After raising prices by up to 11 times, DeepSeek adjusts pricing again! No peak hours on weekends, all billed at off-peak rates.

DeepSeek officially released an email showing that the DeepSeek API open platform will adjust its peak-valley pricing rules starting from midnight today: weekends (Saturday and Sunday) will no longer distinguish between peak and off-peak periods, with all calls charged at the off-peak rate throughout the day. On weekdays (Monday to Friday), the original peak-valley tiered pricing will continue to apply.

This is already the second pricing adjustment by DeepSeek this month. At midnight on August 17, DeepSeek implemented a significant price increase and introduced a peak-valley time-of-use pricing mechanism.

Taking the flagship model DeepSeek-V4-Pro as an example, during peak hours (9:00-12:00, 14:00-18:00), the output price surged from 6 yuan/million tokens to 27 yuan, while the cache-hit input price rose from 0.025 yuan to 0.30 yuan—an increase of 1100%, or 11 times. The cache-miss input price increased from 3 yuan to 9 yuan.

Off-peak prices are relatively moderate: cache-hit input at 0.15 yuan, cache-miss input at 4.5 yuan, and output at 13.5 yuan.

With this weekend pricing adjustment, developers calling the API on Saturdays and Sundays will be charged at off-peak rates all day, eliminating concerns about peak-hour costs. DeepSeek stated that this move aims to give users more flexibility in scheduling business on weekends while helping balance overall network computing load.

The new rules take effect automatically from midnight on August 23, and fees incurred before the effective date will still be settled under the original pricing rules. If users do not agree with the adjustment, they can opt out and apply for a refund.

It is worth noting that this round of price increases by DeepSeek comes amid two financing rounds totaling approximately 100 billion yuan (500 billion in the first round plus a planned 500 billion in the second). Founder Liang Wenfeng previously captured market share rapidly with ultra-low API pricing, earning the industry nickname "Price Butcher." After the price hike signal was released, the industry widely believes that the large model sector is transitioning from "burning money for market share" to a new phase of "balancing the books for survival."