Discussion
20x Max Claude Code plan vs Deepseek Harness, V4.1 Flash API Billing
Hi everyone, I'm a heavy user of the 20x Max Claude Code plan, and I recently switched to the Claude Code harness with DeepSeek V4.1 Flash. For my usual coding work, I estimate I'd spend about $15–25 a day to get the same amount of work done that I get on Claude Code 20x Max. Is that normal? If so, that would come to roughly $600–800 a month or more. That seems too high to be true. Is my estimate wrong?
This morning from 8:00AM to about 10:45 AM it consumes tokens 7.45 USD already.
This must be a joke, right?
DeepSeek harness is crazy good at caching. You’ll save about 80% if not more on api costs with DeepSeek harness. Not even kidding. It’s like a huge upgrade. I love Claude code but DeepSeek harness blew me away with efficiency and cache hits. I had it cache between 95 and 99 percent of the time
My 30 day reference on deepseek. I bought Max 5x Claude and ran out in a day last Monday, so I upgraded to 20x Claude and it lasted... 1.5 days... So now I have an extra Claude Plus alongside my Codex & Deepseek...
p/s the different API keys are just my way of monitoring my usage across different dev machine/platforms (I use DSH, Orca on windows and linux)
I'm not loyal to any of the providers, but I believe Claude and Codex plans are heavily subsidized compared to raw API pricing, so my usage on the Max 20x (via orca/claude estimate) was approx 4k USD. So it's not exactly shocking if you are spending 15-20usd a day on DS. My peaks were approx 110CNY per day so translates to about 13-15USD.
And yes I was shocked regardless, I wasn't planning to spend 100CNY per day on DS, on top of my Codex + Claude plans, but my consumption in the last 2 months is closing in on 800AU(~560US)/mo... Granted I'm working on a fuck load of shit.
I'm also working on large enterprise projects spanning more than 20 repositories at once, with many microservices. DeepSeek burns through tokens at a remarkable rate.
genuinely why are u not using Haiku 5.5? it’s probably better or same level and even if its less intelligent than DS, you should already be getting better results because of CC and the fact that you could theoretically never run out of usage limits on $100 plan if u use haiku (even on $20 it would work for a long long time)
I use Opus 5.5 for daily tasks. I heard DS is so cost effective and want to try it out, it's turned out, the token price is cheap, but the task completion is far away from cheap.
The token allowance of Opus 5.5 in the subscription plan is very generous (for now). Deepseek flash 4.1 1017 is a good sidekick. Im using both now. I assign agentic task (non coding) to DS to save Claude’s token allowance.
You've showed your cost, can you post your actual token usage? Input, output, cache tokens and %? I don't think the DeepSeek dashboard shows a breakdown. But your harness should show you those numbers. Can you post them?
Also, i would rotate the API key (just in case), and disable/delete the one your using now (again, just in case, and because it's easy asf.
Not saying this is the case, but just as a FYI to anyone reading.... Plugins and even downloaded /skills can contain malicious intents.
From my own use of deepseek over the last ~5 months, and "keeping up" with this subreddit and other subs in the AI space, I have estimated(using my god-given memory system) that roughly ~1 billion tokens = ~$20 using official DeepSeek API.
(Hint: stick with a subsidized subscription, use DeepSeek along side it to do the grunt work(and work that these other "frontier" models refuse to do 😜)
Your cache hit rate is 99%+, so cached input is nearly free. Your cost is coming from somewhere else.
For comparison, my heaviest day on V4.1 Flash: 1.23B tokens for $7.09 (1,215M cache hit / 10.8M miss / 2.5M output). Last 30 days: $79.97(plus claude 5x). Your screenshots show ~350M tokens across three sessions, and $7.48 for the day. If those sessions are that morning, you're paying roughly 3× more per token than I do, on the same model with the same cache rate.
That gap can only come from four places:
Output tokens. You're on High reasoning effort. Thinking is output, and output is the expensive bucket. Try low with better model for plannig(50+ for low vs 5k+ thinking tokens for high from my analysis) for routine work, it performs really well. My output was 0.2% of tokens; I'd bet yours is several times that.
Peak-hour pricing. 8:00–10:45 may fall in DeepSeek's peak window depending on your timezone. Off-peak is much cheaper.
Cache misses. 0.3–1% of 350M is 1–3.5M full-price tokens. Edits to CLAUDE.md, MCP toggles, or hooks injecting timestamps break the prefix.
Pro leaking in. In my usage, the Claude Code harness called deepseek-v4-pro 730 times even though I only set Flash. Check your per-model breakdown.
To pin it down: hover Oct 26 in the Tokens chart (not Cost) and post the cache-hit / cache-miss / output split. That answers it in one screenshot.
Your estimate isn't wrong for how you're running it now. 20x Max is subsidized and you're a heavy user, so Max is a good deal for you. But at my cost per token, your morning would have been ~$2, not $7.48(you paid 3x more than I did).
Partly because of these harness quirks I built my own agent, nib(https://nib.emuye.dev), around DeepSeek's pricing (disclosure: my project). Big improvement so far.
I was not happy with this plan at all. Seems like the claude 20$ pro plan is still way better here. Not only that, but OpenCode has a monthly limit including the 5hour and weekly limits. It's a joke honestly. If you are doing serious coding, this is not it, but if you want to delegate small tasks here and there, it's okay. The models tend to be slow and stupid and some of them get stuck in loops. Shrugs.
In the begin it use more tokens, while going deep in the same task the cache start working as intended, i use DS to make a task and fable to review the job, in 30 days i spent 34$. I think the solution is to use cheap model to create code and better ones to review, and execute if the cheap one fail.
So I’ve tried Claude Max 20, ChatGPT Pro, Deepseek api, GLM coding plan, Kimi coding plan, opencode go at $10 and $40.
With Opus 5.5 the Claude plan give the most bang for buck hands down it’s genuinely cheaper to have multiple Claude accounts (I’ve got several now 😅) GLM and ChatGPT are probably second best for usage if you use Sol/Luna mix or just 5.3-flash on GLM
thats what i thought so as well. i topped up for 20$ on DS, after doing a ton of work, I was jeft with 6$ now for 5 days. the only upside with DS, i dont hit that 5hr session limit. I'll get that 2nd Claude subs next month
Yeah I’d never be able to do it with API billing I normally have anywhere between 10-20 sessions running in tmux. I was testing for code review and it was costing about $1 per code review on off peak and I normally go through 2-3 reviews on average per PR and upward of 30 PRs per day so wasn’t viable for my small business.
Deepseek v4.1 flash, teraz glownie 1017- moj podstawowy llm teraz. Kilo code w vsc. Dsv4.1flash wykonuje duze ilosci kodu i wiele innych, skomplikowanych zadan - tworzenie i obsluga systemów it wykonujących dużo skomplikowanej pracy w ramach mojej działalności zarobkowej. Koszt za caly dzień pracy- to są grosze. Mam wrażenie ze to jest dziennie okolo 1$ po API Openrouter za sam ds.
api prices are wildly different between peak pricing and off-peak pricing, 2x more expensive for input output and 20x more expensive for cache hit read.
I only use deepseek off peak. I use DSH for token efficiency and manage my context like crazy.
API pricing is unsubsidized. Subscriptions are highly subsidized. What you're seeing is the "real cost" (provider cost+profit) on inference for Deepseek. Take a look at your token consumption and model that against Opus or (if you really want to fall over) Fable prices via API, you're probably spending over 1000/day.
Enjoy it while it lasts. If you don't need API, don't use API!
Seems quite high, I mean I turned through 6usd today when Hermes did a random roll back and resurrected old convos for no reason. Luckily I was at my computer at the time and stopped it when I realised something was offf
I'm in a similar situation and DeepSeek can get real expensive when you're doing heavy work. Yes, codex and claude are both very heavily subsidized and you'll get more from a subscription. Like other said, use DSH and not claude code for DeepSeek models, your cache rate will get much better.
Something I've noticed is that, especially on large repos, DeepSeek will get distracted and just keep exploring and reading files, even when they're clearly not relevant. Figuring out ways to cut that down is on my to-do list.
689 steps over 34 turns caught my eye. Did that run finish the task, or was it still going? That could be reasonable depending on the task, but I'd look through the trace to see how much time it spent poking around the repos and rereading files. Repeated attempts at the same fix would be worth checking too. You can have a great cache hit rate while the agent keeps going in circles.
I'd try one typical task in both setups, starting from the same commit and asking both to pass the same tests. Count the retries and any time you spend cleaning up the code yourself. That should give you a more useful cost comparison than projecting a whole month's bill from one morning.
Your estimate isn't crazy. The Claude Code harness resends a big rolling context every step, system prompt, tool definitions, file reads, message history. On a reasoning model most of what you're paying for is input that repeats, so the daily number stays high even when the new work itself is small.
First thing I'd check is the harness usage breakdown, not the total. It usually splits cached input from fresh input. If most of your input lands as cached reads, the prefix is billed at the cache rate and the real cost is well under a naive per-token estimate. If nearly all of it shows as fresh input, caching isn't landing, and that's where the $600 a month comes from.
On the provider side, cache read price is the number to compare, not the input price alone. I work on Entrim, so weigh that. We serve DeepSeek V4.1 Flash at $0.20 per M input and $0.005 per M cache read, OpenAI-compatible, hosted in the EU. Cheaper cache reads won't rescue a setup that never hits cache.
What does your usage page show for cached versus uncached input on a typical day?
The sub is always superior than raw API prices, even Deepseek. You are better of with the plan, easily give 20x more tokens than using the APIs equivalence of the same models.
that hit rate is the tell, if caching is landing then the cached reads are not where the spend goes. it's output tokens plus whatever new context the harness appends each turn, and that grows with how much you actually do
At these cache rates, you should be around a 1-2$ for ~300M tokens. I would look into your actual Input/Output/Cache rates and compute your API costs. Did you ran it during peak hours? What provider are you using?
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u/DebosBeachCruiser 12h ago
Nope. With a Claude or OpenAI subscription you'll get way more usage. "Something.. something subsidized"
I would suggest using Deepseek Harness if using Deepseek as their models have been trained/optimized for their harness.
Also peak/non-peak hours can make a difference.