DeepInfra vs DeepSeek

SEPT 2026 audit

A comparison of DeepInfra 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 202624 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.

— DeepInfra's pricing_model was verified 49 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— DeepInfra's flagship_input_price was verified 49 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— DeepInfra's flagship_output_price was verified 49 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— DeepInfra's budget_input_price was verified 49 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— DeepInfra's context_window was verified 49 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— DeepInfra's prompt_caching was verified 49 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— DeepInfra's gpu_hourly_price was verified 49 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— DeepInfra's max_vram was verified 49 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— DeepInfra's free_tier was verified 42 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— DeepInfra's minimum_paid_price was verified 42 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— DeepInfra's regions was verified 42 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— DeepInfra's max_output_tokens was verified 42 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— DeepInfra's batch_discount was verified 42 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— DeepInfra's rate_limits was verified 42 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— DeepInfra's free_offer_type was verified 42 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— DeepInfra's free_card_required was verified 42 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— DeepInfra's soc2 was verified 42 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— DeepInfra's iso27001 was verified 42 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— DeepInfra's hipaa_eligible was verified 42 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— DeepInfra's gdpr_data_residency was verified 42 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— DeepInfra's encryption_at_rest was verified 42 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— DeepInfra's rbac was verified 42 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— DeepInfra's dedicated_infrastructure was verified 42 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— DeepSeek's rate_limits was verified 49 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— DeepSeek's minimum_paid_price was verified 42 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— DeepSeek's pricing_model was verified 42 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— DeepSeek's flagship_input_price was verified 42 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— DeepSeek's flagship_output_price was verified 42 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— DeepSeek's budget_input_price was verified 42 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— DeepSeek's context_window was verified 42 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— DeepSeek's max_output_tokens was verified 42 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— DeepSeek's prompt_caching was verified 42 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— DeepSeek's concurrency_limit was verified 42 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.
— DeepSeek's gdpr_data_residency was verified 42 days ago; the limit for this fact is 30.

The short answer

Choose DeepInfra if…

Running open-weight models at the lowest published per-token rates here — DeepSeek-V4-Flash at $0.06 per million input is a fraction of what the lab itself charges — with dedicated H100s at $2.20 an hour if throughput demands it.

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…

DeepInfra: Only some models carry per-token pricing; the rest bill for inference execution time, which is a different and harder thing to forecast.
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 DeepInfra 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	DeepInfra	DeepSeek
Pricing
Entry paid plan	No minimum spend and no seat fees - billing is pay-per-token usage only, with no charge for idle GPU time.	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	Two products on one bill: per-token serverless inference with a separate cached-input rate for each model, and dedicated GPUs billed per minute and invoiced weekly. Models without per-token pricing are billed for inference execution time instead.	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	$1.30 per million input tokens for DeepSeek-V4-Pro, the most expensive model in its catalogue. Cached input is $0.10.	$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	$2.60 per million output tokens for DeepSeek-V4-Pro.	$3.96 per million output tokens for deepseek-v4-pro at peak, $1.98 off-peak.
Input price, cheapest model	$0.06 per million input tokens for DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731, with cached input at $0.015 and output at $0.18. DeepSeek itself charges $0.44 at peak for the same checkpoint and Fireworks $0.22.	$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	1024k tokens on the DeepSeek V4 models it serves; 160k on the V3 generation. The window is the model's rather than a platform limit.	1M tokens on both models in the current line, deepseek-flash and deepseek-v4-pro.
Max output tokens	Hard cap of 16384 output tokens per response for most models on the chat completions API; the exact limit is model-dependent.	384K tokens maximum.
Prompt caching	Supported	Supported
Rate limits	Default 200 concurrent requests per model per account (429 above it); a limit increase can be requested in the dashboard.	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	Privacy Policy: data may be transferred, stored and processed outside your jurisdiction, specifically in the United States; EU residents keep GDPR rights.	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

DeepInfra: No minimum spend and no seat fees - billing is pay-per-token usage only, with no charge for idle GPU time.
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) →

What is DeepInfra - DeepInfra ↗
“You only pay per token - no idle GPU time, no minimums, no seat fees.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · 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

DeepInfra: Two products on one bill: per-token serverless inference with a separate cached-input rate for each model, and dedicated GPUs billed per minute and invoiced weekly. Models without per-token pricing are billed for inference execution time instead.
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 — DeepInfra ↗
“Some of our langauge models offer per token pricing. Most other models are billed for inference execution time. [...] Billed in minute granularity Invoiced weekly”
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

DeepInfra: $1.30 per million input tokens for DeepSeek-V4-Pro, the most expensive model in its catalogue. Cached input is $0.10.
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 — DeepInfra ↗
“DeepSeek-V4-Pro 1024k $1.30 / $0.10 cached $2.60”
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

DeepInfra: $2.60 per million output tokens for DeepSeek-V4-Pro.
DeepSeek: $3.96 per million output tokens for deepseek-v4-pro at peak, $1.98 off-peak.

Sources (2) →

Pricing — DeepInfra ↗
“DeepSeek-V4-Pro 1024k $1.30 / $0.10 cached $2.60”
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

DeepInfra: $0.06 per million input tokens for DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731, with cached input at $0.015 and output at $0.18. DeepSeek itself charges $0.44 at peak for the same checkpoint and Fireworks $0.22.
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 — DeepInfra ↗
“DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 1024k $0.06 / $0.015 cached $0.18”
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

DeepInfra

1024k tokens on the DeepSeek V4 models it serves; 160k on the V3 generation. The window is the model's rather than a platform limit.

DeepSeek

1M tokens on both models in the current line, deepseek-flash and deepseek-v4-pro.

Sources (2) →

Pricing — DeepInfra ↗
“DeepSeek-V4-Pro 1024k [...] DeepSeek-V3.2 160k $0.26 / $0.13 cached $0.38”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction
Models & Pricing | DeepSeek API Docs ↗
“CONTEXT LENGTH 1M”
Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction

Max output tokens

DeepInfra: Hard cap of 16384 output tokens per response for most models on the chat completions API; the exact limit is model-dependent.
DeepSeek: 384K tokens maximum.

Sources (2) →

Chat Completions - DeepInfra ↗
“The maximum number of tokens that can be generated in a single response is model-dependent, with a hard cap of 16384 tokens for most models.”
Read 2026-09-13 · 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

DeepInfra: Default 200 concurrent requests per model per account (429 above it); a limit increase can be requested in the dashboard.
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) →

Rate Limits - DeepInfra ↗
“Every account has a default limit of 200 concurrent requests per model [...] You can request a rate limit increase in your”
Read 2026-09-13 · 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

DeepInfra: Privacy Policy: data may be transferred, stored and processed outside your jurisdiction, specifically in the United States; EU residents keep GDPR rights.
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) →

DeepInfra Privacy Policy ↗
“Your data may be transferred, stored, and processed outside of your jurisdiction, specifically in the United States. [...] If you are a resident of the European Union you may have additional rights under the General Data Protection Regulation.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official site · 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 tierDeepInfra: No

Kind of free offerDeepInfra: No free offer

Credit card to startDeepInfra: Yes

RegionsDeepInfra: Serverless inference runs on DeepInfra's own inference-optimised infrastructure in US-based data centers. No region selector is documented for the shared inference API.

Batch discountDeepInfra: Batch API jobs are billed 20% below real-time pricing, with results returned within 24 hours.

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

H100 SXM, per GPU-hourDeepInfra: $2.20 per GPU-hour for a dedicated H100 80GB — below every dedicated cloud in this dataset. A100 80GB is $0.89, H200 $2.69, B200 $3.69. Billed in minute granularity, invoiced weekly.

Largest GPU offeredDeepInfra: 270GB per GPU on a B300, at $4.89 per GPU-hour.

SOC 2DeepInfra: Security measures stated to comply with SOC 2 standards in the privacy policy; no report, audit type or auditor is published.

ISO 27001DeepInfra: Security measures stated to comply with ISO 27001 standards in the privacy policy; no certificate or issuing body is published.

HIPAADeepInfra: Technical and organizational measures for HIPAA compliance stated in the privacy policy; no BAA or eligible-services list is published.

Encryption at restDeepInfra: Inference inputs and outputs are not stored to disk; bulk-inference data may be stored on disk in encrypted form, then deleted.

Role-based access controlDeepInfra: Team roles are member and admin; an admin can change roles, but all team members share the same API tokens and models.

Dedicated infrastructureDeepInfra: Private model deployments run on dedicated GPU infrastructure - your weights, your endpoint, your isolation - not shared with other users.

04.

Questions this comparison answers.

Entry paid plan: DeepInfra or DeepSeek?

DeepInfra: No minimum spend and no seat fees - billing is pay-per-token usage only, with no charge for idle GPU time.

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 DeepInfra or DeepSeek?

Pick DeepInfra if Running open-weight models at the lowest published per-token rates here — DeepSeek-V4-Flash at $0.06 per million input is a fraction of what the lab itself charges — with dedicated H100s at $2.20 an hour if throughput demands it.

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

DeepInfraServerless inference for open-weight models with published cached-input rates, plus dedicated GPUs 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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Anthropic vs DeepInfra Anthropic vs DeepSeek Baseten vs DeepSeek DeepInfra vs Baseten DeepInfra vs Fireworks AI DeepInfra vs Google Gemini API DeepInfra vs Novita AI DeepInfra vs OpenAI

DeepInfra vs DeepSeek

The short answer

Choose DeepInfra 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