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.

Reviewed by Palash BagchiUpdated September 202627 criteria comparedSources last checked 3 October 2026

This comparison is not published yet.

It does not meet the quality gate, so the page is marked noindex until the missing data is sourced.

— Baseten's minimum_paid_price was verified 56 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— Baseten's pricing_model was verified 56 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— Baseten's flagship_input_price was verified 56 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— Baseten's flagship_output_price was verified 56 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— Baseten's budget_input_price was verified 56 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— Baseten's prompt_caching was verified 56 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— Baseten's gpu_hourly_price was verified 56 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— Baseten's max_vram was verified 56 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— Baseten's rate_limits was verified 55 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— Baseten's context_window was verified 54 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— Baseten's max_output_tokens was verified 54 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— Baseten's free_tier was verified 49 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— Baseten's regions was verified 49 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— Baseten's free_offer_type was verified 49 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— Baseten's soc2 was verified 49 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— Baseten's iso27001 was verified 49 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— Baseten's hipaa_eligible was verified 49 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— Baseten's gdpr_data_residency was verified 49 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— Baseten's pci_dss was verified 49 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— Baseten's encryption_at_rest was verified 49 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— Baseten's customer_managed_keys was verified 49 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— Baseten's rbac was verified 49 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— Baseten's private_networking was verified 49 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— Baseten's dedicated_infrastructure was verified 49 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— Baseten's uptime_sla was verified 48 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— Baseten's support_included was verified 48 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— DeepSeek's rate_limits was verified 56 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— DeepSeek's minimum_paid_price was verified 49 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— DeepSeek's pricing_model was verified 49 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— DeepSeek's flagship_input_price was verified 49 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— DeepSeek's flagship_output_price was verified 49 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— DeepSeek's budget_input_price was verified 49 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— DeepSeek's context_window was verified 49 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— DeepSeek's max_output_tokens was verified 49 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— DeepSeek's prompt_caching was verified 49 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— DeepSeek's concurrency_limit was verified 49 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— DeepSeek's gdpr_data_residency was verified 49 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.

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.

9 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
Entry paid plan	$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.	No entry plan — DeepSeek publishes one unified pricing standard for the API and states there are no tiered plans. Stated in the API FAQ answer on whether higher-rate-limit plans exist.
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.
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 and $0.022 off-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.	$0.3 per million input tokens for deepseek-flash at peak on a cache miss, $0.15 off-peak; output is $1.2 peak and $0.6 off-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 both models in the current line, deepseek-flash and deepseek-v4-pro.
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.
Compliance
GDPR / data residency	Baseten Cloud supports a GDPR compliance program; residency is set with regional environments or a region on a single deployment.	Personal data is collected, processed and stored in the People's Republic of China; Prighter is the appointed EU and UK privacy representative.

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.

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.
DeepSeek: No entry plan — DeepSeek publishes one unified pricing standard for the API and states there are no tiered plans. Stated in the API FAQ answer on whether higher-rate-limit plans exist.

Sources (2) →

Pricing — Baseten ↗
“Baseten $0 per month, pay as you go Get started [...] Included in Basic: Dedicated deployments Model APIs Training Fast cold starts SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA compliant”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction
Are there plans with higher rate limits? — DeepSeek Help Center (API) ↗
“There is a unified pricing standard and no tiered plans.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction

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.

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 · Report a correction
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 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction

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 and $0.022 off-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 · Report a correction
Models & Pricing | DeepSeek API Docs ↗
“1M INPUT TOKENS (CACHE MISS) OFF-PEAK $0.15 $0.66 PEAK $0.3 $1.32 [...] 1M INPUT TOKENS (CACHE HIT) OFF-PEAK $0.003 $0.022 PEAK $0.006 $0.044”
Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction

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 · Report a correction
Models & Pricing | DeepSeek API Docs ↗
“1M OUTPUT TOKENS OFF-PEAK $0.6 $1.98 PEAK $1.2 $3.96”
Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction

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: $0.3 per million input tokens for deepseek-flash at peak on a cache miss, $0.15 off-peak; output is $1.2 peak and $0.6 off-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 · Report a correction
Models & Pricing | DeepSeek API Docs ↗
“MODEL deepseek-flash(1) deepseek-v4-pro(2) [...] 1M INPUT TOKENS (CACHE MISS) OFF-PEAK $0.15 $0.66 PEAK $0.3 $1.32 [...] 1M OUTPUT TOKENS OFF-PEAK $0.6 $1.98 PEAK $1.2 $3.96”
Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction

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 both models in the current line, deepseek-flash and deepseek-v4-pro.

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 · Report a correction
Models & Pricing | DeepSeek API Docs ↗
“CONTEXT LENGTH 1M”
Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction

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 · Report a correction
Models & Pricing | DeepSeek API Docs ↗
“MAX OUTPUT MAXIMUM: 384K”
Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction

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 · Report a correction
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 · Report a correction

GDPR / data residency

Baseten: Baseten Cloud supports a GDPR compliance program; residency is set with regional environments or a region on a single deployment.
DeepSeek: Personal data is collected, processed and stored in the People's Republic of China; Prighter is the appointed EU and UK privacy representative.

Sources (2) →

Baseten Cloud - Baseten ↗
“Baseten Cloud supports SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, and GDPR compliance programs. [...] to constrain workloads and inference traffic to specific regions”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
DeepSeek Privacy Policy ↗
“we directly collect, process and store your Personal Data in People's Republic of China [...] have therefore appointed Prighter Group with its local partners as our privacy representative”
Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction

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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 — except where we say we read the other provider's own page on a given date and it does not state it. Those rows lean, and the provider can correct them with a link.

Free tierBaseten: No — New workspaces get starting credits for testing; usage beyond them is billed per minute.

Kind of free offerBaseten: Free credit

RegionsBaseten: Two Baseten regions selectable for regional deployments: us (United States) and eu (European Union); other regions by request to support. GPU model deployments only; Chains, training jobs and shared CPU types cannot select a region.

Uptime SLABaseten: Custom SLAs on Enterprise. No percentage is published on the pricing page.

ConcurrencyDeepSeek: 2,500 concurrent requests on deepseek-flash and 500 on deepseek-v4-pro.

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.

Support on entry paid planBaseten: Email and in-app chat support on Basic, which is pay-as-you-go from $0. Pro adds dedicated support on Slack and Zoom.

SOC 2Baseten: Maintains SOC 2 Type II certification for the inference platform; policies and certifications are held in the Baseten Trust Center.

ISO 27001Baseten: ISO 27001:2022 listed as a compliance program; an ISO 27001 certificate for Baseten Labs, Inc. is published in the Trust Center for request. Certificate is request-access in the Trust Center, not a public download.

HIPAABaseten: Maintains HIPAA compliance alongside SOC 2 Type II for model inference on the Baseten platform.

PCI DSSBaseten: PCI DSS - SAQ D listed as a compliance program; a PCI-DSS v4.0.1 AOC for SAQ D Service Provider is published in the Trust Center for request. SAQ D self-assessment AOC, not a QSA Report on Compliance.

Encryption at restBaseten: Trust Center control: datastores housing sensitive customer data are encrypted at rest, and transmission over public networks is encrypted.

Customer-managed keysBaseten: Runtime OIDC BYOK recipes: a model fetches customer-managed keys at runtime to decrypt encrypted weights and to decrypt requests and encrypt responses. Documented under runtime OIDC use cases, implemented in model code via the truss-examples envelope-encryption recipes.

Role-based access controlBaseten: Role-based access control with three organization roles - Admin, Member and Viewer - in a single-team organization.

Private networking / VPCBaseten: Single-tenant Enterprise environments expose endpoints via AWS PrivateLink or Google Cloud Private Service Connect, off the public internet.

Dedicated infrastructureBaseten: Single-tenant runs workloads in an isolated VPC in Baseten Cloud with compute restricted to your organization; Enterprise, custom pricing.

04.

Questions this comparison answers.

Entry paid plan: Baseten or DeepSeek?

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.

DeepSeek: No entry plan — DeepSeek publishes one unified pricing standard for the API and states there are no tiered plans. Stated in the API FAQ answer on whether higher-rate-limit plans exist.

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.

Related comparisons

Anthropic vs DeepSeek Baseten vs Anthropic Baseten vs Fireworks AI Baseten vs Google Gemini API Baseten vs Novita AI Baseten vs OpenAI DeepInfra vs Baseten DeepInfra vs DeepSeek

Baseten vs DeepSeek

The short answer

Choose Baseten if…

Choose DeepSeek if…

Consider something else if…

At a glance.

Where they differ.

Entry paid plan

Pricing model

Input price, top model

Output price, top model

Input price, cheapest model

Context window

Max output tokens

Rate limits

GDPR / data residency

Documented by only one.

Questions this comparison answers.

Provider pages

Related comparisons

Comments