DeepSeek R1 pricing for product descriptions

Quick start

Call DeepSeek R1 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-r1",
    max_tokens=1500,
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Your prompt here"}]
)
# Cost: ~$0.003560 per call at standard rates
# Input:  $0.55/MTok
# Output: $2.19/MTok

How DeepSeek R1 compares on cost

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

Highest-quality affordable option: Gemini 3.6 Flash at $0.006000/call (1.7x the cost, 76/100 quality). DeepSeek R1 is already the cheapest choice for product descriptions.

What drives product descriptions cost

Catalogue-scale generation: modest output per item, multiplied across thousands of SKUs. Per-call price is small and total spend is set by catalogue size, which makes this a batch API workload almost by definition: descriptions are rarely needed within seconds. Shared brand and formatting context belongs in the cached prefix.

For DeepSeek R1 specifically, that means output tokens cost 4.0x more than input, at $2.19 vs $0.55 per MTok. At this use case’s 500/1,500 token split, output accounts for 92% of the $0.003560 per-call cost.

DeepSeek R1 quality benchmarks for product descriptions

Benchmark data for product descriptions is pending for DeepSeek R1. Test against your own evaluation suite before moving to production.

Benchmark data is not yet available for DeepSeek R1. We recommend testing against your own evaluation criteria.

About DeepSeek R1

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: $0.14/MTok input. No batch discount published. Reasoning model: output includes chain-of-thought tokens. Not yet benchmarked, so never recommended.

Other models from DeepSeek

You can compare DeepSeek R1 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