Speed
Output tokens / second
DeepSeek-V3 overview
DeepSeek-V3 specs
- Model ID
deepseek/deepseek-chat-v3-0324- Developer
- DeepSeek
- Context window
- 128,000 tokens
- Max output
- 124,000 tokens
- Input
- Text
- Output
- Text
- API
- OpenAI-compatible, base URL
https://api.aimlapi.com/v1
What Exactly Is DeepSeek-V3 API?
If you've been following AI developments, you know how rare it is for an open-source model to genuinely surprise the field. DeepSeek-V3 did exactly that when it dropped in late December 2024.
A New Kind of Efficiency
DeepSeek-V3 uses a Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) architecture, meaning only 37 billion of its 671 billion parameters are active during any given forward pass. You get the knowledge of a massive model at the compute cost of a much smaller one.
Truly Open Source
Unlike many "open" models that only release weights with restrictive licenses, DeepSeek-V3 is available on Hugging Face with model checkpoints, technical reports, and enough documentation to reproduce key training decisions. It invites scrutiny rather than avoiding it.
Frontier-Level Capabilities
Independent evaluations consistently place DeepSeek-V3 alongside GPT-4o and Claude 3.5 Sonnet on coding and math benchmarks, domains where the gap between open and closed models has historically been most stark.
Built on Three Pillars of Innovation
The architectural choices behind DeepSeek-V3 weren't accidental. Each component was selected, validated in prior work, and refined to address a specific bottleneck in large-scale LLM development.
Multi-Head Latent Attention (MLA)
Standard multi-head attention stores a separate key-value cache for every token in every layer, which creates a substantial memory bottleneck at inference time. MLA solves this by compressing the KV cache into a lower-dimensional latent space.
In practice, this means DeepSeek-V3 can maintain a 128K token context window without the memory requirements that would make deployment impractical. The compression is learned during training, so the model figures out which information is worth retaining.
Use cases
- Long-form Document Tasks: Legal, academic, and research papers
- Complex Reasoning & Analytics: Code generation, math problems
- Enterprise Retrieval Pipelines: RAG systems requiring deep context support
- Conversational AI: Chatbots with extended awareness and coherence
- Multilingual Assistants: High performance in multiple languages
Capabilities
- File input
- Streaming
- Structured outputs
- Function calling
DeepSeek-V3 benchmarks by 
Artificial Analysis
See how DeepSeek-V3 compares in generation speed and latency. Data retrieved Nov 3, 2026.
Benchmark results
Compare 7 models available on AI/ML API across 5 independent benchmarks.
Humanity's Last Exam
Expert-written questions across academic subjects.
GPQA Diamond
Graduate-level science questions written to resist web search.
Terminal-Bench 4.0
Agentic tasks completed in a command-line environment.
AA-LCR
Reasoning across long documents of about 100k tokens.
SciCode
Python coding tasks drawn from scientific research.
DeepSeek-V3 API pricing
| Usage | Price | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| Input | $0.3068 | 1M tokens |
| Output | $1.21 | 1M tokens |
| Cached input | $0.1481 | 1M tokens |
Prices from the AI/ML API price list, checked on Nov 4, 2026.
DeepSeek-V3 vs other models: token prices
AI/ML API input and output rates for 5 models, per million tokens.
| Model | Input | Output |
|---|---|---|
 DeepSeek-V3 | $0.3068 | $1.21 |
| DeepSeek Chat (V4.1 Flash) | $0.3 | $1.2 |
| DeepSeek V4.1 Flash | $0.3 | $1.2 |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash Vision Exp | $0.44 | $1.32 |
| DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 | $0.39 | $1.56 |
How to use the DeepSeek-V3 API
View docs
Build with your agent
Give your agent the model details, code and documentation.
Paste it into your coding agent to build the integration.
1Get your API key
Create API keyexport AIMLAPI_KEY="8f2b4c7d9a1e6b3f…"2Make your first request
curl 'https://api.aimlapi.com/v1/chat/completions' \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $AIMLAPI_KEY" \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-d '{
"model": "deepseek/deepseek-chat-v3-0324",
"messages": [
{
"role": "user",
"content": "Write a haiku about the ocean."
}
]
}'import os
import requests
headers = {
"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['AIMLAPI_KEY']}",
"Content-Type": "application/json",
}
payload = {
"model": "deepseek/deepseek-chat-v3-0324",
"messages": [
{
"role": "user",
"content": "Write a haiku about the ocean."
}
]
}
response = requests.post("https://api.aimlapi.com/v1/chat/completions", headers=headers, json=payload, timeout=120)
response.raise_for_status()
print(response.json())const response = await fetch("https://api.aimlapi.com/v1/chat/completions", {
method: "POST",
headers: {
Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.AIMLAPI_KEY}`,
"Content-Type": "application/json",
},
body: JSON.stringify({
"model": "deepseek/deepseek-chat-v3-0324",
"messages": [
{
"role": "user",
"content": "Write a haiku about the ocean."
}
]
}),
});
if (!response.ok) throw new Error(`HTTP ${response.status}`);
console.log(await response.json());Models similar to DeepSeek-V3
Related articles
DeepSeek-V3 FAQ
What is the context window of DeepSeek-V3?
DeepSeek-V3 has a 128,000 tokens context window and can return up to 124,000 tokens.
What inputs and outputs does DeepSeek-V3 support?
DeepSeek-V3 takes text as input and returns text.
What is the model ID for DeepSeek-V3?
Use deepseek/deepseek-chat-v3-0324 as the model id. Requests go to https://api.aimlapi.com/v1/chat/completions.
When was DeepSeek-V3 released?
DeepSeek-V3 became available on August 28, 2025.
How much does DeepSeek-V3 cost?
DeepSeek-V3 costs $0.3068 input and $1.21 output per 1M tokens on AI/ML API, billed as you go with no subscription.
Does DeepSeek-V3 support streaming?
Yes, DeepSeek-V3 can stream responses as they are generated.
Who created DeepSeek-V3?
DeepSeek-V3 was built by DeepSeek.
Is DeepSeek-V3 a reasoning-focused model?
DeepSeek-V3 is classified as a chat model, not a dedicated reasoning model.
Does DeepSeek-V3 support function calling and tool use?
Yes, it supports function calling, parallel tool calls, and structured outputs.