How much does R1 cost per million tokens?

R1 costs $0.7 per million input tokens and $2.50 per million output tokens at list price.

What is the context window of R1?

R1 accepts up to 64,000 tokens of context and returns up to 16,000 output tokens.

How much do 1,000 chat messages cost with R1?

About $1.95, assuming 1,000 input + 500 output tokens per message.

Is there a cheaper alternative to R1?

In the same price range, OpenAI GPT-6 Luna Pro ($0.1 / $0.5), OpenAI GPT-6 Luna ($0.1 / $0.5), Qwen Qwen3.8 Omni Flash ($0.15 / $0.47) cost less per token. Quality differs: test on your own prompts.

Where can I buy DeepSeek API credits for less?

Discount credit books resell OpenRouter usage below face value within their depth, OpenRouter adds a 5.5% card fee, and DeepSeek sells its own credits at face value. The live table on this page ranks them for $100 of usage.

DeepSeek · live price

R1 API pricing

DeepSeek R1 is here: Performance on par with OpenAI o1, but open-sourced and with fully open reasoning tokens. It's 671B parameters in size, with 37B active in an inference pass....

Mid-range ($1–5 per 1M)Tool callingReasoning

Input: $0.7; per 1M tokens
Output: $2.50; per 1M tokens
Cached input: –; per 1M tokens
Context: 64K; 16K max output

List price from OpenRouter, which passes DeepSeek's price through without markup. Refreshed hourly. Released January 20, 2025. Model id deepseek/deepseek-r1.

What R1 costs in practice

At list price, before any batch or caching discount.

1,000 chat messages

$1.95

1,000 input + 500 output tokens each

1,000 RAG questions

$6.85

8,000 input + 500 output tokens each

100 coding-agent steps

$2.60

30,000 input + 2,000 output tokens each, no caching

R1 price history

No price change since we started tracking on 2026-10-01. We record prices daily; changes will show here.

R1 price by host

One host serves this model through OpenRouter.

Novita$0.7 in · $2.50 out · 64K ctx · 99.9% uptime 24h

Where to buy DeepSeek credits for less

R1 costs the same per token everywhere it's sold through OpenRouter. What changes is the price of the credits. Live quotes for $100 of usage:

#	Where you buy	You payYou pay for $100.00 of usage	vs list price	Price source
1	OrbioCardCheapest right now Credits from a discount book, plus a 5% platform fee and card processing, both included in the quote.	$85.10 incl. $2.60 card processing	-14.9%	live quote
2	smaaartCard Credits from a discount book, plus a 5% platform fee on face value. Card processing and taxes shown at checkout.	$95.00 + card processing and tax at checkout (not in this number)	-5.0%	live quote
3	Direct from the labCard Prepaid credits at face value (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google…). Taxes may apply.	$100.00 no top-up fee	list price	face value
4	OpenRouterCrypto 5% on crypto purchases. No markup on model prices.	$105.00 fees included	+5.0%	published fee
5	OpenRouterCard 5.5% on card purchases, $0.80 minimum. No markup on model prices.	$105.50 fees included	+5.5%	published fee

Disclosure: this site is run by the team behind smaaart, one of the options compared. Tables are ranked by price only, from live quotes and published fees, including when smaaart isn't first. How we compare

R1 cost calculator

Enter your monthly tokens to price your own usage.

Model$0.7 in / $2.50 out per 1M tokens · list price, liveInput tokens / month (millions)Output tokens / month (millions)

Usage at list price$60.00/ month

Cheaper alternatives to R1

Other labs' models in the same price range or the one below, cheaper per token.

Model	Input / 1M	Output / 1M	Blended 3:1	Context
OpenAI: GPT-6 Luna Pro	$0.1	$0.5	$0.2	1.1M
OpenAI: GPT-6 Luna	$0.1	$0.5	$0.2	1.1M
Qwen: Qwen3.8 Omni Flash	$0.15	$0.47	$0.23	1M
Z.ai: GLM 5.3 FlashX	$0.37	$1.25	$0.59	1.0M
Qwen: Qwen3.8 Flash	$0.15	$0.47	$0.23	1M
Z.ai: GLM 5.3 Flash	$0.15	$0.5	$0.237	1.0M

Other DeepSeek models

Model	Input / 1M	Output / 1M	Blended 3:1	Context
DeepSeek V3	$0.257	$1.03	$0.45	164K
DeepSeek V3 0324	$0.29	$1.14	$0.502	164K
R1 0528	$0.5	$2.15	$0.913	164K
DeepSeek V3.1	$0.25	$0.95	$0.425	164K
DeepSeek V3.1 Terminus	$0.3	$1	$0.475	164K
DeepSeek V3.2 Exp	$0.27	$0.41	$0.305	164K

All DeepSeek API prices