alt Hacker NewsCan you tell me more about deepseek?
I paid $2 for deepseek api, put the key in void editor and made a crypto tool in html.
It turned out to be around 67kb. I used sample files in CSV that were a few hundred lines.
It spent around $1.8 in the hour or two or light coding and follow up bugs.
Is it really really this much?
I can't imagine spending a month using it for a day job, it would cost more than the salary so what gives?
I understand the local ai and all that but do cloud providers cost this much?
Earlier I thought "billion tokens" but now not sure
Replies
My 2 weeks with DeepSeek V4:
Pro is ~50% more expensive than Flash.
Both need babysitting.
Plan, split in small tasks, give it docs, types, tests, linter, best practice examples, etc.
Always start a new session when starting a task.
Do regular manual sanity checks, and tell it to find issues in the codebase.
I pay like $1,50 per day for Pro.
A local AI is not about cost. In fact you will likely pay more for it than with most providers. Just look up the advantages of having access to a technology like this that can be self hosted
so Deepseek 4 Pro cannot go on own sessions for too long.
I delegate small-medium tasks: refactors, summaries, research, writing tests + have very good codebase already + extensive history / architecture / docs / linters. so it picks up and does decent small-medium scope work. it is fast, accurate, cheap. does exactly what I want directly and does not waste time nor tokens.
definitely not "implement me complex greenfield project".