DeepSeek Flash pricing for chatbot

Quick start

Call DeepSeek Flash with the OpenAI Python SDK pointed at api.deepseek.com:

import os
from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(
    base_url="https://api.deepseek.com/v1",
    api_key=os.environ["DEEPSEEK_API_KEY"],
)
response = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="deepseek-flash",
    max_tokens=1000,
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Your prompt here"}]
)
# Cost: ~$0.000900 per call at standard rates
# Input:  $0.15/MTok
# Output: $0.60/MTok

How DeepSeek Flash compares on cost

Per-call cost for all models scoring 50+ on chatbot benchmarks. Hover for details.

Highest-quality affordable option: GPT 5.6 Luna at $0.001600/call (1.8x the cost, 85/100 quality). DeepSeek Flash is already the cheapest choice for chatbot.

What drives chatbot cost

Conversational cost compounds: every turn resends the history, so the tenth message in a thread costs several times the first. Cost grows with the square of conversation length unless you cache the prefix or truncate history. Prompt caching is not an optimization here, it is the difference between a viable and an unviable unit economic.

For DeepSeek Flash specifically, that means output tokens cost 4.0x more than input, at $0.60 vs $0.15 per MTok. At this use case’s 2,000/1,000 token split, output accounts for 67% of the $0.000900 per-call cost.

DeepSeek Flash quality benchmarks for chatbot

Benchmark data for chatbot is pending for DeepSeek Flash. Test against your own evaluation suite before moving to production.

Benchmark data is not yet available for DeepSeek Flash. We recommend testing against your own evaluation criteria.

About DeepSeek Flash

Prices are off-peak rates from api-docs.deepseek.com (read 2026-10-11). Peak-hour prices are 2x the listed input and output rates — Tokeven does not model time-of-day tiers; off-peak is used as the base. Cache hit: $0.003/MTok input. No batch discount published. Not yet benchmarked, so never recommended.

Other models from DeepSeek

You can compare DeepSeek Flash head-to-head against any other model on our model comparison pages, or track how pricing has changed over time on the pricing history tracker.

Frequently asked questions