DeepSeek V4 Pro price cut of 75% moves from temporary promotion to permanent policy in a move that shakes up the global AI pricing landscape
DeepSeek is not done disrupting the AI industry. The Chinese startup has made its 75 percent price reduction on DeepSeek V4 Pro permanent, according to the company’s pricing page. The DeepSeek V4 Pro price cut was initially a temporary promotion scheduled to end on May 31, 2026. However, DeepSeek decided to lock it in permanently. Moreover, the move significantly strengthens its position against major rivals in an increasingly competitive AI market.
The new pricing tells the full story. DeepSeek V4 Pro now costs between $0.003625 and $0.87 per one million tokens. Before the reduction, prices ranged from $0.0145 to $3.48 per one million tokens. Therefore, enterprise customers and power users processing millions of tokens daily stand to save substantially on their AI operating costs.
The timing follows DeepSeek’s release of its V4 models — Pro and Flash — roughly one month ago. The company positioned both models as cost-effective options offering a 1 million context length. Furthermore, the permanent price cut now places DeepSeek V4 Pro well below comparable offerings from OpenAI’s GPT-5 and Google’s recently released Gemini 3.5 Flash. Therefore, budget-conscious developers and businesses have a compelling reason to consider switching.
The pressure on rival companies is real. Lower pricing from DeepSeek forces competitors to either match costs or justify their premium pricing through superior capabilities. Additionally, the competitive tension between DeepSeek and Western AI firms extends beyond pricing. Anthropic previously accused DeepSeek of distillation attacks, alleging the Chinese company improperly learned from Claude’s more capable models. Therefore, the rivalry carries dimensions well beyond a simple price war.
Still, DeepSeek’s aggressive pricing strategy is working. It is attracting attention, users, and pressure on the entire industry simultaneously. Finally, for anyone paying significant AI API bills each month, this permanent price cut is worth taking seriously.
