DeepSeek will eliminate the weekend price gap for API calls from 00:00 Beijing time on Aug. 23, 2026, charging users the off-peak rate throughout Saturdays and Sundays. Weekday usage will retain peak and off-peak pricing, with peak periods from 9 a.m. to noon and 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. Beijing time; peak rates are twice off-peak prices. The change has prompted a startup with about a dozen employees to schedule programmers around cheaper AI usage periods, requiring one weekday and one weekend day off each week and moving lunch breaks to after 2 p.m., according to a V2EX post. The company uses coding services from DeepSeek, Zhipu, MiniMax, GLM and Volcano Engine. DeepSeek has also deployed its V4 Pro production model under the unchanged model name, adding stronger agent capabilities and Responses API and Codex integration. The rollout and broader price increases reflect a shift among Chinese large-model companies from low-price market-share strategies toward value-based pricing, as agent adoption drives higher token consumption and increases demand for computing infrastructure.