Cheapest DeepSeek R1 API: RunAPI is 88% below the official price
DeepSeek R1 costs $0.550/$2.19 per 1M tokens from DeepSeek. The cheapest quote is RunAPI: $0.069 in, $0.274 out. Full table and buying checklist below.
| # | Provider | 1M input | 1M output | Discount | Tokens per $100 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | Official list | $0.550 | $2.19 | 0% | 121M |
| 1 | $0.069 | $0.274 | −88% | 972M | |
| 2 | $0.719 | $3.09 | — | 89.7M |
Tokens per $100 assume a “code” mix: 5 input tokens per output token. Prices are crawled; verify them on the provider page before buying.
What to check before buying
- Test the key with the free API checker — it verifies the endpoint responds, without sending tokens.
- Compare the blended cost for your workload, not just the input price: output tokens dominate in agent workloads.
- Check uptime and minimum top-up: the cheapest provider is useless if it is down half the day.