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The Stack / Chat Assistants
DeepSeek
02 DecisionsYes with eyes open — DeepSeek's free chat and $0.14/M-input API make it the price floor of serious AI, and V4 is a legitimately strong model. The trade-off is the trust boundary: it's a China-based service, so route work by data sensitivity, not just by cost.
The job in the stack
The cost-floor seat: a genuinely free consumer assistant and the cheapest credible API for volume workloads.
Pricing
| Plan | Price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Chat | $0 | Fully free — no paid consumer tier exists |
| API (V4-Flash) | $0.14/M input | $0.28/M output; cached input $0.0028/M (98% discount) |
| API (V4-Pro) | ~$0.44/M input | Promo pricing through May 2026; ~$0.87/M output |
Pricing verified 2026-07-06. Plans change — the source of truth is DeepSeek's own pricing page.
Models & versions
- DeepSeek V4-FlashFast tier — the volume-workload workhorse
- DeepSeek V4-ProFlagship reasoning tier
The honest read
What works
- +Consumer chat is entirely free — no caps ladder, no upsell maze
- +API pricing an order of magnitude below Western frontier rates
- +Aggressive cache discounts reward well-structured prompting
- +Open-weight releases keep self-hosting on the table
What breaks
- −Data residency and governance: a China-based service is a real trust-boundary call for business data
- −Ecosystem and tooling depth trail OpenAI/Anthropic
- −Content policies differ — some topics return notably filtered answers
Use it for
- →High-volume API workloads where token math dominates
- →Cost-sensitive experimentation and prototyping
- →A capable free assistant for non-sensitive personal use
Skip it if
- ×Client or regulated data is involved — keep that inside your vetted seats
- ×You need the strongest reasoning/writing available — pay for the frontier
Questions operators ask
?Is DeepSeek safe for business use?
Define safe. The models are capable and the price is unbeatable — but data flows to a China-based service, which is disqualifying for client, health, financial, or regulated data in many operations. Use it where the data wouldn't hurt you published; keep everything else in your governed seats.
What changed
- Added to the stack (cost-floor seat). Verified: chat free, V4-Flash API $0.14/$0.28 per M with 98% cache discount, V4-Pro promo ~$0.44/$0.87.
Give DeepSeek a job
The cost-floor seat: a genuinely free consumer assistant and the cheapest credible API for volume workloads.
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