DeepSeek Prices API Web Search and Fetch at 5 Yuan per 1,000 Successful Requests

The pricing itself is modest; the signal is that DeepSeek is productizing retrieval as a metered API layer rather than a bundled freebie, which matters for developers building agents on its stack. The explicit free window through third-party harnesses like Claude Code and Codex suggests DeepSeek is courting developers who currently route their tooling elsewhere, using zero-cost access as the on-ramp before billing begins. Whether that grace period converts into durable paid usage — or just trains users to expect free retrieval — is the open question worth watching as the billing date approaches.