However, I just double checked, and OpenRouter's pricing page for Flash v4 with DeepSeek provider shows a cache hit rate of $0.0028, which is the same as on DeepSeek's official API pricing page ($0.0028), so they do seem to be the same price, (assuming DeepSeek is able to pin your specific OpenRouter requests to the same DeepSeek server). OpenRouter adds 5% to that cost, but still it might be cheaper than the other providers.
Also just found out OpenRouter has a new feature "Response Caching" where they can cache identical requests and return them immediately with no billing. The entire request must be identical, though, not just a prefix, and you have to enable this feature. I don't know who would need to send multiple identical requests, but it's better than nothing?
Interesting, it seems we have some providers offering dsv4-flash cheaper than ds themselves. For the full model it's the other way around, all 3rd party providers are 2x+ more expensive.
The cheaper ones are fp4 and fp8 whereas I assume DeepSeek provider is unquantized, so that probably accounts for it. DeepSeek also doesn't necessarily have the cheapest hardware, other providers could be using it as a loss leader, etc
I belive no sane provider, antropic and openai included, serve BF16.
Side note: I suspect Antropic was experimenting with changing quant level based on server load a few months back which is what caused that major quality drop we saw then.
However, I just double checked, and OpenRouter's pricing page for Flash v4 with DeepSeek provider shows a cache hit rate of $0.0028, which is the same as on DeepSeek's official API pricing page ($0.0028), so they do seem to be the same price, (assuming DeepSeek is able to pin your specific OpenRouter requests to the same DeepSeek server). OpenRouter adds 5% to that cost, but still it might be cheaper than the other providers.
Also just found out OpenRouter has a new feature "Response Caching" where they can cache identical requests and return them immediately with no billing. The entire request must be identical, though, not just a prefix, and you have to enable this feature. I don't know who would need to send multiple identical requests, but it's better than nothing?