R1 0528 API Pricing
DeepSeek · context window 164K · prices updated 2026-09-29
Where R1 0528 sits on price
At $2.15 per million output tokens, R1 0528 is a mid tier model — right at the median output price of $2.20, which puts it cheaper than 51% and pricier than 49% of the models we track. It sits 13th cheapest of the 15 DeepSeek models we track. Output costs 4.3× input, the usual spread — trim both, starting with the answer length.
Cached input is 30% cheaper. On an input-heavy workload you need roughly a 83% cache-hit rate to take 25% off the input line — reachable for chatbots and agents that resend the same system prompt and history.
What real workloads cost on R1 0528
These three workloads are the ones teams actually run on a mid-priced model — a $2.15/1M model is not bought for the same job as one ten times the price.
| Workload | Per request | Per month |
|---|---|---|
| Support chatbot — 500 conversations/day (5K in / 1.4K out) Conversation history re-sent each turn — the classic prompt-caching win. | $0.0055 | $82.65 |
| Document pipeline — 10K docs/day (3K in / 500 out) Batch-friendly: no user waiting, so a ~50% batch discount usually applies. | $0.0026 | $773 |
| Small app — 1K requests/day (500 in / 150 out) The baseline most side projects actually run at. | $0.0006 | $17.18 |
Model your exact traffic in the API cost calculator — it preloads R1 0528 with caching and batch options.
R1 0528 price history
R1 0528's price has not moved since we began tracking it on Aug 2, 2026 — 58 days of stability in a market where 88 of the 353 models we track have repriced over the same period, including 11 of DeepSeek's own 15 models.
Change-points from our daily price snapshots (tracking since Aug 2, 2026; intraday moves between snapshots are not captured).
R1 0528 vs Qwen3 VL 8B Thinking
The closest-priced alternative from another vendor is Qwen3 VL 8B Thinking (Alibaba (Qwen)) — 2% cheaper on output, with $0.32 less per million input tokens. When two models land this close on price, the decision is quality on your own workload, not the price sheet: run 50 real requests through both and compare.
See Qwen3 VL 8B Thinking pricing →Cheaper alternatives
More DeepSeek models
Frequently asked questions
› How much does the R1 0528 API cost?
R1 0528 costs $0.5 per million input tokens and $2.15 per million output tokens, with cached input at $0.35 per million (30% cheaper). That works out to roughly 465,116 output tokens per dollar.
› What does the support chatbot workload cost on R1 0528?
Support chatbot — 500 conversations/day (5K in / 1.4K out) costs about $0.0055 per request and $82.65 per month on R1 0528. Conversation history re-sent each turn — the classic prompt-caching win.
› What does it cost to fill R1 0528's 164K context window?
Sending 164K of input in a single request costs $0.0819 at $0.5 per million tokens — before any output. With prompt caching that same fill drops to about $0.0573 on repeat requests. This is why large context windows are cheap to advertise and expensive to actually use.
› Is R1 0528 worth the price?
R1 0528 sits in the middle of the market (13 of 15 by price within DeepSeek). The honest test is a routing experiment: send the same 200 real requests to this model and to a tier below, and compare failure rate against the price gap — most teams find a majority of traffic never needed the pricier model.