DeepSeek R1: Improved Performance, Higher Limits, and Transparent Pricing

On Jan 29, 2025, we introduced DeepSeek R1 in the model catalog in Azure AI Foundry, bringing one of the popular open-weight models to developers and enterprises looking for high-performance AI capabilities. At launch, we made DeepSeek R1 available without pricing as we gathered insights on real-world usage and performance. 

Now, we’re excited to share that the model has better latency and throughput along with competitive pricing, making it easier to integrate DeepSeek R1 into your applications while keeping costs predictable. 

Scaling to Meet Demand: Performance Optimizations in Action 

The high adoption brought a few challenges—early users experienced capacity constraints and performance fluctuations due to the surge in demand. Our product and engineering teams moved quickly, optimizing infrastructure and fine-tuning system performance. 

You can expect higher rate limits and improved response times starting from Feb 26, 2025. We continue rolling out further improvements to meet customers’ expectations. You can learn more about rate limits in the Azure AI model inference quotas and limits documentation page. 

Thanks to these improvements, we’ve significantly increased model efficiency, reduced latency, and improved throughput, ensuring a smoother experience for all users. 

DeepSeek R1 Pricing 

With these optimizations, DeepSeek R1 now delivers a good price-to-performance ratio. Whether you’re building chatbots, document summarization tools, or AI-driven search experiences, you get a high-quality model at a competitive cost, making it easier to scale AI workloads without breaking the bank. 

What’s Next? 

We’re committed to continuously improving DeepSeek-R1’s availability as we scale. If you haven’t tried it yet, now is the perfect time to explore how DeepSeek-R1 on Azure AI Foundry can power your AI applications with state-of-the-art capabilities. 

Learn how to get started with DeepSeek-R1 in Azure AI Foundry.