- DeepSeek V4-Flash API offers a cost-effective pricing of about $0.14 per million input tokens via the official platform, significantly cheaper than OpenAI or Anthropic.
- The official DeepSeek platform limits payment methods to Alipay and WeChat Pay, excluding international developers using Visa or Mastercard.
- A solution called api-hub.cc was created as a proxy that accepts credit cards and generates API keys with spending limits via LiteLLM's /key/generate endpoint.
- api-hub.cc provides a flat rate of $0.20 per million input tokens for DeepSeek V4-Flash, which is cheaper than DeepSeek's peak-hour pricing of ~$0.28 per million tokens introduced in June 2026.
- The proxy offers three pricing tiers: $5 for casual use, $20 for daily use, and $100 for team or power users, addressing the payment barrier for international developers.