Baseten vs DeepSeek

SEPT 2026 audit

A comparison of Baseten and DeepSeek built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.

Updated September 202611 criteria comparedSources last checked 8 September 2026

The short answer

Choose 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.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

Choose 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.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

Consider something else if…

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.
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.

7 sourced criteria separate them — see where, with sources, below.

Visit Baseten documentation Visit DeepSeek documentation

No affiliate links, sponsored placements or paid rankings appear on this site. Ordering follows the sourced data and the stated criteria.

01.

At a glance.

Criterion	Baseten	DeepSeek
Pricing
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.
Inference
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.

Only criteria both providers publish appear here; a tinted cell marks a real difference. Criteria only one of them documents are listed below, and an absence there means we found no source — not that the feature is missing. How we source this.

The small bar above a value is inetGeek's own lean toward that side — computed from the same facts shown, never a number the provider published. See the picker below "The short answer" to weigh only the criteria you care about.

02.

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.
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.

Sources (2) →

Pricing — Baseten ↗
“$0 per month, pay as you go [...] Only pay for the compute you use, down to the minute. Volume discounts available [...] Pro Unlimited autoscaling and priority compute access [...] Priority access to high-demand GPUs”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing
Models & Pricing — DeepSeek API Docs ↗
“The prices listed below are in units of per 1M tokens. [...] Off-peak rates are half of the peak rates. Peak hours are 01:00 - 04:00 and 06:00 - 10:00 UTC, Monday through Friday (all other hours are off-peak).”
Read 2026-09-06 · official 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.
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.

Sources (2) →

Pricing — Baseten ↗
“GLM-5.3 GLM-5.3 $1.40 $1.40 $0.14 $0.14 $4.40 [...] GLM-5.2 Fast GLM-5.2 Fast $2.10 $2.10 $0.21”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing
Models & Pricing — DeepSeek API Docs ↗
“1M INPUT TOKENS (CACHE MISS) OFF-PEAK $0.22 $0.66 $0.22 PEAK $0.44 $1.32 $0.44 [...] 1M INPUT TOKENS (CACHE HIT) OFF-PEAK $0.007 $0.022 $0.007 PEAK $0.014 $0.044 $0.014”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing

Output price, top model

Baseten: $4.40 per million output tokens for GLM-5.3.
DeepSeek: $3.96 per million output tokens for deepseek-v4-pro at peak, $1.98 off-peak.

Sources (2) →

Pricing — Baseten ↗
“GLM-5.3 GLM-5.3 $1.40 $1.40 $0.14 $0.14 $4.40”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing
Models & Pricing — DeepSeek API Docs ↗
“1M OUTPUT TOKENS OFF-PEAK $0.66 $1.98 $0.66 PEAK $1.32 $3.96 $1.32”
Read 2026-09-06 · official 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.
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.

Sources (2) →

Pricing — Baseten ↗
“GPT OSS 120B GPT OSS 120B $0.10 $0.10 - - $0.50 [...] GLM-5.3-Flash GLM-5.3-Flash $0.15 $0.15 $0.03 $0.03 $0.50”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing
Models & Pricing — DeepSeek API Docs ↗
“MODEL deepseek-v4-flash [...] 1M INPUT TOKENS (CACHE MISS) OFF-PEAK $0.22 [...] PEAK $0.44 [...] 1M OUTPUT TOKENS [...] PEAK $1.32”
Read 2026-09-06 · official 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.

DeepSeek

1M tokens on every model in the current line.

Sources (2) →

Model APIs overview — Baseten Docs ↗
“SupportedModelsTable [...] model: "DeepSeek V4 Pro", context: 1048, maxOutput: 262 [...] model: "GLM 5.3", context: 1048, maxOutput: 262 [...] model: "GLM 4.7", context: 200, maxOutput: 200 [...] model: "OpenAI GPT 120B", context: 128, maxOutput: 128”
Read 2026-09-08 · official docs
Models & Pricing — DeepSeek API Docs ↗
“CONTEXT LENGTH 1M”
Read 2026-09-06 · official 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.

DeepSeek

384K tokens maximum.

Sources (2) →

Model APIs overview — Baseten Docs ↗
“SupportedModelsTable [...] model: "DeepSeek V4 Pro", context: 1048, maxOutput: 262 [...] model: "GLM 5.3", context: 1048, maxOutput: 262 [...] model: "GLM 4.7", context: 200, maxOutput: 200 [...] model: "OpenAI GPT 120B", context: 128, maxOutput: 128”
Read 2026-09-08 · official docs
Models & Pricing — DeepSeek API Docs ↗
“MAX OUTPUT MAXIMUM: 384K”
Read 2026-09-06 · official 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.
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.

Sources (2) →

Pricing and limits — Baseten Docs ↗
“Basic (unverified) | 15 | 100,000 | Basic (verified) | 120 | 500,000 | Pro | 120 | 500,000 [...] Cached and uncached input tokens count equally toward this limit, even though cached tokens cost less.”
Read 2026-09-07 · official docs
Rate Limit & Isolation — DeepSeek API Docs ↗
“Concurrency Limit | 500 | 2500 | 2500 [...] Concurrency limits are calculated at the account level, regardless of which API Key is used [...] when the concurrency limit is exceeded, you will receive an HTTP 429 error code [...] There is no additional cost for capacity expansion.”
Read 2026-09-06 · official docs

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03.

Documented by only one.

These criteria are published by one provider and not the other. An absence here means we have not found a source, not that the feature is missing.

Entry paid planBaseten: $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-hourBaseten: $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 offeredBaseten: 180GB per GPU on a B200, at $0.16633 per minute — $9.98 an hour.

04.

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.

Provider pages

BasetenModel inference platform with per-token APIs for open models and dedicated deployments billed by the minute.DeepSeekHosted inference for the DeepSeek model family, priced per million tokens with peak and off-peak rates.

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