DeepSeek V3 pricing for document summarization

Quick start

Call DeepSeek V3 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-v3",
    max_tokens=1000,
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Your prompt here"}]
)
# Cost: ~$0.003800 per call at standard rates
# Input:  $0.27/MTok
# Output: $1.10/MTok

How DeepSeek V3 compares on cost

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

Highest-quality affordable option: Gemini 3 Flash at $0.008000/call (2.1x the cost, 83/100 quality). DeepSeek V3 is already the cheapest choice for document summarization.

What drives document summarization cost

The archetypal input-heavy task: the entire source document goes in, a short summary comes back. Cost is almost entirely a function of document length, and the output rate barely registers. Long documents can cross a provider's long-context threshold, where the whole request is re-priced at a multiple. Check the threshold before feeding in a hundred-page PDF as one call.

For DeepSeek V3 specifically, that means output tokens cost 4.1x more than input, at $1.10 vs $0.27 per MTok. At this use case’s 10,000/1,000 token split, output accounts for 29% of the $0.003800 per-call cost.

DeepSeek V3 quality benchmarks for document summarization

Benchmark data for document summarization is pending for DeepSeek V3. Test against your own evaluation suite before moving to production.

Benchmark data is not yet available for DeepSeek V3. We recommend testing against your own evaluation criteria.

About DeepSeek V3

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: $0.07/MTok input. No batch discount published. Not yet benchmarked, so never recommended.

Other models from DeepSeek

You can compare DeepSeek V3 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