DeepSeek vs Gemini API pricing
Checked against the official price pages on 2026-10-12
In short
At 100M input and 20M output tokens a month, the cheapest model from each is deepseek-flash (about ¥270 a month) and Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite (about ¥539 a month). DeepSeek's entry model is cheaper; Gemini's costs about 2.0 times as much.
The most expensive from each is deepseek-v4-pro (about ¥1,080 a month) and Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview (about ¥2,963 a month). Price says nothing about whether the models are equally capable; weigh it with benchmarks and context length.
For your own usage: API cost calculator
All models
Prices are per million tokens: ¥ is CNY, $ is USD; time-of-day pricing is written peak / off-peak. Monthly cost is in CNY and assumes 100M input and 20M output tokens a month, no cache hits and half of calls at peak hours where that applies, cheapest first. Models priced in USD are converted at 1 USD = 6.733 CNY (PBoC central parity, 2026-10-09).
| Model | Input | Cache hit | Output | Monthly (CNY) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DeepSeekdeepseek-flash | ¥2 / 1 | ¥0.04 / 0.02 | ¥8 / 4 | 270 |
| GoogleGemini 3.5 Flash-Lite | $0.3 | $0.03 | $2.5 | 539 |
| GoogleGemini 3.8 Flash | $0.75 | $0.075 | $3.75 | 1,010 |
| DeepSeekdeepseek-v4-pro | ¥9 / 4.5 | ¥0.3 / 0.15 | ¥27 / 13.5 | 1,080 |
| GoogleGemini 3.1 Pro Preview | $2 | $0.2 | $12 | 2,963 |
Price changes at both vendors
DeepSeek V4-Pro launched at a list price of ¥12 input (cache miss) / ¥24 output, with a 75% launch discount (¥3 / ¥6). source
DeepSeek cut cache-hit input prices across the lineup to a tenth of launch levels: ¥0.02 for V4-Flash, ¥0.025 for V4-Pro. source
DeepSeek said V4-Pro would stay permanently at a quarter of its list price after the promotion — ¥3 input / ¥6 output (about $0.435 / $0.87). source
DeepSeek introduced peak/off-peak API pricing: weekday 9:00–12:00 and 14:00–18:00 Beijing time are peak; off-peak is half price. V4 Pro output ¥27 peak / ¥13.5 off-peak; V4 Flash output ¥9 / ¥4.5. source · our coverage
DeepSeek launched V4.1 Flash and said it planned to route V4 Pro requests to the new model at Flash prices. source · our coverage
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