The 5M Token Illusion: How R1 Drains DeepSeek's Free Credits

DeepSeek's 5M free API tokens appear generous but are worth only ~$3.40 in actual usage—far less than a month of meaningful prototyping. The real cost trap emerges when developers default to R1, the expensive reasoning model, for routine tasks: it burns 3-6.7x more tokens than V4. Compounded by small oversights like missing max_tokens limits, what seemed like abundant credit evaporates in days.