Is the DeepSeek API free?
DeepSeek's pricing and rate-limit pages publish no free tier or trial amount. Billing deducts from a topped-up balance or a granted balance, granted first, so any grant is visible only in the account console. The API is prepaid.
Signup credit: DeepSeek API
Shown only in the provider console| Limit | Value | Applies to | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free credit | Unpublished | Account | A 'granted balance' is mentioned in billing text with no published amount or eligibility. |
- What moves you past this tier
- Topping up a balance; no published minimum purchase.
- Card required
- Not stated by the provider
- Source
- DeepSeek models and pricing (billing section) Read 2026-09-11
Peak hours 01:00–04:00 and 06:00–10:00 UTC Monday to Friday; all other hours are off-peak at half the peak rate.
Paid entry tier: DeepSeek API
Published on the provider pageDeepSeek publishes no per-minute request or token limits; the documented limits are concurrency caps per account (and per user_id on expanded accounts): 2,500 concurrent requests for deepseek-flash and 500 for deepseek-v4-pro. Excess returns HTTP 429. Under load the server keeps the connection alive with empty lines or SSE comments and closes it if inference has not started after 10 minutes.
| Limit | Value | Applies to | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Concurrent requests | 2,500 | deepseek-flash | Account-level concurrency limit |
| Concurrent requests | 500 | deepseek-v4-pro | Account-level concurrency limit |
- What moves you past this tier
- Expanded capacity is arranged with DeepSeek; the same concurrency caps then apply per user_id.
- Card required
- Not stated by the provider
- Source
- DeepSeek rate limits Read 2026-09-11
Questions
Is DeepSeek free?
The chat app is separate. The DeepSeek API is prepaid: you top up a balance and each request deducts tokens at the published rates, with off-peak hours billed at half the peak rate. DeepSeek’s pricing and rate-limit pages publish no free tier and no trial amount.
Does DeepSeek give free API credits?
Its billing text says fees are deducted from a topped-up balance or a granted balance, granted first, but it publishes no grant amount or eligibility. Any grant is visible only inside the account console, so we record it as unpublished rather than promise one.
What are DeepSeek’s API rate limits?
DeepSeek publishes concurrency caps rather than per-minute request or token limits: 2,500 concurrent requests for deepseek-flash and 500 for deepseek-v4-pro per account, with the same caps per user_id on expanded accounts. Excess returns HTTP 429; under load the server keeps the connection alive and closes it if inference has not started after 10 minutes.