DeepSeek adds pay-per-request Search and Fetch APIs at $0.75 per 1,000 calls
By Rob Litterst, Co-founder, PricingSaaS
Published Last updated
DeepSeek’s pricing page · Change detected
What changed
DeepSeek's docs now list a new "Search & Fetch Pricing" table: Search and Fetch are standalone APIs billed per request, each priced at $0.75 per 1,000 successful requests. Server-side tool calls made through DeepSeek Harness, Claude Code or Codex already hit these APIs and are free for now; per-request billing for them starts at 00:00 Beijing time on November 1, 2026.
Why it matters
Developers using the DeepSeek API get a short free window before server-side Search and Fetch calls start showing up as separate line items on Nov 1 — worth budgeting for now rather than after billing starts. Watch whether DeepSeek's rapid pricing cadence continues once the Search and Fetch meter goes live, given how often it has revised terms this year.
In context
DeepSeek's add-on comes 27 days after it extended its 50% off-peak discount to Chinese public holidays, continuing an unusually fast cadence — 8 real changes since tracking began in July 2026, roughly one every 11 days. That cadence has included real swings: API prices roughly doubled in August's peak/off-peak restructuring, only for Flash pricing to be cut up to 57% weeks later. A metered Search and Fetch API, with billing deferred to November, is a smaller move by comparison but keeps the pattern going. Market-wide, 89 pricing changes across 79 companies added a new paid add-on in the last 180 days — 5.2% of all tracked changes — including Baseten's own model-lineup addition the same day.