DeepSeek V4 Flash Vision (Exp) API Pricing
DeepSeek's first vision model costs exactly what the text model costs: at peak $0.44/M input, $1.32/M output and $0.014/M cached input, and half of each off-peak, on the same time-of-day card as V4 Flash. What makes images cheap here is not the rate but the ceiling: every image is resized to roughly 800x800 before inference, which caps it at 384 tokens — so a 5000x5000 photo and a 2000x2000 one bill the same, about $0.00017 at peak and half that off-peak. The -exp in the id is DeepSeek's own: this is an experimental endpoint, not a GA one, and it is the only DeepSeek model that accepts images at all.
Run the numbers.
Calculator pre-loaded with PEAK rates — halve every result for an off-peak run, which covers 17 of every 24 hours. Images enter the same input bucket at up to 384 tokens each, so an image-heavy workload is priced by counting images, not megabytes.
Real-world presets.
Repo-wide bug fix
Reading 100-page contracts
Reading a screenshot
Chart analysis turn
Paste text. See tokens. See cost.
Counts use a chars-per-token calibration measured on the vendor's own published tokenizer (deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V3.2-Exp, 2026-06-10). English prose is typically within a few percent; code and non-Latin scripts tokenize heavier. For billing-exact counts use the vendor's count-tokens API.
| Model | Input /M | Output /M | Effective blended | Context | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DeepSeek V4 Flash Vision (Exp) | $0.44 cache $0.014 | $1.32 | $0.189 current page - peak | 1M | The only DeepSeek that reads images |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | $0.44 cache $0.014 | $1.32 | $0.189 same | 1M | Identical card, text only |
| DeepSeek V4 Pro | $1.32 cache $0.044 | $3.96 | $0.569 pricier | 1M | Harder reasoning, no image input |
| Qwen3-VL Flash | $0.05 | $0.40 | $0.078 cheaper | 256K | Cheapest vision tier, shorter window |
| GPT-5.6 Luna | $0.20 cache $0.02 | $1.20 | $0.152 cheaper | 1.05M | Cheaper vision on a GA endpoint |
| Gemini 3.7 Flash | $0.75 cache $0.075 | $3.75 | $0.481 pricier | 1M | Vision plus audio and video input |
By comparison
Frequently asked.
What images actually cost on DeepSeek's experimental vision endpoint, and where the limits bite.
Q · 01 How much does one image cost? +
Q · 02 Does it cost more than the text model? +
$0.44 / $0.014 / $1.32 at peak and half that off-peak. There is no vision surcharge, no separate image unit, and no minimum. The only reason to pick V4 Flash instead is that this endpoint is experimental.Q · 03 What does the -exp in the model id mean? +
DeepSeek-V4-Flash-Vision-Exp, so the experiment is baked into the id you call. Treat it the way you would any experimental endpoint: the id can change, and DeepSeek publishes no deprecation window for it. We record it with preview status for that reason.Q · 04 How many images can one request carry? +
Q · 05 What does it give up against V4 Flash? +
Q · 06 Are images allowed anywhere in the conversation? +
400, and so does sending an image to any other DeepSeek model, which replies "This model does not support image". Supported formats are JPEG, PNG, GIF and WebP, detected from file content rather than from the file name.Q · 07 Which hours are peak? +
01:00-04:00 and 06:00-10:00 UTC, Monday through Friday. Every other hour — 17 of 24 on weekdays, and all weekend — is off-peak at exactly half the rate. Batch-style image work that can wait is the clearest case for scheduling: the same 600-image request costs about $0.05 off-peak instead of $0.10.