❯ DeepSeek opens Search and Fetch APIs at RMB 5 per 1,000 successful requests, with existing tool calls billed from November

Search and retrieval have their own chargesDeepSeek’s update announcement opens Search and Fetch interfaces, each priced at RMB 5 per 1,000 requests. Search and Fetch requests made through server-side tools when using the DeepSeek API in DeepSeek Harness, Claude Code and Codex have temporarily been free. Billing for those calls begins at midnight Beijing time on November 1.

One interface finds pages; the other reads themThe API guide explains that Search returns structured results for a query, while Fetch retrieves a specified webpage and returns its body in Markdown. Both use the same authentication as the model API. Developers can connect searching, selecting a result and reading the full page into a workflow for agents or question-answering applications that cite external material.

Empty results do not count as successful callsCharges depend on the number of requests, rather than the number of results or the tokens in a retrieved page. A call is billed only when it succeeds and returns search results or page content. Failures, timeouts and searches with no results are free. Model input and output tokens consumed when reading that content remain separately chargeable under the model’s pricing rules.

Web access becomes part of the task budgetTeams can access models and web content through the same account, while also budgeting for repeated searches and fetches. Successful calls accumulate costs when a task revisits the same topic. Query design and content reuse therefore affect the bill, and shorter model output alone does not determine the cost of an entire web research workflow.

▮ SIGNALAn agent’s total cost increasingly depends on the tools it invokes and how often it invokes them, beyond the model’s token prices.