Intel / post

DeepSeek Search benchmarked: cheapest per search, mid-pack on quality

Source: x.com
Date: Published Oct 22, 2026

Why it matters

If your agent calls a search API, DeepSeek Search costs $0.75 per 1k searches and scores 69 on the index, but returns large results that raise model cost, and it rejects queries over 128 characters.

Key takeaways · AI-distilled

DeepSeek Search costs $0.75 per 1,000 successful searches, the lowest per-search price of any paid Search API Artificial Analysis benchmarks, and DeepSeek does not bill empty results.
Paired with GPT-5.6 Luna, it scores 69 on the Artificial Analysis Search Index, a 36-point lift over the same model without search, but ranks 25th of 27 on BrowseComp, where answers need multi-hop reasoning across several searches.
Each search returns about 7,000 , which raises model cost to about $0.023 per task, second highest on the board, though the total of about $0.032 per task still ranks 5th cheapest of 27.
DeepSeek rejects queries over 128 characters. In testing, 6% of the 's searches hit that limit, and the model's first shorter rewrite succeeded for 87% of them.

Terms in this piece · Glossary

AI agent — An AI system that doesn't just answer once but works toward a goal in a loop — taking actions, reading the results, and deciding what to do next.
token — The chunk of text a model reads and writes in — roughly three-quarters of a word — and the unit AI usage is billed in.

Read the source x.com