Cheapest DeepSeek V4 API: 4 Options, Real Numbers ($9–$77/mo)

Posted on Oct 30 • Originally published at ai-info.fastget.link

Disclosure: I run ai-info.fastget.link, an independent reference site for AI API pricing and comparisons. No affiliate links in this post. All figures below were checked on the date noted — treat it as a snapshot, not gospel. This post is a mirror; the canonical version lives on my site.

Cheapest DeepSeek V4 API — 4 Options Compared

Written 3 Sep 2026 · prices verified 3 Sep 2026 3 Sep 2026

Running DeepSeek V4 Flash on 100M input / 25M output tokens a month costs $9 on one platform and $77 on another — an 8x spread on the same model. Here are all four options with real numbers, and why most price quotes you'll find online are measuring the wrong thing.

Enter your own volume. Rows are sorted by what you would actually pay, cheapest first.

OpenRouter rows are the cheapest route for the given model ID, checked 3 Sep 2026. Routes are re-priced continuously — the cheapest host today is not guaranteed to be cheapest tomorrow (see §3).

DeepSeek Official splits into peak and off-peak: peak is UTC 01:00–04:00 and 06:00–10:00 Monday–Friday, 35 of 168 hours. The other 133 hours, including all weekend, are half price. Check those windows in your timezone →

Novita quotes a flat rate at every hour. DeepSeek's own endpoint appears as a host inside OpenRouter at exactly its off-peak rate, which is why the Pro rows tie.

On Flash, both resale options beat DeepSeek's own endpoint at every hour of the day:

OpenRouter is the cheapest of the four, and it is also the one we earn nothing from. But it is a routing marketplace: it sends your request to whichever host is cheapest at that moment, and that host changes. Novita charges a flat rate you can put in a budget — at the cost of paying more than the router.

Where to start → Want a flat rate you can forecast? Novita AI charges $0.14/$0.28 for Flash around the clock — 45% below DeepSeek's own off-peak rate and 73% below peak, with no scheduler to build. → Chasing the lowest possible number? OpenRouter's DeepSeek V4 Flash routes from $0.05/$0.16 — cheaper, but re-check it before you commit spend.

Pro inverts the picture. DeepSeek's off-peak rate on Pro is genuinely competitive, and Novita is not:

Nothing here recommends Novita for Pro, so we won't pretend otherwise. If your workload is Pro-heavy, run the official endpoint and shift what you can into off-peak, or route through OpenRouter — where DeepSeek's own host currently lists at $0.66/$1.98, meaning you pay the off-peak rate at 15:00 on a Wednesday.

Novita is also worth a look on Pro if you need dated-build parity — but compare first: its deepseek-v4-pro-0813 entry is $1.32/$3.96, a pass-through of DeepSeek's peak rate. Details in §4.

Here is the part that makes cross-platform comparison genuinely hard, and that almost no pricing page mentions: both OpenRouter and Novita list each DeepSeek V4 model twice — an undated entry and a dated build — and the two are priced differently on both platforms, in opposite directions.

Those dated figures are recognisable: $0.44/$1.32 is DeepSeek's Flash peak rate and $1.32/$3.96 is its Pro peak rate, to the cent. If you landed on Novita's pricing page, sorted by model name, and saw $0.44 for Flash, you would reasonably conclude Novita is expensive. On Flash it isn't — you were looking at a pass-through resale of DeepSeek's undiscounted peak price. The cheap entry on Novita is the undated one. On Pro the pass-through is $1.32/$3.96, which is cheaper than Novita's own $1.60/$3.20 — and both sit above DeepSeek's off-peak rate (§3).

OpenRouter's dated Flash build is the cheaper of its two Flash entries ($0.05/$0.16 against $0.0679/$0.168) and sees more context — 1,310,720 tokens against 1,048,576. And the undated ID is not "the latest model": OpenRouter's own canonical_slug field shows deepseek-v4-pro is pinned to deepseek-v4-pro-20260423, the April build, three months older than -0813.

This pattern is not a DeepSeek quirk. Across the OpenRouter catalogue, dated entries run from 81% cheaper ( qwen3-235b-a22b-2507 ) to twice the price with a quarter of the context ( gpt-3.5-turbo-0613 ). A comparison quoting a model name without an ID cannot be checked, so treat it as unverified.

The honest trade-off, since it decides which of the two cheap options suits you:

What is the cheapest DeepSeek V4 API? At 100M input / 25M output tokens a month: OpenRouter, at $9.00 for Flash and $115.50 for Pro. Both are cheapest-route prices checked 3 Sep 2026, and both will move.

Is Novita cheaper than DeepSeek's official API? For Flash, yes, at every hour: Novita's flat $0.14/$0.28 is 45% below DeepSeek's off-peak $0.22/$0.66 and 73% below peak $0.44/$1.32. For Pro, no — Novita is $1.60/$3.20, roughly double DeepSeek's off-peak $0.66/$1.98. Use the official endpoint or a router for Pro.

Why do I see two different prices for the same DeepSeek model? Because it is listed twice: an undated entry and a dated build. On Novita the dated entries are pass-throughs of DeepSeek's peak rate and cost more; on OpenRouter the dated Flash build is cheaper and sees more context. They are different builds, not duplicates — see §4.

Does the undated model ID mean "latest version"? No. On OpenRouter it is pinned to a specific build — deepseek-v4-pro resolves to the 23 April 2026 release. The dated -0813 entry is newer. Check canonical_slug before assuming.

Do I need to schedule around off-peak hours to save money? Probably not. 79% of the week is already off-peak, weekends included, applied per request with no opt-in. Scheduling only pays if a large share of your traffic lands in the 35 peak hours — and on Flash, alternatives undercut the off-peak rate anyway.

How often should I re-check these prices? Route prices daily, if the number matters to a decision you're making now. Flat rates like Novita's only need checking when the provider announces a change. Every figure on this page carries a 3 Sep 2026 verified date and is answerable only to that date.

Bottom line → Flash workload, and you want a rate that won't move? Start with Novita AI — $0.14/$0.28 flat, 45% under DeepSeek's own off-peak rate. → Pro workload? Skip Novita and go direct to DeepSeek, or route through OpenRouter at $0.66/$1.98 all day.

Every figure on this page comes from one of these, fetched and snapshotted 3 Sep 2026:

Originally published on ai-info.fastget.link — more DeepSeek pricing and comparison pieces there.