Updated October 30, 2026
Short answer: yes. The DeepSeek web chat and mobile app are free to use with an account. Only the API, which developers use to build DeepSeek into their own software, is paid, and it is billed by usage rather than by subscription.
What is free
- The web chat at chat.deepseek.com.
- The official app for iOS and Android. DeepSeek’s own download page describes it as a way to “chat with leading AI models for free”.
- The model behind them. As of October 30, 2026, DeepSeek says the chat and app run DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-1017, the update released on October 17, 2026. Free users get the same model.
There is no paid “Plus” or “Pro” subscription for the chat. If a website or an app asks you to pay for “DeepSeek Premium”, it is not DeepSeek.
Are there limits on the free chat?
DeepSeek doesn’t publish a fixed number of free messages. In practice, the limit you will meet is server load: at busy times you may see “The server is busy. Please try again later.” Waiting a moment and resending usually works. See DeepSeek not working: causes and fixes.
What is paid: the API
The API lets developers send requests to DeepSeek’s models from their own code. You top up prepaid credit on platform.deepseek.com and each request is deducted from it. If the credit runs out, the API returns error 402.
Prices are per million tokens. A token is a small piece of text: roughly three quarters of an English word on average. Official prices on October 30, 2026, in US dollars:
| Per 1M tokens | deepseek-flash | deepseek-v4-pro |
|---|---|---|
| Input, cache hit | $0.003 off-peak / $0.006 peak | $0.022 off-peak / $0.044 peak |
| Input, cache miss | $0.15 off-peak / $0.30 peak | $0.66 off-peak / $1.32 peak |
| Output | $0.60 off-peak / $1.20 peak | $1.98 off-peak / $3.96 peak |
Source: DeepSeek API pricing. Prices can change; check that page before you commit to a budget.
Off-peak hours cost half
Peak hours are 01:00–04:00 and 06:00–10:00 UTC, Monday to Friday, excluding Chinese public holidays. Every other hour, including whole weekends, is off-peak and charged at half price. If your workload can wait, schedule it outside those windows.
What does that mean in practice?
Take a request with 2,000 input tokens and 1,000 output tokens on deepseek-flash, off-peak, with no cache hit. The input costs 2,000 × $0.15 / 1,000,000 = $0.0003 and the output 1,000 × $0.60 / 1,000,000 = $0.0006, so about $0.0009 per request, or roughly $0.90 per thousand such requests. The same requests on deepseek-v4-pro at peak time would cost about $6.60 per thousand.
Search and Fetch
Since October 17, 2026, DeepSeek also sells web Search and Fetch APIs at $0.75 per 1,000 successful requests each. Calls made through DeepSeek Harness, Claude Code or Codex are free until billing starts on November 1, 2026 at midnight Beijing time.
Which option is right for you?
- You want to ask questions, write or translate: use the free chat or app. You don’t need the API.
- You are building a tool or automating a task: use the API with
deepseek-flashfirst. It is the cheapest and handles images too; switch todeepseek-v4-proonly if the quality isn’t enough.
FAQ
Is DeepSeek free without registration?
No. The official chat requires an account, created with an email address or another sign-in method offered in your country. Creating the account is free.
Is DeepSeek cheaper than ChatGPT?
For chat, both have a free option; DeepSeek has no paid chat plan at all. For the API, compare the per-million-token prices on each provider’s official pricing page: they change often.
Why did someone ask me to pay for DeepSeek?
Some third-party sites and apps resell access or pretend to be DeepSeek. The official chat is free at chat.deepseek.com. Only the API, on platform.deepseek.com, is paid.