The model is fantastic. And costs almost nothing. The only problem I see is that they will train on your data.
There are zero-data-retention providers of DeepSeek models, of which I have used openrouter (with zdr guardrails), and fireworks. But these are 3x to 5x more expensive than directly using DeepSeek, possibly due to poor caching. Thats the price to pay for zdr.
This is unlikely, and if true, would probably bankrupt whichever model provider got caught doing this.
I bought it through OpenRouter and used it with Pi agent.
The model was good, but there appeared to be a pricing glitch or something, because it burned through $50 in under an hour on pretty trivial stuff.
Pi agent claimed it only used like $1. OpenRouter claimed differently and said I used all $50.
I use Openrouter for everything except Deepseek. For Deepseek I use their API directly.
I use it from pi.dev as well through the OpenCode Go $10 subscription ($5 first month).
Used more than 20M tokens at a cost of ~$20 (up to $60 is included in the $5 plan) Out of which deepseek pro had ~200 messages which is around 1.5M tokens (10+M cached)
You can check the logs in OpenRouter and see which providers it used and how many tokens you used.
Besides, in a few days, they'll change their pricing, doubling it during their peak hours, so, realistically:
- It will be 2x more expensive if you live in their time zone
- It will be 1.5x more expensive if you live in a time zone that is adjacent to theirs
- It will be the same price IF you use it while they sleep (during offpeak hours)
It's still cheap, but the price/performance ratio is not that good
DeepSeek V4 didn't produce the same impact as V3, and Huawei dropping the ball is making it worse
They had promised massive price cuts for July, so now (Huawei chips), but they had to rush the cuts because lack of momumtum (they advertised them as promotion), and are now backtracking by introducing this peak hours pricing
Trump decided to help them a little by allowing them to buy more NVIDIA chips, so what exactly is China's role in all of this?
We are supposed to blindly pat them in the back while praising them, all while handing them over our data? I thought they were dangerous competition threatening our model of society
I have been happily using DeepSeek V4 Flash for the last couple of months now. I tried GLM-5.2 for a while, but it was too slow and verbose compare to DeepSeek V4 Flash. If I have a basic skill I need to execute, DeepSeek V4 flash is still the best model for it.