Tech Brief (Aug. 14): DeepSeek Launches V4-Pro and Raises API Prices by as Much as 1,100%

DeepSeek launches V4-Pro and raises API prices by as much as 1,100%

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek on Thursday released the official version of its flagship DeepSeek-V4-Pro model and sharply raised prices for its application programming interface, with some rates increasing by as much as 1,100%. DeepSeek introduced peak and off-peak pricing. During peak hours — 9 a.m. to noon and 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. Beijing time — API prices for DeepSeek-V4-Pro rose to 0.3 yuan ($0.04) per million tokens for cached input, 9 yuan for uncached input and 27 yuan for output. Previously, the model was priced at flat rates of 0.025 yuan, 3 yuan and 6 yuan, respectively. Off-peak prices are set at half the peak rates. On performance, the official release of DeepSeek-V4-Pro emphasizes stronger agent capabilities. DeepSeek says the model outperforms X.AI Co. Ltd.’s GLM-5.2 in several agent benchmarks and beats Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.8 in selected tests, though it trails Kimi K3 and Claude Fable 5 in most evaluations. On third-party evaluation platform Artificial Analysis, DeepSeek-V4-Pro scored 53, tying GLM-5.2 and ranking behind models including Opus 5, Fable 5, GPT-5.6 Sol, Grok 4.6, Kimi K3, Qwen3.8-Max, Meta’s Muse Spark 1.2 and GPT-5.6 Terra.