We are not publishing a free-tier verdict for either Blaxel or DeepSeek API. When we last read the page we cite for Blaxel, on 2026-10-21, we refused the change we considered recording because it named no figure that had moved, and refusing a change is not a confirmation of the terms we publish for it. Tier "Pay-as-you-go" is usage-billed from the first request. We are not publishing a stability rating for DeepSeek API. We are not comparing the two pricing histories.
A verdict here is not a fixed property of the vendor. A one-off pricing event demotes a vendor while its recorded date falls in the last 180 days and then lapses on its own, with nothing about the vendor having changed; a standing condition — a free tier withdrawn and not restored, a product retired — does not lapse with time. A badge carrying a date states the record it rests on; a badge with no date rests on no record in force.
Sandboxes and runtime for AI agents, priced on usage with no plan fee. New accounts get up to $200 in free credits; Blaxel does not say whether they renew, and its terms say unused service credits expire one year after they are issued unless otherwise specified. The free quota tier allows 10 sandboxes, which it deletes after at most 7 days, and free accounts cannot request higher quotas. A running sandbox costs $0.0000115 per GB of RAM per second; idle time is not billed as active CPU.When we last read the page we cite for this offer, on 2026-10-21, we refused the change we considered recording because it named no figure that had moved, and refusing a change is not a confirmation of the terms above, so we cannot confirm these terms today.
Pay-as-you-go LLM API with no free tier, billed from a prepaid balance. DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash (deepseek-flash): $0.30/M input, $1.20/M output at peak. DeepSeek-V4-Pro (deepseek-v4-pro): $1.32/M input, $3.96/M output at peak. Cache-hit input is $0.006/M on Flash and $0.044/M on Pro. Off-peak rates are half; peak hours are 01:00-04:00 and 06:00-10:00 UTC on weekdays. 1M context, up to 384K output. China-based. To call the API today, use deepseek-flash or deepseek-v4-pro: DeepSeek retired the older model names deepseek-chat and deepseek-reasoner on 2026-07-24 (its change log of 2026-04-24 says they "will be discontinued in three months (2026-07-24)"). Until then both ran on the Flash model, deepseek-chat in non-thinking mode and deepseek-reasoner in thinking mode, so deepseek-flash replaces either.
Until November 1, 2026, 00:00 Beijing time, server-side Search and Fetch calls via DeepSeek Harness, Claude Code, or Codex are free; after that, they are billed at $0.75 per 1,000 successful requests. (From api-docs.deepseek.com/quick_start/pricing, read 2026-10-17.)
DeepSeek's Search API and Fetch API are standalone APIs billed per request. Search finds web pages for a query; Fetch retrieves one web page as Markdown. Each costs $0.75 per 1,000 successful requests. Failed requests, empty search results, and timeouts are not billed. (From api-docs.deepseek.com/guides/search, read 2026-10-17.)
DeepSeek's API accepts Anthropic-format requests at https://api.deepseek.com/anthropic. DeepSeek documents running Claude Code on it with a DeepSeek API key. Claude model names are mapped: claude-opus to deepseek-v4-pro, billed at the V4 Pro price; claude-sonnet and claude-haiku to deepseek-flash. Claude Code's web search runs through DeepSeek and adds model token costs. This is paid usage from the prepaid balance, since there is no free tier. (From api-docs.deepseek.com/guides/anthropic_api, read 2026-10-22.)
Pricing Change History
Blaxel
No recorded pricing changes for Blaxel.
DeepSeek API
restructuredeffective 2026-09-10medium impact
On 2026-09-10, DeepSeek released deepseek-flash (V4.1-Flash) and retired deepseek-v4-flash and deepseek-v4-flash-vision-exp. These retired names still route to V4.1-Flash at Flash prices. Flash prices fell from 04:00 UTC; V4 Pro prices did not change. Source ↗
restructuredeffective 2026-08-16high impact
At 16:00 UTC on 2026-08-16, DeepSeek introduced peak and off-peak pricing, with off-peak at half the peak rate. V4 Flash and V4 Pro output prices rose, with Flash from $0.28 to $1.32 at peak and Pro from $0.87 to $3.96 at peak. Source ↗
Watch Both Vendors for Pricing Changes
We do not push notifications. Every change we record is readable the moment it lands, and the JSON answer carries an ETag — send it back as If-None-Match and an unchanged answer costs one 304.