DeepSeek API in India: Access, Pricing in ₹, and Setup

The problem: DeepSeek billing doesn't work well from India

DeepSeek's own platform bills in USD and expects an international card. For Indian developers who want the lowest-cost frontier model available today, that is an odd bottleneck — DeepSeek is already the cheapest option on the table, and the payment friction adds cost right back in forex fees and card declines.

AICredits removes that step. Top up a prepaid wallet in INR via UPI, net banking, or a domestic debit card, and DeepSeek usage deducts from that wallet in rupees.

Step 1: Create your account and add credits

Sign up at aicredits.in — no card required. Go to Billing → Add Credits and top up via Razorpay (minimum ₹10). Then go to API Keys → Create New Key, name it deepseek-production, and optionally set a budget cap.

Step 2: Call DeepSeek with the OpenAI SDK

from openai import OpenAI
 
client = OpenAI(
    base_url="https://api.aicredits.in/v1",
    api_key="sk-your-aicredits-key",
)
 
response = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="deepseek/deepseek-chat",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Summarise this invoice into three bullet points."}],
)
print(response.choices[0].message.content)

For step-by-step reasoning tasks, swap the model to deepseek/deepseek-reasoner — the response includes the reasoning trace separately from the final answer.

What DeepSeek costs in rupees

| Model | Input (₹/1M) | Output (₹/1M) | Best for | |-------|--------------|----------------|----------| | DeepSeek V3 | ₹12.18 | ₹48.72 | General chat, summarisation, code | | DeepSeek R1 | ₹52.92 | ₹211.00 | Step-by-step reasoning, math, logic |

DeepSeek V3 is one of the cheapest general-purpose models on the platform. A 500-input/300-output-token request costs roughly ₹0.02 — a ₹100 topup covers several thousand such calls. Check aicredits.in/calculator for the current figure against your workload, since rates track the live forex conversion.

DeepSeek V3 vs DeepSeek R1: which one do you need?

Use V3 for anything that doesn't require deliberate multi-step reasoning: chat, classification, summarisation, extraction, most code generation. It is fast and inexpensive.

Use R1 when the task benefits from the model working through intermediate steps before answering — math word problems, logical puzzles, multi-constraint planning. R1's reasoning tokens are billed at the same rate as its output tokens, so the cost difference versus V3 comes mostly from generating more tokens per response, not a punitive per-token rate.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the DeepSeek API available in India?

Yes, through AICredits. You get an INR-billed API key that routes to DeepSeek's models — no DeepSeek account or international card needed.

Can I use DeepSeek for free?

DeepSeek has no free API tier. On AICredits you can start with as little as ₹10, which covers a large number of DeepSeek V3 calls given its per-token price.

Does AICredits support DeepSeek R1's reasoning output?

Yes. The reasoning_content field in the response carries DeepSeek R1's chain-of-thought separately from the final answer, exactly as DeepSeek's own API returns it.

Can I switch between DeepSeek and other models with the same key?

Yes. Change the model field in your request — deepseek/deepseek-chat, openai/gpt-4o-mini, anthropic/claude-3-5-sonnet-20241022 — and the same API key and wallet cover all of them.

Get started

• Create a free account and top up ₹10 via UPI.
• Follow the quickstart guide to make your first DeepSeek call.
• See the DeepSeek API India overview for the live pricing table.
• Comparing budget models? Read GPT-4o Mini vs Claude Haiku vs Gemini Flash.