DeepSeek V4 Pro pricing for content moderation

Quick start

Call DeepSeek V4 Pro 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-v4-pro",
    max_tokens=100,
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Your prompt here"}]
)
# Cost: ~$0.000528 per call at standard rates
# Input:  $0.66/MTok
# Output: $1.98/MTok

How DeepSeek V4 Pro compares on cost

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

Cheapest viable option: GPT 5.6 Luna at $0.000220/call (58% less, 91/100 quality).

What drives content moderation cost

The highest-volume, lowest-per-call task on this list: short input, a label out. Per-call cost is nearly negligible, which means total cost is a function of throughput alone. At moderation volume the difference between tiers is the entire budget, and a fast-tier model handling the clear cases with escalation for the ambiguous ones beats one model handling everything.

For DeepSeek V4 Pro specifically, that means output tokens cost 3.0x more than input, at $1.98 vs $0.66 per MTok. At this use case’s 500/100 token split, output accounts for 38% of the $0.000528 per-call cost.

DeepSeek V4 Pro quality benchmarks for content moderation

Benchmark data for content moderation is pending for DeepSeek V4 Pro. Test against your own evaluation suite before moving to production.

Benchmark data is not yet available for DeepSeek V4 Pro. We recommend testing against your own evaluation criteria.

About DeepSeek V4 Pro

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: $0.022/MTok input. No batch discount published. Not yet benchmarked, so never recommended.

Other models from DeepSeek

You can compare DeepSeek V4 Pro 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