R1 API Pricing
DeepSeek · context window 64K · prices updated 2026-09-15
Where R1 sits on price
At $2.50 per million output tokens, R1 is a mid tier model — 1.2× the median output price of $2.08, which puts it cheaper than 45% and pricier than 55% of the models we track. It sits 16th cheapest of the 18 DeepSeek models we track. Output costs 3.6× input, the usual spread — trim both, starting with the answer length.
What real workloads cost on R1
These three workloads are the ones teams actually run on a mid-priced model — a $2.50/1M model is not bought for the same job as one ten times the price.
| Workload | Per request | Per month |
|---|---|---|
| Support chatbot — 500 conversations/day (5K in / 1.4K out) Conversation history re-sent each turn — the classic prompt-caching win. | $0.007 | $105 |
| Document pipeline — 10K docs/day (3K in / 500 out) Batch-friendly: no user waiting, so a ~50% batch discount usually applies. | $0.0033 | $1005 |
| Small app — 1K requests/day (500 in / 150 out) The baseline most side projects actually run at. | $0.0007 | $21.75 |
Model your exact traffic in the API cost calculator — it preloads R1 with caching and batch options.
R1 price history
R1's price has not moved since we began tracking it on Aug 2, 2026 — 44 days of stability in a market where 78 of the 334 models we track have repriced over the same period, including 12 of DeepSeek's own 18 models.
Change-points from our daily price snapshots (tracking since Aug 2, 2026; intraday moves between snapshots are not captured).
R1 vs Nova 2 Lite
The closest-priced alternative from another vendor is Nova 2 Lite (Amazon) — priced within a rounding error on output, with $0.4 less per million input tokens. When two models land this close on price, the decision is quality on your own workload, not the price sheet: run 50 real requests through both and compare.
See Nova 2 Lite pricing →Cheaper alternatives
More DeepSeek models
Frequently asked questions
› How much does the R1 API cost?
R1 costs $0.7 per million input tokens and $2.50 per million output tokens and no discounted cached-input tier. That works out to roughly 400,000 output tokens per dollar.
› What does the support chatbot workload cost on R1?
Support chatbot — 500 conversations/day (5K in / 1.4K out) costs about $0.007 per request and $105 per month on R1. Conversation history re-sent each turn — the classic prompt-caching win.
› What does it cost to fill R1's 64K context window?
Sending 64K of input in a single request costs $0.0448 at $0.7 per million tokens — before any output. There is no cached-input tier on this model, so every repeat of that context is billed at full price. This is why large context windows are cheap to advertise and expensive to actually use.
› Is R1 worth the price?
R1 sits in the middle of the market (16 of 18 by price within DeepSeek). The honest test is a routing experiment: send the same 200 real requests to this model and to a tier below, and compare failure rate against the price gap — most teams find a majority of traffic never needed the pricier model.