MakerDeepSeek
ReleasedSeptember 10, 2026
API price (per 1M tokens)$0.3 in / $1.20 out
Open weightsYes
DeepSeek's peak-hours rate. Off-peak it's half: $0.15 / $0.60.
Best for
- Cheap reasoning at scale
- Self-hosting with a permissive license
- Batch jobs you can schedule off-peak
Strengths
- Joint top released open-weight model on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v5 (32, level with GLM-5.3)
- MIT license, so commercial use is straightforward
- About $0.26 per Artificial Analysis index task, against $1.24 for Gemini 3.8 Flash
Watch out for
- Prices double during DeepSeek's weekday peak hours
- 552B parameters is far too big for a home PC
- Hosted by a Chinese company, so check data rules before sending anything sensitive to its API
Ranking history
| Edition | Power Rankings | Coding | Best Value | Open-Weight Watch | Image Generation | Video Generation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Week 45, 2026 | #12 (84) | — | #4 (90) | #1 (90) | — | — |
| Week 44, 2026 | #10 (86) | — | #2 (93) | #2 (90) | — | — |