DeepSeek will start billing API web-search and fetching calls on November 1, at RMB5 per 1,000 successful requests.

DeepSeek announced request-based pricing for existing search and fetch functionality. Its October 18 notice said the API already supported webpage search and retrieval. The stated rate is RMB5 for every 1,000 successful requests.

The billing scope includes server-side tool calls in named development environments. Users accessing DeepSeek’s API through DeepSeek Harness, Claude Code, and Codex already invoke the Search and Fetch interfaces through server-side tools. According to the announcement, those calls had not yet been charged.

The commencement time is explicitly specified. Charging begins at 00:00 Beijing time on November 1, 2026. The announcement concerns successful Search/Fetch requests and does not state a change to model-token pricing.