DeepSeek Peak & Off-Peak Price Clock

DeepSeek charges double during peak hours and half price off-peak. This clock shows which rate applies now, exactly when it changes — in your time zone and in UTC — and what the switch is worth on your token volume.

Off-peak pricing Off-peak rates apply

Peak starts in 12 h 49 min

Fri 6 Nov, 01:00 UTC · your local time shown once JavaScript loads

Your time local --:--:--

UTC 12:10:01

Peak hours today 01:00–04:00 & 06:00–10:00 UTC

Peak window

01:00–04:00 UTC

Fri 6 Nov · 3 h window

Starts in 12 h 49 min

Off-peak window

until 01:00 UTC

peak resumes Fri 6 Nov, 01:00 UTC · 3 h

Running now — peak in 12 h 49 min

The next 24 hours (local time)

now+12 hours+24 hours

Peak — full price Off-peak — 50% off

Check any moment

Pick the time a batch, crawl or backfill will run and see which rate it lands in.

Date and time (your time zone)

Choose a time and press Check.

Off-peak vs peak rates

USD per 1 million tokens. Off-peak is exactly half of peak on every line.

	DeepSeek V4.1 Flashper 1M tokens		DeepSeek V4 Proper 1M tokens
	off-peak	peak	off-peak	peak
Input — cache hit	$0.003	$0.006	$0.022	$0.044
Input — cache miss	$0.15	$0.30	$0.66	$1.32
Output	$0.60	$1.20	$1.98	$3.96

What is what: cache hit is input served from DeepSeek's context cache (repeat context), cache miss is fresh input, output is generated tokens. Search and Fetch are billed separately at $0.75 per 1,000 successful requests and are not affected by peak pricing.
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash — model DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-1017, 1M context, up to 384K output, concurrency 2,500.
DeepSeek V4 Pro — model DeepSeek-V4-Pro-0813, 1M context, up to 384K output, concurrency 500.

What the window is worth

Enter a typical month of usage to compare the two rates.

Cache-hit input tokens

Cache-miss input tokens

Output tokens

Model	Peak	Off-peak	Saving
Enable JavaScript to calculate, or compare the rates above by hand.

Public-holiday off-peak days

The only off-peak days that are not simply "outside peak hours": Chinese public holidays waive peak pricing for the whole day. Weekends are already off-peak, so they are not listed.

No public holidays left in 2026. China's State Council publishes the next year's calendar in early November. Until that notice is out, dates from 1 January 2027 follow the weekday rule only — a weekday there may still turn out to be off-peak once the new holidays are announced.

Expected 2027 anchors (festival dates, not yet an official schedule): New Year 1 Jan · Spring Festival 6 Feb · Qingming 5 Apr · Labour Day 1 May · Dragon Boat 9 Jun · Mid-Autumn 15 Sep · National Day 1 Oct. The official breaks around these dates will be longer, and only the State Council notice fixes them — they are not used by the clock above until confirmed.

The 2026 calendar — 7 holidays, 19 weekdays off-peak instead of peak, 133 peak hours waived (7 h each)

Holiday	Dates (UTC)	Weekday peak days waived	Peak hours waived	Status
New Year's Day	1–3 Jan 2026	2	14 h	Passed
Spring Festival	15–23 Feb 2026	6	42 h	Passed
Qingming Festival	4–6 Apr 2026	1	7 h	Passed
Labour Day	1–5 May 2026	3	21 h	Passed
Dragon Boat Festival	19–21 Jun 2026	1	7 h	Passed
Mid-Autumn Festival	25–27 Sep 2026	1	7 h	Passed
National Day	1–7 Oct 2026	5	35 h	Passed

Holiday years confirmed: 2026. A weekday holiday waives both UTC peak windows, so it bills off-peak for 7 hours that would otherwise be full price.

Upcoming changes

Change	UTC	Your time	In
Peak	Fri 6 Nov, 01:00 UTC	—	12 h 49 min
Off-peak	Fri 6 Nov, 04:00 UTC	—	15 h 49 min
Peak	Fri 6 Nov, 06:00 UTC	—	17 h 49 min
Off-peak	Fri 6 Nov, 10:00 UTC	—	21 h 49 min
Peak	Mon 9 Nov, 01:00 UTC	—	3 d 12 h
Off-peak	Mon 9 Nov, 04:00 UTC	—	3 d 15 h
Peak	Mon 9 Nov, 06:00 UTC	—	3 d 17 h
Off-peak	Mon 9 Nov, 10:00 UTC	—	3 d 21 h

A month of peak windows plus any upcoming holiday days, ready for any calendar app.

How the rule works. Peak is 01:00–04:00 and 06:00–10:00 UTC, Monday to Friday, excluding Chinese public holidays. Every other hour is off-peak, and weekends are off-peak in full — including make-up working weekends, which the weekday rule does not touch. Holiday dates are taken from China's State Council notice; 2026 is confirmed, so dates after that fall back to the weekday rule until the next notice is published.
Rates and hours from the official DeepSeek pricing page, verified November 2026.

About

DeepSeek bills its API at double the rate during peak hours and half price the rest of the time. This clock shows which rate applies right now, when the next switch happens in your own time zone and in UTC, the week ahead, and what the difference is worth on your token volume. Peak is 01:00-04:00 and 06:00-10:00 UTC on weekdays; everything else, including weekends and Chinese public holidays, is off-peak.

How to use

Open the page. Status, clocks and countdowns update every second from your browser clock.
Read the two countdown cards for the exact moment peak pricing starts and the exact moment off-peak returns, in your local time and in UTC.
Use the 24-hour strip and the upcoming-changes table to pick the cheapest window for batch jobs and backfills.
Enter token volumes in the calculator to compare peak and off-peak spend for both models.

Frequently asked questions

What are DeepSeek peak hours?

01:00-04:00 and 06:00-10:00 UTC, Monday to Friday, excluding Chinese public holidays. Every other hour is off-peak, including weekends in full.

How much cheaper is off-peak?

Off-peak rates are exactly half of peak rates, on cache-hit input, cache-miss input and output tokens alike.

Do Chinese public holidays count?

Yes. Peak pricing does not apply on Chinese public holiday dates, so those weekdays bill at off-peak rates all day. Make-up working weekends stay off-peak because weekends are off-peak regardless of the working calendar.

Why do the local times differ from UTC?

UTC never shifts, but local clocks follow daylight saving. The page converts each window with your browser current offset, so local times move by an hour when your zone changes.

Does peak pricing apply to search and fetch?

No. DeepSeek Search and Fetch are charged per successful request at a flat rate of $0.75 per 1,000 requests.