I cut my AI API costs 99% by switching from Claude to DeepSeek

I cut my AI API costs 99% by switching from Claude to DeepSeek(twitter.com)

27 points by agentbc9000 81 days ago | 17 comments

sibidharan 81 days ago |

Which models are we talking about? Is there any degradation in quality, long context retrieval?

throwa356262 81 days ago | |

The tweet mentioned deepseek V4 flash.

From HF: 284B parameters (13B active), 1M context window.

This is indeed some kind of compressed context and the quality goes down as the context grows. IIRC the V4 paper had some numbers on this

https://huggingface.co/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4-Flash

sibidharan 80 days ago | | |

I heard claude models are of trillions of parameters !!! 284B, 1M... I wouldn't trust on long running autonomous agents! But for the API costs, this is justified if a better hardware with bigger model is used and will be a claude equivalent for comparable quality at long context retrieval on long running autonomous tasks. At least for me that is important.

wilbur_whateley 81 days ago | | |

V4 flash is much worse than any Claude model. If you're doing something simple, it can be a good way to save money though.

ninju 81 days ago | |

It depends on how mature the DeepSeek model became before OpenAI noticed that they were wholesale replicating their model and starting blocking access

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/openai-accuses-deepseek-...

rs999gti 81 days ago |

> to DeepSeek

But China?

agentbc9000 81 days ago | |

We use DeepSeek's API for summarisation only — no sensitive data, no user data, no fine-tuning. It's article text that's already public. The Supabase database is where the AgentDB data actually lives and that's fully in our control.

agentbc9000 81 days ago | |

Fair question. How much of the tech in your stack is made in China? Your iPhone, your laptop's rare earth minerals, the Amazon servers half your SaaS runs on... nearly everything.

dpoloncsak 81 days ago | | |

Hardware made in China, while can still have issues, is not nearly the problem that software running on servers in China is

bagol 81 days ago | |

What's wrong with China?

rs999gti 80 days ago | | |

Bad intellectual property protections and implied spyware.

akomtu 81 days ago | | |

China is fine. The Communist regime is the problem.