DeepSeek Launches Cheap Nightly Rates to Access AI Models

The explosion of interest in any cloud system is putting a serious strain on infrastructure, and Chinese company DeepSeek has adopted marketing tools to manage the load more evenly. Starting Wednesday, access to the DeepSeek V3 model for developers will be half the price between 00:30 and 8:30 Beijing time.

Image source: Unsplash, Solen Feyissa

The R1 model, which underlies the popular DeepSeek chatbot, will become 75% cheaper for developers to use via the API at the specified time. DeepSeek services have become quite popular in China itself, including even competing AI developers like Tencent Holdings and Perplexity AI. Government agencies are eager to use DeepSeek services, since local legislation prohibits Chinese officials from transferring data for processing outside the country. It is worth recalling that governments of some countries like Italy and South Korea have also prohibited their officials from using DeepSeek.

DeepSeek had to warn customers that they might have trouble accessing its services during the day. Lowering the cost of nighttime access should help distribute the load more evenly. DeepSeek’s overseas customers, who live in time zones further away from Beijing, may benefit even more from such changes than their Chinese customers.