DeepSeek API Peak Hours: Weekends, Holidays, Makeup Days

Introduction

Search DeepSeek API peak hours, and many teams only remember “daytime is expensive, night is cheap.” The more common bill shock is different: does a makeup Saturday or a weekday that “feels like work” during National Day count as peak?

The official pricing footnote already answers this: peak fires only on Beijing-time Monday–Friday windows that are not Chinese public holidays; weekends and Chinese public holidays are off-peak all day, at half the peak rate. This site is an independent community—treat the official pricing page as source of truth for windows and unit prices.

I. Three Rules First, Then the Clock

Condition	Billing tier
Beijing Mon–Fri 09:00–12:00 and 14:00–18:00, and not a Chinese public holiday	Peak
Any other time (lunch gap, nights, etc.)	Off-peak
All day Saturday & Sunday; all day on Chinese public holidays	Off-peak (clock does not matter)

UTC helper for overseas cron: peak is Mon–Fri 01:00–04:00 and 06:00–10:00 UTC, still excluding Chinese public holidays; everything else is off-peak. Full price tables: DeepSeek API and the official pricing page.

Makeup workdays? Official wording says weekends are off-peak in full. So a Saturday/Sunday makeup day still bills as weekend → off-peak—do not switch your budget to peak just because the office asks people to work. A Chinese public holiday that lands on a weekday is off-peak all day. Use the State Council holiday calendar plus the official footnote; this article does not replace either.

One line: ask “is it a workday and not a Chinese public holiday?” before “is it inside the two peak windows?”

II. What Half-Price Off-Peak Looks Like (Rates at Writing Time)

Unit: USD per 1M tokens on the English docs (CNY on the Chinese page). Off-peak = 50% of peak. Models on the current official table: deepseek-flash (V4.1 Flash) and deepseek-v4-pro.

Line item	Flash off-peak / peak	Pro off-peak / peak
Input · cache hit	$0.003 / $0.006	$0.022 / $0.044
Input · cache miss	$0.15 / $0.30	$0.66 / $1.32
Output	$0.60 / $1.20	$1.98 / $3.96

Concurrency: Flash 2500, Pro 500. August price-structure unpack: DeepSeek API price change. September Flash rename: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash GA. Always re-check the official page before forecasting—the table here is for scheduling math only.

III. How to Schedule Around National Day (Logic, Not Legal Advice)

Self-check with “calendar first, clock second”:

1. Chinese public holiday day → off-peak all day, even if it falls on a weekday daytime window.
2. Ordinary Saturday/Sunday → off-peak all day.
3. Makeup workday that is still Sat/Sun on the calendar → still weekend → off-peak.
4. True weekday Mon–Fri after makeup shifts, not a holiday → only then can peak apply; check 09–12 and 14–18 Beijing time.

Good off-peak candidates: eval replays, data cleaning, batch summaries, offline agent runs, non-realtime reports. Realtime support / trading paths that must stay online at peak: change model tier and caching—not gambling on the clock. Cache: DeepSeek API context caching. HTTP 429: rate-limit guide.

IV. Developer Checklist

1. Cron/queues in UTC; docs in Beijing time. Avoid “server is UTC, teammates guess Beijing” double mistakes.

2. Keep the holiday table external. Do not hard-code one year’s days off; swap a calendar data source yearly.

3. Batch defaults to off-peak. Weekday 12:00–14:00, after 18:00, overnight, plus full weekends and holidays.

4. Realtime paths: Flash + cache before forcing peak Pro. Escalate to Pro for hard reasoning; effort knobs: thinking mode.

5. Reconcile with usage, not intuition. Run the same script once at peak and once off-peak; compare tokens × unit price.

V. FAQ

Does the web chat also use peak pricing?
No. Peak/off-peak applies to DeepSeek API billing only. Web / App chat follows product rules, not API unit prices.

Does “excluding Chinese public holidays” cover makeup rest days?
Peak requires “Mon–Fri and not a Chinese public holiday.” Weekends are always off-peak; public-holiday calendar days are always off-peak. When makeup schedules intersect a given year, follow the official footnote + State Council calendar. If unsure, estimate optimistic (off-peak) and pessimistic (peak) bills.

Should overseas teams care about Chinese holidays?
Yes. Billing follows Chinese public holidays, not your local public holidays. An overseas workday that lands in a Chinese long holiday can still be off-peak all day for the API.

Is this an official announcement?
No. This is an independent community cheat sheet. The official pricing page footnote wins.

Summary

Remember the DeepSeek API peak hours order: weekday & Chinese public holiday → two peak clock windows → half-price off-peak. Weekends and Chinese public holidays are full-day off-peak opportunities; do not treat makeup weekends as peak just because the office looks busy. Unit prices stay on the official page—this article is about not missing the calendar.

Further reading

• DeepSeek API
• DeepSeek API price change
• DeepSeek API context caching
• DeepSeek V4.1 Flash GA
• DeepSeek web app