DeepSeek API vs GroqCloud

DeepSeek API

Accepts both OpenAI and Anthropic request formats. 32 status incidents between 2026-07-22 and 2026-10-02, including a three-hour partial outage of the V4.1 Flash API on 2026-09-14.

GroqCloud

Free plan with no card, at 30 requests a minute and 1,000 a day on gpt-oss. Four model shutdown dates between 2026-07-17 and 2026-09-21, with no stated minimum notice.

DeepSeek API

1. Send only data you'd be happy to publish
2. Schedule bulk work off-peak for half price. Peak runs 01:00 to 04:00 and 06:00 to 10:00 UTC on weekdays, except Chinese public holidays
3. Set max_tokens yourself. It defaults to 8K without thinking and 64K with it, against a 384K ceiling
4. For schema-checked tool arguments use base URL https://api.deepseek.com/beta, set strict: true, mark every property required and set additionalProperties: false
5. Keep a fallback provider and check the model field. 429 carries no Retry-After, and deepseek-v4-flash now answers as V4.1 Flash

GroqCloud

1. Call /models at start-up. Four model ids stopped working this quarter
2. Read retry-after on a 429 and the x-ratelimit-remaining-tokens header before the next call
3. Free plan allows 8,000 tokens a minute on gpt-oss, so keep prompts small or batch them
4. Don't build on Qwen 3.8 27B. It's a preview and previews can go at short notice
5. Treat a 498 as Flex capacity and retry later; 5xx responses aren't billed