), streaming and async examples
• Cutting the bill — eight levers ranked by effect

What different usage shapes cost on DeepSeek R1

A monthly token budget does not convert cleanly into a monthly invoice, and DeepSeek R1 is an ordinary case rather than an extreme one: output is priced at 4.0× input, level with the median of 4.0× across the 231 models in our index. Everything follows from that one number, at 5:1 it is manageable, at 1:1 the same token count costs half as much. Below are five shapes real DeepSeek R1 deployments fall into, each costing it out at the split it actually produces.

The cheapest comparison is GPT-5 nano at $0.025 / $0.2 per 1M — 6.4× cheaper than DeepSeek R1 on a blended rate. Treat it as a rate floor, not a recommendation: it says nothing about whether GPT-5 nano can do the work you need DeepSeek R1 for.

Read the table as a sanity check rather than a forecast. If your own output share sits anywhere near 3%, everything above is priced almost entirely at DeepSeek R1's $0.2899 input rate; at 40% the $1.1596 output rate has taken the larger half. Nobody's split is exactly the one you assumed when you picked the model, which is why the calculator asks for it before quoting anything.

FAQ

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