Chinese LLM API Pricing Guide: DeepSeek, Qwen, Kimi, MiniMax, GLM, and Doubao
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Chinese LLM PricingDeepSeekQwenKimiMiniMax
Chinese LLM API pricing should be compared by total cost per successful task, not just headline token prices.
Cost factors
Track:
- input tokens
- output tokens
- long-context prompts
- retries
- failed requests
- caching
- embeddings
- reranking
- gateway overhead
Provider-specific routing
Use cheaper or faster models for simple tasks. Reserve DeepSeek for hard reasoning, Kimi for long documents, Qwen for broad workflows, and MiniMax for conversational experiences when they perform best.
Cost dashboards
Measure cost by model, provider, feature, customer, and plan.
Final thoughts
Chinese LLM APIs can reduce cost, but only if teams route intelligently and measure real usage.