DeepSeek ended free Search and Fetch calls via Claude Code

DeepSeek removed a note from its pricing page that had exempted Search and Fetch API calls made through DeepSeek Harness, Claude Code or Codex from billing. Per DeepSeek's pricing page, those calls were free of charge until 00:00 Beijing time on Nov 1, 2026; the table above the note lists Search and Fetch at $0.75 per 1,000 successful requests on DeepSeek's pricing page as of Nov 5, 2026, the same rate both APIs have carried since they launched. The note has been replaced with a line pointing readers to DeepSeek's Search & Fetch guide.

Pulse tracked DeepSeek launching these same Search and Fetch APIs at $0.75 per 1,000 requests on Oct 17, 2026, 19 days before this one. The per-request rate itself has not moved; what changed is that the temporary carve-out for agent-routed traffic has lapsed on the schedule DeepSeek's pricing page set when it first listed the exemption.

For product leaders building on model APIs, this is a reminder that a ‘free while agent coding takes off’ launch usually has an expiration date attached from day one — DeepSeek's pricing page named Nov 1, 2026 as the cutoff when it first listed the exemption, not an afterthought added later. If your own usage-based pricing carves out a channel (an agent, an SDK, a partner integration) to drive adoption, write the sunset date into the terms the way DeepSeek did, rather than leaving it open-ended and creating a harder billing conversation down the line.

For a team heavy on Claude Code or Codex against DeepSeek's models, the practical effect is that Search and Fetch calls routed through those tools now cost $0.75 per 1,000 requests, per DeepSeek's pricing page as of Nov 5, 2026, the same as any other channel — worth checking agent configs for retry loops or redundant search calls now that the usage carries a real per-request cost. Watch whether other model providers that offered similar agent-specific waivers to court the Claude Code / Codex ecosystem start winding them down on the same kind of fixed schedule.