DeepSeek cuts V4-Flash API prices with new peak/off-peak billing from Sept 10
DeepSeek officially announced a price cut for its V4-Flash (flash) API series effective Sept 10, 12:00 Beijing time, restoring input prices to pre-hike levels and switching to peak/off-peak billing, with the largest discounts in off-peak hours. The new scheme replaces the expiring "Intermediate" V4.1 pricing; the price sheet had leaked via community channels a day earlier.
Confirmed
- DeepSeek platform announcement: V4-Flash price cut from Sept 10, 12:00 (reported by 机器之心, 量子位, aigclink).
- Off-peak pricing (yuan per million tokens): cache-hit input 0.02 (down 60% from 0.05); cache-miss input 1 (down 33.33% from 1.5); output 4 (down 11.11% from 4.5).
- Peak hours are weekdays 9:00–12:00 and 14:00–18:00; the rest is off-peak. Peak prices are higher, per the official schedule.
- The new scheme replaces the expiring "Intermediate" V4.1 pricing (per teortaxesTex).
- michaelsoftbinbows noted that DeepSeek V4 Flash (0731) via openinference on OpenRouter costs only $0.05 input / $0.16 output per 1M tokens off-peak, below official pricing (from $0.22), drawing wide discussion.
Unconfirmed
- WeChat account 赛博禅心 mentioned a 20-concurrency limit accompanying the new scheme, flagged as pending official confirmation; the official announcement is silent on this.
Timeline
- Sept 8: teortaxesTex summarized the leaked pricing; 赛博禅心 posted the cut with effect time and concurrency details, unconfirmed.
- Sept 9: Official announcement confirmed via 量子位, 机器之心, aigclink; OpenRouter third-party low pricing sparked discussion.
- Sept 10, 12:00: New prices take effect.
Why it matters
- Input prices returning to pre-hike levels partially rolls back the earlier increase, directly benefiting developers and vendors relying on DeepSeek APIs.
- Off-peak cache-hit pricing as low as 0.02 yuan per million tokens, combined with time-based billing, will push users toward off-peak calls and higher cache utilization, reflecting shifts in DeepSeek's capacity and scheduling.
- The notable gap between official and third-party channels (e.g., OpenRouter) offers developers a cheaper alternative access path.
2026-09-08 ~ 2026-09-09 · 6 related posts
- Episode 1: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash Opens Limited Internal Beta with New Architecture and Native Multimodality(2026-09-08, 18 posts)
- Episode 2: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash Tested: Blazing 350 Tokens/s but Still Experimental(2026-09-08, 2 posts)
- Episode 3: DeepSeek cuts V4-Flash API prices with new peak/off-peak billing from Sept 10(2026-09-08, 6 posts)
- Episode 4: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash Nears Frontier Models at a Fraction of the Cost, Independent Tests Show(2026-09-09, 15 posts)
- Episode 5: DeepSeek Releases Open-Source V4.1 Flash, Beating Its Own Flagship at a Fraction of the Cost(2026-09-09, 57 posts)
- Episode 6: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash Leaks: 552B Asymmetric MoE Claimed to Rival GPT-5.6 Sol(2026-09-10, 21 posts)
- Episode 7: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash Benchmark Results Leak, Sparking Community Discussion(2026-09-10, 2 posts)
- Episode 8: DeepSeek Shrinks Per-Token KV Cache 54x in Nine Months to Sub-KB Levels(2026-09-10, 6 posts)
- Episode 9: Leaked DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash Touted as New Open-Source King(2026-09-10, 3 posts)
- Episode 10: Bug Hunt Bench Ranks Frontier Coding Models on 105 Real Bugs(2026-09-10, 13 posts)
- Episode 11: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash Confirmed to Center on YOCO Architecture(2026-09-10, 7 posts)
- Episode 12: Leaked DeepSeek V4.1 Flash Tech Report Reveals KV Cache-Obsessed Flagship(2026-09-11, 44 posts)
- Episode 13: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash tops Vals open-source index at $0.30 per run(2026-09-11, 2 posts)
- Episode 14: DeepSeek launches V4.1-Flash: 552B backbone, 1M-token context(2026-09-11, 5 posts)
- Episode 15: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash scores 40 in AA index despite rising hallucinations(2026-09-11, 2 posts)
- Episode 16: Inside KV-Cache Sharing: How DeepSeek CED and GLM 5.2 Differ(2026-09-11, 4 posts)
- Episode 17: DeepSeek 4.1 Flash Shows Big Gains in Kernel Engineering and Cost(2026-09-11, 2 posts)
- Episode 18: SGLang delivers Day 0 support for DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, hitting 873 tok/s(2026-09-12, 2 posts)
Primary sources
- [source] DeepSeek cuts flash-series prices to 1 yuan/M input tokens, launches v4.1-flash — 赛博禅心 · 2026-09-08
- [source] DeepSeek's Post-Sept 10 Pricing: Premium Output, Off-Peak Cache Hits at ¥0.02 — teortaxesTex · 2026-09-08
- DeepSeek cuts flash pricing up to 60%, introduces peak/off-peak billing — aigclink · 2026-09-09
- DeepSeek V4 Flash listed at $0.05/$0.16 per 1M off-peak on OpenRouter, 4x below official pricing — michaelsoft__binbows · 2026-09-09