Nairobi, October 21, 2026. Fikra API, the Nairobi-based OpenAI-compatible inference API, today confirmed that its pinned DeepSeek routes are the cheapest DeepSeek deployments available anywhere, and cheaper than the official DeepSeek API.
The company publishes its DeepSeek line at $0.045 per 1M input tokens and $0.09 per 1M output tokens on the current flagship build (deepseek-v4.1-flash), with a 1,048,576-token context and automatic cached-input billing at $0.025 per 1M tokens. DeepSeek's own official API lists materially higher rates, and the cheapest floors observed on major agent gateways ($0.036 to $0.10 per 1M input, $0.14 to $0.60 per 1M output on these builds) sit well above Fikra's list.
Published rates are the only rates. Every price on the company's pricing page, documentation, DeepSeek page and cost calculator is served from the same model registry that answers GET /v1/models on its public API. An integrator or an automated agent can verify any quoted rate in a single request, and rates have not changed with the October pricing announcement.
Free-tier era closed. Fikra previously ran the DeepSeek line as a free flagship; that has retired and fikra-free-deepseek now bills at DeepSeek-line rates ($0.045 in / $0.09 out / $0.025 cached per 1M, the same numbers as deepseek-v4.1-flash). New accounts still start with a $1 signup credit.
Agents can price and pay without a human. All models in the line are callable per-call with x402 (USDC on Base) via POST /v1/agent/chat/completions, with POST /v1/agent/quote returning a pre-flight price for any planned call. Machine-readable pricing is published at fikraapi.co.ke/pricing.md and rendered in the agent surface at fikraapi.co.ke/llms.txt.
Quote. "DeepSeek is the price-to-quality frontier for open-weight inference, and we serve it at the lowest published rate in the world. The rate you verify against the registry is the rate you get billed." James Miano, founder, Fikra API.
Comparison tables and verification links: fikraapi.co.ke/deepseek