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DeepSeek API+57 Strong positive

GILD Review

GILD's call and the buying facts behind it.

From GILD research

Should we adopt DeepSeek API?

Can your legal and security teams accept the DeepSeek API's data terms for its price?

  1. 30-Second TakePick the DeepSeek API if you choose models on price per task and your data may be stored in China.
  2. Best fitDevelopers and product teams choosing models on price per task, with workloads that reuse long prompt prefixes and can run in off-peak hours, and data that may be stored in China.GILD Review
  3. Consider another workflowIf data must stay out of China or needs zero retention, run the open weights through OpenRouter's other hosts or evaluate the Claude API. US federal civilian agencies are barred from DeepSeek products under DHS order 2026-01.GILD Review

Drawn from 48 sources and 3 operator insights

GILD analysis

DeepSeek API Review

Practitioners praise the DeepSeek API above all for price per task, from cheap cache hits to half-price off-peak hours, and report empty answers, leaked tool-call markup, and retired model names. The API bills per million tokens from a prepaid balance and stores data in the People's Republic of China. Adopt it where legal accepts those terms, with model names pinned and agent loops tested.

  • AI Model APIs
  • AI Costs

The decision

Best fit
Developers and product teams choosing models on price per task, with workloads that reuse long prompt prefixes and can run in off-peak hours, and data that may be stored in China.
Consider another workflow
If data must stay out of China or needs zero retention, run the open weights through OpenRouter's other hosts or evaluate the Claude API. US federal civilian agencies are barred from DeepSeek products under DHS order 2026-01.
Adoption condition
Legal sign-off on the privacy policy and PRC-law terms, a training opt-out if needed, model names pinned against DeepSeek's notices, and agent loops tested for empty answers and leaked tool-call markup.

Basis: DeepSeek's pricing, rate limit, and model notices, its privacy policy and Open Platform terms, and its status page, fetched from October 28 to November 2, 2026, and 43 public accounts from people using the API.

Buying & deployment factsWhat a team building on it should verify before production traffic grows.
How you buy it

US$0.30 per 1M input

deepseek-flash cache-miss input at peak; output costs US$1.20 and cache hits US$0.006 per 1M.

Source 1, DeepSeek, Models and pricing: Models and pricing

Details

Pay-as-you-go per 1M tokens: you top up a prepaid balance and each call deducts its tokens times the listed price, granted balance first. Each request chooses the model by name, deepseek-flash or deepseek-v4-pro, with no default model. deepseek-flash costs US$0.30 per 1M cache-miss input tokens, US$0.006 per 1M cache-hit input tokens, and US$1.20 per 1M output tokens at peak. deepseek-v4-pro costs US$1.32, US$0.044, and US$3.96.

Cost drivers

Half price off-peak

Off-peak rates are half; server-side Search and Fetch per-request billing was set for November 1, 2026.

Source 1, DeepSeek, Models and pricing: Models and pricingSource 5, api-docs.deepseek.com, DeepSeek API Docs: Error Codes: DeepSeek API Docs: Error Codes

Details

Output and cache-miss input tokens drive the bill, and off-peak rates are half the peak rates. Peak hours are 01:00 to 04:00 and 06:00 to 10:00 UTC on weekdays. Search and Fetch cost US$0.75 per 1,000 successful requests each. DeepSeek set 00:00 Beijing time on November 1, 2026 as the start of per-request billing for Search and Fetch. When the balance runs out, the API returns error 402, Insufficient Balance.

Where it runs

Stored in China

DeepSeek's privacy policy stores personal data in the People's Republic of China.

Source 3, DeepSeek, Privacy policy: Privacy policySource 4, DeepSeek, Open Platform terms: Open Platform terms

Details

On DeepSeek's hosted cloud API. DeepSeek's privacy policy states that it collects, processes, and stores personal data in the People's Republic of China. DeepSeek retains personal data for as long as necessary to provide its services. The Open Platform terms are governed by the laws of the People's Republic of China in the mainland.

What to verify

No SSO or audit log

0 matches on 57 DeepSeek API docs pages (Nov 2, 2026).

Source 3, DeepSeek, Privacy policy: Privacy policySource 4, DeepSeek, Open Platform terms: Open Platform termsSource 2, DeepSeek, Rate limit: Rate limit

Details

Each account can run 2,500 concurrent deepseek-flash requests. DeepSeek documents no SSO, SAML or SCIM, audit log or security certification for its API: GILD found 0 matches across 61 pages, the 57 pages of its API documentation and 4 policy and home pages, checked Nov 2, 2026.

Pages GILD searched, by set, Nov 2, 2026
WherePages readMatches
DeepSeek API documentation in English, every page in its sitemap570
DeepSeek's privacy policy, terms of use, Open Platform terms and English home page40
GILD search record, Nov 2, 2026

Sourced from DeepSeek documentation