# Baseten vs DeepSeek

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/compare/baseten-vs-deepseek/

Every value below is read from Baseten's and DeepSeek's own documentation. See https://inetgeek.com/methodology/ for how.

## At a glance

| Criterion | Baseten | DeepSeek |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Pricing model | No platform fee: per-token Model APIs for open models, and dedicated deployments billed per minute of compute with volume discounts. The Pro tier buys priority access to high-demand GPUs rather than a lower rate. | Per million tokens, with every rate doubling at peak: off-peak is half price, and peak is 01:00–04:00 and 06:00–10:00 UTC on weekdays. Cache hits are priced roughly 30x below cache misses. |
| Input price, top model | $1.40 per million input tokens for GLM-5.3, with cached input at $0.14 and output at $4.40. GLM-5.2 Fast, a speed variant, is $2.10. | $1.32 per million input tokens for deepseek-v4-pro at peak on a cache miss, halving to $0.66 off-peak. A cache hit is $0.044 peak. |
| Output price, top model | $4.40 per million output tokens for GLM-5.3. | $3.96 per million output tokens for deepseek-v4-pro at peak, $1.98 off-peak. |
| Input price, cheapest model | $0.10 per million input tokens for GPT OSS 120B, with output at $0.50. GLM-5.3-Flash is $0.15 in and $0.50 out. | $0.44 per million input tokens for deepseek-v4-flash at peak on a cache miss, $0.22 off-peak, with output at $1.32 peak. |
| Context window | 1,048K tokens on the DeepSeek V4 line and the GLM 5.2/5.3 family, the widest it serves; 262K on the Kimi K2 models, 200K on GLM 4.7 and 128K on GPT OSS 120B. Baseten's table publishes these in thousands, so the magnitude is 1,048,000 rather than the 1,048,576 a power-of-two reading would give — the vendor's own figure, not a conversion of it. | 1M tokens on every model in the current line. |
| Max output tokens | 262K tokens on most models, and it is a separate ceiling from the context window rather than the remainder of it: DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 allows 384K output inside a 1,048K window, while GLM 4.7, Nemotron Ultra and GPT OSS 120B cap output at their full context. The Inkling models are the outlier at 32K. | 384K tokens maximum. |
| Prompt caching | Supported | Supported |
| Rate limits | Two limits, requests and tokens per minute, set by account status rather than spend: an unverified Basic account gets 15 RPM and 100,000 TPM, a verified Basic or Pro account 120 RPM and 500,000 TPM, Enterprise custom. Cached input counts toward TPM at full weight even though it is billed cheaper. | Concurrency rather than requests per minute: 500 concurrent requests on deepseek-v4-pro and 2,500 on deepseek-v4-flash, per account rather than per key. Exceeding it returns HTTP 429, and expansion is free on request. |

## Where they differ

### Pricing model

- Baseten: No platform fee: per-token Model APIs for open models, and dedicated deployments billed per minute of compute with volume discounts. The Pro tier buys priority access to high-demand GPUs rather than a lower rate. ([source](https://www.baseten.co/pricing/))
- DeepSeek: Per million tokens, with every rate doubling at peak: off-peak is half price, and peak is 01:00–04:00 and 06:00–10:00 UTC on weekdays. Cache hits are priced roughly 30x below cache misses. ([source](https://api-docs.deepseek.com/quick_start/pricing))

### Input price, top model

- Baseten: $1.40 per million input tokens for GLM-5.3, with cached input at $0.14 and output at $4.40. GLM-5.2 Fast, a speed variant, is $2.10. ([source](https://www.baseten.co/pricing/))
- DeepSeek: $1.32 per million input tokens for deepseek-v4-pro at peak on a cache miss, halving to $0.66 off-peak. A cache hit is $0.044 peak. ([source](https://api-docs.deepseek.com/quick_start/pricing))

### Output price, top model

- Baseten: $4.40 per million output tokens for GLM-5.3. ([source](https://www.baseten.co/pricing/))
- DeepSeek: $3.96 per million output tokens for deepseek-v4-pro at peak, $1.98 off-peak. ([source](https://api-docs.deepseek.com/quick_start/pricing))

### Input price, cheapest model

- Baseten: $0.10 per million input tokens for GPT OSS 120B, with output at $0.50. GLM-5.3-Flash is $0.15 in and $0.50 out. ([source](https://www.baseten.co/pricing/))
- DeepSeek: $0.44 per million input tokens for deepseek-v4-flash at peak on a cache miss, $0.22 off-peak, with output at $1.32 peak. ([source](https://api-docs.deepseek.com/quick_start/pricing))

### Context window

- Baseten: 1,048K tokens on the DeepSeek V4 line and the GLM 5.2/5.3 family, the widest it serves; 262K on the Kimi K2 models, 200K on GLM 4.7 and 128K on GPT OSS 120B. Baseten's table publishes these in thousands, so the magnitude is 1,048,000 rather than the 1,048,576 a power-of-two reading would give — the vendor's own figure, not a conversion of it. ([source](https://docs.baseten.co/inference/model-apis/overview))
- DeepSeek: 1M tokens on every model in the current line. ([source](https://api-docs.deepseek.com/quick_start/pricing))

### Max output tokens

- Baseten: 262K tokens on most models, and it is a separate ceiling from the context window rather than the remainder of it: DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 allows 384K output inside a 1,048K window, while GLM 4.7, Nemotron Ultra and GPT OSS 120B cap output at their full context. The Inkling models are the outlier at 32K. ([source](https://docs.baseten.co/inference/model-apis/overview))
- DeepSeek: 384K tokens maximum. ([source](https://api-docs.deepseek.com/quick_start/pricing))

### Rate limits

- Baseten: Two limits, requests and tokens per minute, set by account status rather than spend: an unverified Basic account gets 15 RPM and 100,000 TPM, a verified Basic or Pro account 120 RPM and 500,000 TPM, Enterprise custom. Cached input counts toward TPM at full weight even though it is billed cheaper. ([source](https://docs.baseten.co/inference/model-apis/pricing-and-limits))
- DeepSeek: Concurrency rather than requests per minute: 500 concurrent requests on deepseek-v4-pro and 2,500 on deepseek-v4-flash, per account rather than per key. Exceeding it returns HTTP 429, and expansion is free on request. ([source](https://api-docs.deepseek.com/quick_start/rate_limit))

## Which should you choose?

Pick Baseten if Teams that want per-token APIs and dedicated GPUs from one vendor with no plan fee — minute-granularity billing means a model that runs for ten minutes costs ten minutes.

Pick DeepSeek if Batch-shaped work that can run outside weekday mornings UTC, where off-peak halves an already low rate and a cache hit costs about 3% of a cache miss.

Consider something else: Baseten — Its dedicated H100 works out at $6.50 an hour, roughly three times DeepInfra's, so steady GPU workloads pay a premium for the platform around them.

Consider something else: DeepSeek — Capacity is expressed as concurrent requests rather than tokens per minute, which is a different thing to plan against, and the peak window lands on European working hours.

## Documented by only one

- Entry paid plan: Baseten: $0 per month on the Basic plan — pay as you go, with dedicated deployments, model APIs and training included rather than gated behind a fee.
- H100 SXM, per GPU-hour: Baseten: $6.50 per hour for a dedicated H100 80GB. Baseten publishes $0.10833 per MINUTE — the hourly figure is that times 60, ours rather than Baseten's, and the page offers an hourly toggle. A100 80GB is $0.06667 a minute and B200 $0.16633.
- Largest GPU offered: Baseten: 180GB per GPU on a B200, at $0.16633 per minute — $9.98 an hour.

## Questions this comparison answers

**Should I choose Baseten or DeepSeek?**

Pick Baseten if Teams that want per-token APIs and dedicated GPUs from one vendor with no plan fee — minute-granularity billing means a model that runs for ten minutes costs ten minutes.
Pick DeepSeek if Batch-shaped work that can run outside weekday mornings UTC, where off-peak halves an already low rate and a cache hit costs about 3% of a cache miss.