Research / How Chinese AI Model Pricing Changed: Flash Tiers

How Chinese AI Model Pricing Changed: Flash Tiers

2026-09-22 · updated 2026-09-22

Research question: What has actually changed in Chinese AI model API pricing during 2026, and what does the current price structure across six providers reveal about the economics of the market?

How Chinese AI Model Pricing Changed: Flash Tiers — Image: AI-generated illustration (Seedream)

Related entities

deepseek-v4-1-flash
deepseek-v4-pro
qwen3.8-max
qwen3.8-flash
doubao-seed-2-1-pro
kimi-k3
minimax-m3
glm-5.3
glm-5.3-flash

Sources

[Official] DeepSeek API docs — Models & Pricing [Official] DeepSeek API Change Log [Official] Alibaba Cloud Model Studio — model pricing [Official] Volcengine Ark — model pricing [Official] MiniMax API platform — pay-as-you-go pricing [Official] Kimi API — pricing [Official] Z.ai pricing [Official] DeepSeek — Introducing DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash · 2026-09-10