China's DeepSeek Opens Web Search and Fetch API, Charging 5 Yuan per 1,000 Successful Requests

en.Wedoany.com Reported - On October 18, Chinese AI company DeepSeek announced the pricing arrangements for its web search and fetch API services. The Search and Fetch interfaces are now officially available, each billed at 5 yuan per 1,000 successful requests. Currently, when using the DeepSeek API through DeepSeek Harness, Claude Code, and Codex, related calls triggered by server-side tools are temporarily free of charge; starting from 00:00 Beijing Time on November 1, 2026, call fees will begin to be charged.

The two interfaces are powered by DeepSeek's self-developed search engine, and developers can access them using their existing API keys. Search retrieves web pages based on query terms and returns structured results containing information such as titles, URLs, and summaries; a single request can be configured to return 1 to 50 results. Fetch is responsible for crawling specified web pages and returns the page title and body content in Markdown format.

DeepSeek stipulates that only requests that return an HTTP 200 status code and produce valid results are billed. Specifically, Search must return non-empty search results, and Fetch must successfully retrieve the web page body; failed requests, searches with no results, or timeouts are not charged. Interface fees are calculated based on the number of successful requests and are not affected by the number of returned results or model Token usage.

Both interfaces have a rate limit of 5 requests per second per account, with independent quotas that do not consume model concurrency allowances. Fetch additionally has a target-domain-level request limit; exceeding the limit will return an HTTP 429 error. Fees are deducted directly from the developer account's top-up balance or gift balance; when both types of balance exist, the gift balance is used first.