DeepSeek Confirms V4 Official Launch for Mid-July with Peak-Time API Pricing

DeepSeek

Models / LLM official + media 3 src. ~1 min

DeepSeek confirmed around July 1 that the official release of DeepSeek V4 is scheduled for mid-July, following its April 24 preview. V4 ships as V4-Pro (1.6T total / 49B active params) and V4-Flash (284B total / 13B active), both with a 1M-token context window. For the first time, DeepSeek introduces peak/off-peak API pricing: usage doubles during 9 AM–12 PM and 2–6 PM Beijing time. Legacy model names deepseek-chat and deepseek-reasoner retire on July 24.

Why it matters

The 1M-context upgrade across both tiers raises the bar for open-weight models. The peak pricing experiment signals DeepSeek is managing real capacity constraints — even at peak prices, V4 remains more than 17x cheaper than GPT-5.5.

Importance: 3/5

DeepSeek V4 official launch date and pricing structure confirmed; first peak/off-peak API pricing; legacy model names retiring July 24

deepseek-v4 api pricing moe reasoning china

Sources

official DeepSeek V4 Preview Release — DeepSeek API Docs

media DeepSeek to launch V4 in mid-July with new peak-time API pricing — TechNode

secondary DeepSeek V4 Arrives Mid-July — Srpske Novine