DeepSeek to start charging for AI web search

Chinese AI company DeepSeek is introducing charges for two features that let programs search the web and retrieve content from it. They are called Search and Fetch, and they are powered by DeepSeek's own search engine.

For now, calls to the features are free when used as server-side tools through DeepSeek Harness, Claude Code and Codex with the DeepSeek API. Server-side means that DeepSeek's own computers perform the task, not the user's.

What will it cost?

According to DeepSeek's pricing page, billing starts on October 31, 2026, at 16:00 UTC. That corresponds to 00:00 China time on November 1, 2026.

According to EconoTimes, the price will be 5 yuan, roughly $0.75, per 1,000 successful requests. The dollar amount is a conversion. Search and Fetch are billed separately.

Billing is based on the number of successful calls, not on tokens (the small units of text AI models work in) or the number of results returned. According to EconoTimes, failed or timed-out calls and searches with no results are free.

What do the two features do?

Search returns ranked web results for a single query. Fetch retrieves a single page and converts it to Markdown, a simple text format that is easy for AI to read.

According to Sandbase blog, Fetch rejects non-public addresses, binary data and unsupported formats.

Each endpoint, meaning each of the two entry points to the service, has a separate limit of five calls per second per account, according to EconoTimes.

Unclear for other users

It is unclear what applies to pure REST use outside the three tools mentioned. REST is a common way for programs to communicate with each other. The pricing page does not give October 31 as the date for that use, but instead November 1 at 00:00 China time.

For regular users of the AI tools, this means that something that has so far been free to let the AI look up on the web may become a small expense for those who use it heavily.