DeepSeek-V4 launches with a 4.5x price hike for peak output

DeepSeek has published the official V4 API pricing, and it's a significant step up from the current rates.

The new prices take effect August 17. For V4-Pro during peak hours, cache-missed input jumps from 3 yuan to 9 yuan per million tokens — a 3x increase. Output is the bigger shock: 6 yuan per million tokens becomes 27 yuan, or 4.5x what developers pay today.

Peak hours run daily from 9:00–12:00 and 14:00–18:00 Beijing time. Everything else gets off-peak pricing, which is half the peak rate — but still above current prices. Off-peak V4-Pro input will be 4.5 yuan, with output at 13.5 yuan. The cheaper V4-Flash tier is priced at 1.5 yuan for input and 4.5 yuan for output.