What DeepSeek V4 Pro's free tier actually is, how request-based (not token-based) billing works, what one request means inside an agent loop, and what 200 covers.
"200 requests a day" sounds small until you realize it's counted by request, not token — and that one difference changes how far the free tier actually goes for agent work.
What is DeepSeek V4 Pro?
DeepSeek V4 Pro is DeepSeek's flagship reasoning model — up to 1M tokens of context, multiple reasoning-effort levels, aimed at hard multi-file work and long agent loops. Its fast sibling, DeepSeek V4 Flash, handles cheap high-frequency tasks.
TeamoRouter exposes both, and each has a free tier: deepseek-v4-pro-free and deepseek-v4-flash-free, 200 requests per account per day, reset daily, no payment info required.
Requests vs tokens — the critical distinction
Most APIs bill by token (input + output). The free tier bills by request:
| Billing unit | How it's counted | Trait |
|---|---|---|
| Token | Input + output tokens | Longer output = more expensive |
| Request | One full turn | Independent of output length |
Here's the payoff: a call that reads 100K tokens of context and outputs a 5,000-token diff counts as 1 request — the same as a one-word "hello." For agent work, where a single turn packs in a huge context and produces a long output, that's dramatically more generous than a token budget.
What one "request" means inside an agent
In plain chat, one request = one Q&A. Inside an agent, the model calls tools, and every tool round-trip is its own request:
Model: "read src/reporting.py" ← request 1
Tool: returns file contents
Model: "edit line 45, dedupe branches" ← request 2
Tool: write done
Model: "run tests" ← request 3
So 200 requests really means 200 rounds of model decision-making — not 200 tokens.
What 200 actually covers
- Read a file + explain a function → 1–3
- Single-file edit → 3–5 (a dozen+ per day)
- Multi-file refactor → 10–15
- Long agent loop (build + self-test + fix) → 20–40
Bottom line: single-file daily edits are fully covered; heavy agent loops cover 3–5 hard tasks. Past that, paid is cheap.
When it runs out
Drop -free from the model ID — that's the entire migration:
deepseek-v4-pro-free → deepseek-v4-pro ($1.74 / $3.48 per 1M)
deepseek-v4-flash-free → deepseek-v4-flash ($0.14 / $0.28)
Paid models have no account-level limit, and even heavy use stays under a few dollars a day.
The takeaway: request-based billing rewards giving the model full context and asking for complete results — not splitting work into many tiny calls.
Take 200 free requests a day → TeamoRouter
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