DeepSeek R1

DeepSeek's 671B MoE reasoning model (37B active) with chain-of-thought reasoning for math and code.

Params: 671B, 37B active
Context: 128K tokens
Released: Jan 2025
License: MIT

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Hosted API price

Cheapest via Novita · per 1M tokens

USD

Input: $0.70 /1M
Output: $2.50 /1M
Hosted by: 3 providers

Hosted API pricing

How we price

Order

Providers are listed cheapest input rate first, then by output rate, a tie going to the creator's own listing. A provider that lists the model without a published rate sits at the end.

Prices

Base-tier, on-demand rates in USD per 1M tokens, converted at ECB reference rates where a provider publishes in another currency. Cached-input and batch rates show only where a provider publishes them. "Cheapest" marks the one provider with the lowest input and output pair; a tie wears no badge.

Cost

Input rate times the input tokens plus output rate times the output tokens, at the monthly volume set above the table. Cached-input, batch, long-context and reasoning-token billing are not modelled.

Transparency and funding

Affiliates: Affiliate links are marked. We may earn a commission if you click them, but commissions never affect the order.

Every provider serving DeepSeek R1, cheapest input first. Set your monthly volume to see what each would bill.

Input M Output M

Every provider serving DeepSeek R1, with its price per 1M input and output tokens and what the volume above would cost
Provider	Input /1M	Output /1M	Cached input /1M	Cost at 10M in + 2M out	Link
Novita Cheapest	$0.70	$2.50	$0.35	$12.00	Visit website
Azure	$1.35	$5.40		$24.30	Visit website
Replicate	$3.75	$10.00		$57.50	Visit website

Heads up: Base-tier, on-demand rates per 1M tokens; cached, batch and long-context tiers excluded. A provider may serve a shorter context or a quantized build than the creator's release. Verify before provisioning. More on how we price.

Estimated cost to self-host

DeepSeek R1 needs about 373 GB of GPU memory at 4-bit with 32K context. The cheapest rental that fits is 8× A100 at about $9,850 a month.

That costs the same as roughly 10B tokens a month on Novita's API. Self-hosting is more expensive below that volume.

Single node ≤ 8

What it costs to self-host DeepSeek R1 at each precision: the memory it needs, the cheapest rental that holds it, that rental's month and the API volume it pays off at
Precision	Memory	Cheapest fit (32K context)(Full 128K context)	Cost /mo	Break-even vs API
4-bit INT4 / FP4	373 GB380 GB	8× A100	$9,850$9,850	10B tokens /mo10B tokens /mo
8-bit FP8 / INT8	674 GB678 GB	8× RTX PRO 6000	$12,614$12,614	13B tokens /mo13B tokens /mo
16-bit FP16 / BF16	1,346 GB1,353 GB	8× B300	$45,446$45,446	45B tokens /mo45B tokens /mo

Estimates based on median on-demand rates for Nvidia GPUs. Memory is weights plus KV cache for one request, using FP8 KV cache where supported and FP16/BF16 otherwise. Break-even assumes a 5:1 input-to-output ratio. No guarantee of runtime support, usable performance, or that a matching quantized build exists. Pricing methodology.

Similarly priced models

The models nearest DeepSeek R1 by blended rate, each at its own cheapest provider.

Models priced nearest DeepSeek R1 per 1M tokens, each at its cheapest provider
Model	Blended /1M	Input /1M	Output /1M	Context	Cutoff	vs DeepSeek R1
GLM-4.7 Z.AI	$0.8667	$0.60	$2.20	205K		−13%
Gemini 3 Flash Preview Google Cloud	$0.9167	$0.50	$3.00	1M	Jan 2025	−8%
Qwen3.6-Plus Alibaba Cloud	$0.9167	$0.50	$3.00	1M		−8%
GLM-5.2 Z.AI	$0.95	$0.70	$2.20	1M		−5%
Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B Nvidia	$0.99	$0.66	$2.64	1M	Sep 2025	−1%
DeepSeek R1 This model DeepSeek	$1.00	$0.70	$2.50	128K
DeepSeek R1 Turbo DeepSeek	$1.00	$0.70	$2.50	64K		0%
Llama 3 70B Meta	$1.00	$0.65	$2.75	8K	Dec 2023	0%
Qwen3-VL-235B-A22B Thinking Alibaba Cloud	$1.00	$0.40	$4.00	262K		0%
Kimi K2.6 Moonshot AI	$1.0333	$0.60	$3.20	262K		+3%
Grok Build 0.1 xAI	$1.1667	$1.00	$2.00	256K		+17%

USD per 1M tokens at each model's cheapest listed provider. Blended is the cost of 10M input plus 2M output tokens, spread over the 12M.

Lyceum

NVIDIA H200 from $2.20/hr, B200 from $3.40/hr, B300 from $3.80/hr

Per-second billing with no minimum commitment or vendor lock-in

Scale to 8,000 GPUs over InfiniBand for distributed AI training

View Pricing

Capabilities

What DeepSeek R1 accepts and can do, as published by DeepSeek.

Text Accepts and generates natural-language text.
Reasoning Thinks before it answers, always on or as a switchable mode.
Function calling Connect to external tools, APIs, and systems.
Structured output Return responses in structured formats like JSON.

Common questions

What is DeepSeek R1 good for?

Math and code tasks that gain from step-by-step reasoning. MIT-licensed weights allow self-hosting or fine-tuning, on a multi-GPU node.

When is DeepSeek R1 not a good fit?

Cost-sensitive or multimodal work: it is text only and sits at the top of DeepSeek's price range. DeepSeek's later hybrid models fold R1-style reasoning into a single chat model.

What is the cheapest way to run DeepSeek R1?

Hosted, unless you push serious volume. Novita charges $0.70 in / $2.50 out per 1M tokens. The cheapest rental that fits is 8x A100 at $9,850 a month, which costs the same as about 10B tokens a month on that API.

Can I self-host DeepSeek R1?

Yes. The weights are MIT licensed. At 4-bit it needs about 373 GB of GPU memory, which starts at roughly $9,850 a month on the cheapest rental that fits.