DeepSeek V4 Pro Price Increase: What Developers Need to Know
DeepSeek V4 Pro Price Increase: What Developers Need to Know DeepSeek has overhauled how it charges for API access to its V4 Pro and V4 Flash models, moving from a single flat rate to a peak and off-peak billing structure. The new rates went live on August 16, 2026, at 16:00 UTC, and for some token types the jump is steep enough to force teams to rethink how they build around the model. DeepSeek V4 Pro API Price Increases by Tier and Token Type Under the new schedule, DeepSeek splits each day into peak and off-peak windows, with peak hours running 01:00–04:00 UTC and 06:00–10:00 UTC. Off-peak pricing is set at half of peak, but every rate — even off-peak — sits above the old flat price. Most V4 Pro token rates are rising roughly 2x to 4x. Output tokens, which cost $0.87 per million under the old flat rate, now run $3.96 per million at peak and $1.98 off-peak. Input tokens on a cache miss climb from $0.435 to $1.32 at peak. The sharpest increase by far is cache-hit pricing on V4 Pr...