---
title: 'DeepSeek Makes Weekends Cheap: Off-Peak Rates All Day on Saturdays and Sundays'
url: 'https://docs.agenteum.top/blog/2026-08-21-deepseek-weekend-off-peak-pricing'
markdown: 'https://docs.agenteum.top/blog/2026-08-21-deepseek-weekend-off-peak-pricing.md'
date: '2026-08-21'
description: 'DeepSeek makes weekends off-peak: from August 23, 2026, Saturday and Sunday get half-price rates all day. Save on agent workloads by scheduling heavy token work on weekends.'
taxonomy:
  category:
    - news
  tag:
    - deepseek
    - ai
    - pricing
    - billing
    - cost
  archives_month:
    - aug_2026
  archives_year:
    - '2026'
---

# DeepSeek Makes Weekends Cheap: Off-Peak Rates All Day on Saturdays and Sundays

DeepSeek just made a move that quietly saves everyone money: **starting Sunday, August 23, 2026, off-peak rates apply all day on weekends**.

That means **Saturdays and Sundays are now half-price** — all day, every day. Here's the full picture.

## What changed

Effective **00:00 Beijing Time, August 23, 2026**, DeepSeek adjusted its peak/off-peak billing rules. The new rule is simple:

> **Weekends (Saturday and Sunday, Beijing Time) = off-peak rates all day.**

Previously, peak hours were only defined per day (01:00–04:00 and 06:00–10:00 UTC), so weekend work could still land in a peak window. Now the entire weekend is discounted.

## What the rates look like

DeepSeek's off-peak prices are **exactly half** of peak. For `deepseek-v4-flash-vision-exp` (and flash):

|  | Peak | Off-peak |
|---|---|---|
| **Input (cache miss)** | $0.44 / M | **$0.22 / M** |
| **Input (cache hit)** | $0.014 / M | **$0.007 / M** |
| **Output** | $1.32 / M | **$0.66 / M** |

So on a weekend, you're paying **half** for every token. That's a real cut for anyone running agent workloads.

## Why this matters

Agents burn tokens around the clock — scheduled jobs, background tasks, long conversation loops. The distinction between peak and off-peak used to matter mostly for weekday batch runs. Now the whole weekend is the cheap window.

For anyone running an AI agent, this changes the math:

- **Batch jobs, reports, and heavy generation** — run them on the weekend, pay half.
- **Weekday evenings** (after 10:00 UTC) were already off-peak; weekends are now the same everywhere.

## The practical takeaway

This is a deliberate nudge toward **weekend computing** — schedule your token-heavy work for Saturday/Sunday and DeepSeek cuts your bill in half. For a 1M-token weekend batch that's the difference between $0.44 and $0.22 per million input tokens.

Worth recalibrating your cron jobs around it.

*Source: [DeepSeek Models & Pricing](https://api-docs.deepseek.com/quick_start/pricing/), August 2026.*

---

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- Parent: [Blog](https://docs.agenteum.top/blog.md)
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