DeepSeek Search API: $0.75 per 1,000. Check where queries go

Web search for AI agents just got a new floor price. DeepSeek opened a Search API and a Fetch API for developers, and its official pricing page lists both at $0.75 per 1,000 successful requests. If your agents do research, price checks or lead lookups, search calls can be a real line on the bill. The price is low. Before you switch, check what you send and where it goes.

What actually happened

From DeepSeek's pricing documentation:

• Two endpoints. Search returns web results. Fetch takes a URL and returns the page content. DeepSeek calls them "standalone APIs billed per request."
• The price. $0.75 per 1,000 successful requests, for each endpoint. Charges come out of your prepaid or granted balance.
• The free window. Server-side tool calls made through DeepSeek's harness, Claude Code or Codex are free for now. Per-request billing starts at 00:00 Beijing time on November 1, 2026.

Independent write-ups, such as PPC Land's coverage, call it the cheapest list price among common agent search APIs. Some testers say result quality is mixed. The pricing page does not list rate limits for these endpoints, so test throughput before you rely on it.

Why it matters for your business

Search is the hidden cost in many agent workflows. A research agent can make dozens of search and fetch calls for one task. At scale, the per-call price matters more than the model price.

But a search query is data. It can hold a customer name, a supplier, a product you have not launched, or a price you plan to beat. DeepSeek is a Chinese company, and its pricing page says nothing about how it handles search data. That is not a reason to ban it. It is a reason to decide on purpose.

How we would test it:

• Split by sensitivity. Send public, generic lookups (product specs, public prices) to the cheap provider. Keep queries with customer or deal data on a provider whose data terms you have read.
• Put search behind your own interface. One adapter, many providers. Then a price change or a policy change is a config switch.
• Measure quality on your own queries. Run 100 real queries through two providers and compare. A cheap search that sends your agent to the wrong page costs more in tokens and retries.
• Set a budget alert before November 1. Free windows end. Know your call volume first.

Sources: DeepSeek API docs: Models & Pricing, PPC Land: DeepSeek prices web search for AI agents at $0.75 per 1,000 calls.