DeepSeek off-peak pricing: hours and how much you save (Oct 2026)
Off-peak billing is half of the peak rate for each listed price row on DeepSeek’s Models & Pricing page.
Peak hours are 01:00–04:00 and 06:00–10:00 UTC, Monday through Friday, excluding Chinese public holidays. All other hours, full weekends, and Chinese public holidays are off-peak.
Peak/off-peak billing took effect at 16:00 UTC on 16 August 2026, per the API change log and pricing page.
Official sources
Peak vs off-peak hours
DeepSeek defines peak in UTC (rows below). Local rows cover US Eastern and Pacific, UK, Central Europe (Paris/Berlin), India, and Singapore. Summer and winter offsets are listed where DST applies (UK clocks change 25 October; US clocks 1 November; EU clocks 26 October). Always treat UTC as authoritative. Weekends and Chinese public holidays are off-peak in full per the Models & Pricing page; DeepSeek does not publish a holiday calendar there.
| Zone | Peak window A (UTC 01:00–04:00) | Peak window B (UTC 06:00–10:00) |
|---|---|---|
| UTC | 01:00–04:00 | 06:00–10:00 |
| London (BST, UTC+1) | 02:00–05:00 | 07:00–11:00 |
| London (GMT, from 25 Oct) | 01:00–04:00 | 06:00–10:00 |
| New York (EDT, UTC−4) | 21:00–00:00 (prev. day) | 02:00–06:00 |
| New York (EST, from 1 Nov) | 20:00–23:00 (prev. day) | 01:00–05:00 |
| Los Angeles (PDT, UTC−7) | 18:00–21:00 (prev. day) | 23:00–03:00 (prev. day) |
| Los Angeles (PST, from 1 Nov) | 17:00–20:00 (prev. day) | 22:00–02:00 (prev. day) |
| Paris / Berlin (CEST, UTC+2) | 03:00–06:00 | 08:00–12:00 |
| Paris / Berlin (CET, from 26 Oct) | 02:00–05:00 | 07:00–11:00 |
| India (IST, UTC+5:30) | 06:30–09:30 | 11:30–15:30 |
| Singapore (SGT, UTC+8) | 09:00–12:00 | 14:00–18:00 |
Current per-model prices
Peak and off-peak USD rows change on DeepSeek’s site. Use the live table: Models & Pricing. This directory mirrors list prices on /api-pricing.
Worked example (illustration)
Suppose a batch job on deepseek-flash uses 1M cache-miss input tokens and 500k output tokens during a peak window. Using the published peak list prices ($0.30 input / $1.20 output per 1M tokens on the pricing page):
Peak = $0.30 + 0.5 × $1.20 = $0.90. The same token counts in off-peak would halve each rate → $0.45.
Illustration only — cache hits, thinking mode, and Search calls bill differently.
Scheduling batch jobs off-peak
Schedule in UTC to match DeepSeek’s billing windows. Example cron (runs at 12:00 UTC on weekdays — off-peak):
# Mon–Fri 12:00 UTC — outside both peak bands
0 12 * * 1-5 /usr/local/bin/run-deepseek-batch.shFAQ
Off-peak prices are 50% of peak prices for the same model and token type.
DeepSeek states this on the Models & Pricing page; we do not calculate percentage savings beyond that rule.
Yes. The pricing page says weekends are off-peak in full.
DeepSeek excludes Chinese public holidays from peak windows but does not publish a holiday calendar on the pricing page.
The published price table applies peak/off-peak rows to deepseek-flash and deepseek-v4-pro.