DeepSeek starts charging for Search and Fetch API calls
The web search and fetch endpoints DeepSeek opened to Claude Code, Codex and its own Harness for free now bill $0.75 per 1,000 successful calls, each endpoint separately.
DeepSeek’s Search and Fetch APIs stop being free today. The two endpoints, launched on 17 October and powered by DeepSeek’s own search index, let an agent run a web search or pull back a page’s content as markdown. Calls routed through DeepSeek Harness, Claude Code or Codex had been free since launch. Per-request billing started at 00:00 Beijing time on 1 November.
Each endpoint is billed separately at $0.75 per 1,000 successful requests. DeepSeek only counts a request as billable if it returns HTTP 200 and produces a result: a non-empty results array for Search, actual page content for Fetch. Failed calls, empty results and timeouts aren’t charged.
Search: $0.75 / 1,000 successful requests
Fetch: $0.75 / 1,000 successful requestsWhy it matters: if you pointed an agent at DeepSeek’s search or fetch tools through Claude Code or Codex on the assumption it would stay free, it now has a real cost. $0.75 per 1,000 calls looks trivial in isolation, but an agent that searches before every answer can run through thousands of calls a day, so it’s worth checking usage before the bill does it for you.
The caveat: DeepSeek’s pricing page doesn’t publish request volume alongside the change, so there’s no way to say from the source alone how large the jump is for any particular integration.