# DeepSeek Raises Peak-Hour Pricing Up to 1,100%

> DeepSeek is ending the era of flat, always-cheap inference. Starting August 16, the company is splitting its pricing into peak and off-peak windows, and the peak markups are steep. V4-Flash jumps to $1.32 per million tokens at peak versus $0.66 off-peak, and V4-Pro climbs to $3.96 at peak against $1.98 off-peak. Compared with its old rates of around $0.28 and $0.87, some peak prices are up as much as 1,100 percent. Peak hours are defined as 01:00 to 04:00 and 06:00 to 10:00 UTC, when demand on its servers is highest. Even after the increase, DeepSeek insists it remains cheaper than most competitors, which is probably true given how aggressively it undercut everyone to begin with. The move is a small but telling signal. The race to the bottom on token prices cannot last forever, and even the cheapest providers are now nudging customers to schedule heavy workloads for quieter hours. Expect time-of-day pricing, long normal for electricity, to start spreading across the AI industry.

_Section: [Daily AI Updates](https://www.wortins.com/daily-ai) · Source: Bloomberg · Published Saturday, August 15, 2026_

## Wortins' read

DeepSeek is ending the era of flat, always-cheap inference. Starting August 16, the company is splitting its pricing into peak and off-peak windows, and the peak markups are steep. V4-Flash jumps to $1.32 per million tokens at peak versus $0.66 off-peak, and V4-Pro climbs to $3.96 at peak against $1.98 off-peak. Compared with its old rates of around $0.28 and $0.87, some peak prices are up as much as 1,100 percent. Peak hours are defined as 01:00 to 04:00 and 06:00 to 10:00 UTC, when demand on its servers is highest. Even after the increase, DeepSeek insists it remains cheaper than most competitors, which is probably true given how aggressively it undercut everyone to begin with. The move is a small but telling signal. The race to the bottom on token prices cannot last forever, and even the cheapest providers are now nudging customers to schedule heavy workloads for quieter hours. Expect time-of-day pricing, long normal for electricity, to start spreading across the AI industry.

## Source

[Read the full story at Bloomberg](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-13/deepseek-increases-prices-for-ai-services-by-multiple-times)

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