DeepSeek gives new accounts 5 million free tokens (about $8 in DeepSeek free credits) for API usage, valid for 30 days. It’s not a huge dollar amount, but the pricing is so low that you can get meaningful testing done on real traffic.
Solo devs wiring up an OpenAI-style /chat/completions endpoint, startup teams trying to keep inference costs near zero, researchers prototyping prompts before they commit to a vendor. This program fits that zone.
This guide breaks down eligibility, the exact signup flow, what the credits cover, and the gotchas that decide whether your 5M tokens feel like a weekend demo or a month of iteration.
Program at a Glance
| Provider | DeepSeek |
| Credit Amount | 5M tokens (about $8.40 value) |
| Duration | 30 days from registration |
| Eligibility | New users registering on the DeepSeek API platform. |
| Credit Card Required? | No, no payment method needed. |
| Difficulty | Easy. Instant credit after signup. |
| Best For | API prototyping, cheap inference tests, OpenAI SDK migration. |
| Official Page | DeepSeek Program Page |
What You Actually Get
The offer is straightforward: once you register on the DeepSeek API platform, your account is credited with 5 million free tokens that you can spend on the DeepSeek API. The API currently exposes two endpoints, both powered by DeepSeek-V3.2: deepseek-chat (fast, non-thinking) and deepseek-reasoner (thinking mode for harder problems). You call it through an OpenAI-compatible interface, which means most existing OpenAI SDK code can be adapted by changing the base URL and model name. Both models support JSON output, tool/function calling, and chat prefix completion, and deepseek-chat also supports FIM (Fill-in-the-Middle) for code insertion.
In real terms, $8-ish doesn’t sound like much until you remember DeepSeek’s token pricing is extremely low. You can do a lot of “is this viable?” work: basic chat features, coding helpers, structured JSON extraction with tool calls, or prompt experiments with long context (128K). If you design prompts to benefit from DeepSeek’s caching (shared system prompts and prefixes), the same credit balance can stretch noticeably further for repeated workloads.
Who Qualifies (and Who Doesn’t)
Eligibility is basically “be new.” DeepSeek grants one free token allocation per account after you register on the API platform, and that’s it. The good news is there’s no credit card step and no payment method required during signup.
- You need to register as a new user on platform.deepseek.com to receive the token grant.
- Signing up works with an email address or via GitHub, which is usually faster.
- Email verification is required, so use an inbox you can access immediately.
- No credit card or payment method is required at any step.
If you already claimed the free token grant on another DeepSeek account, don’t expect a second allocation. DeepSeek also sometimes pauses new registrations during viral surges, so “eligible” does not always mean “available this minute.”
How to Sign Up
Registration usually takes about 5 minutes if you can verify your email quickly.
- Go to platform.deepseek.com.
- Click “Sign Up”, then register with an email address or via GitHub for quicker access.
- Fill out the registration form (name, email, password) and submit it.
- Verify your email by clicking the confirmation link sent to your inbox (it usually arrives within a minute).
- Log into the dashboard and navigate to the “API Keys” section.
- Click “Generate API Key”, then copy and save it immediately because you will not be able to view it again.
- Confirm your dashboard balance shows the automatic credit of 5 million free tokens.
After signup, the tokens should show up automatically in your dashboard balance. One important timing detail: the 30-day clock starts at registration, not your first API call.
What the Credits Cover
Your free tokens apply to DeepSeek’s API usage, and the API is designed to be OpenAI-compatible (base URL, bearer token auth, and POST /chat/completions). On the model side, you’re choosing between two DeepSeek-V3.2-powered endpoints: a fast general model and a reasoning model with much larger max output.
| Service / Feature | What It Does | Included? |
|---|---|---|
| deepseek-chat (V3.2) | Fast chat for coding, content, general assistants. | ✓ |
| deepseek-reasoner (V3.2) | Thinking mode for math, logic, code analysis. | ✓ |
| Tool/function calling + JSON output | Structured outputs and calling tools via chat API. | ✓ |
| Prompt caching (cache hit pricing) | Cheaper repeated-prefix requests when caching applies. | ✓ |
Notable exclusion: the free, unlimited web chat at chat.deepseek.com is separate from API credits. It’s great for human use, but it does not replace API access if you need programmatic calls.
Limitations to Know About
Every “free” program has catches. DeepSeek’s are mostly about timing, fairness, and platform load rather than hidden billing traps, which is honestly refreshing.
- The 5 million token grant expires after 30 days, and the timer starts when you register.
- You only get one free token grant per account, so repeated “new user” attempts are a dead end.
- During extreme demand, DeepSeek may temporarily pause new registrations or top-ups for a few hours to a day.
- There are no fixed RPM/TPM rate limits, but dynamic throttling can queue requests under high load, and any request that takes more than 30 minutes will have its connection closed.
What happens when credits run out is simple: there’s no auto-billing. When your free credits are used up or expire, API calls stop working until you top up, and the granted balance is consumed first before any topped-up balance.
Have Unused DeepSeek Credits?
Credit programs are famous for breakage. Teams sign up, run a pilot, and then the remaining balance just sits there until it expires. If you end up with unused DeepSeek credits you can’t realistically burn down, AI Credit Mart lets you list them so they don’t go to waste, and buyers get a real discount.
Need More DeepSeek Credits?
Once the free grant is gone, you can keep going with pay-as-you-go pricing, but you do not have to pay full price if you’re scaling faster than expected. AI Credit Mart has discounted DeepSeek credits from organizations with surplus allocations. Discounts typically land around 30–70% below retail, which is a nice way to keep inference costs predictable.
Tips for Getting the Most Out of Your Credits
- Design prompts to be cache-friendly by keeping system prompts and few-shot examples at the very start of your messages.
- Watch your output tokens, because output is priced higher than cached input and can burn the free grant faster.
- Generate and store your API key safely the first time, since DeepSeek will not show it again after creation.
- If you don’t need programmatic access, use chat.deepseek.com for unlimited free chatting and save the API tokens for product work.
- Think about data jurisdiction: DeepSeek is based in Hangzhou, and data may be processed on servers in China, so avoid sensitive workloads if that’s a concern.
Frequently Asked Questions
They’re worth about $8.40 in API usage, which you can spend on deepseek-chat or deepseek-reasoner. Because DeepSeek pricing is very low, that can cover a surprising amount of prototyping, especially if your prompts benefit from cache-hit pricing and you keep output tokens under control.
No.
They last 30 days, starting at registration (not your first API call).
Yes. If you have DeepSeek credits you won’t use before they expire, you can list them on AI Credit Mart and sell them at up to 70% of face value. Companies regularly list surplus credits from startup programs and enterprise agreements.
AI Credit Mart has discounted DeepSeek credits available from companies with surplus allocations. Prices are typically 30-70% below retail.
There’s no auto-billing; once the free credits expire (or you use them up), API calls stop working until you top up.
The API currently serves two endpoints powered by DeepSeek-V3.2: deepseek-chat and deepseek-reasoner, and the free tokens apply to API usage.
Yes, mostly. DeepSeek is designed as a drop-in replacement for OpenAI’s API: you set the base URL to https://api.deepseek.com (or /v1 for full compatibility), authenticate with a Bearer API key, and call POST /chat/completions. If you already use the official OpenAI Python or Node.js SDKs, the main changes are the base URL and the model name. That also means many existing wrappers work without major rewrites, which is handy when you’re just trying to evaluate cost and response quality quickly.
5 million free tokens is a clean, no-credit-card way to test DeepSeek’s OpenAI-compatible API with real endpoints and real limits. Sign up, run your evaluation, and if you end up on either side of the “too many credits / not enough credits” line, AI Credit Mart gives you a practical next step.
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