# DeepSeek API vs Tencent Cloud TokenHub (slim)

> Tencent Cloud TokenHub scores 59.5 (C) to DeepSeek's 45.8 (E) for llm inference. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deepseek-api-vs-tencent-tokenhub.md (~6,600 tokens) · this version ~3,380 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deepseek-api-vs-tencent-tokenhub.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deepseek-api-vs-tencent-tokenhub
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-01
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

Tencent Cloud TokenHub scores 59.5 (C) on agent readiness against DeepSeek API's 45.8 (E), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. DeepSeek API leads on reliability and transparency & trust. Both do llm inference.

- DeepSeek API: E 45.8, rank #1059 of 1260 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/deepseek-api.min.md
- Tencent Cloud TokenHub: C 59.5, rank #646 of 1260 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/tencent-tokenhub.min.md
- DeepSeek API, good for Low-cost long-context work on public data, and off-peak batch-style jobs run through the normal API. Ahead on Reliability, 60 against 46; Transparency & trust, 65 against 54.
- Tencent Cloud TokenHub, good for Teams in or near Tencent Cloud that want one key and bill for Tencent's Hy models and Chinese open-weight models (DeepSeek, Kimi, GLM, MiniMax, Qwen, MiMo) with per-key limits and CNY billing. Ahead on Schema & documentation, 73 against 49; Agent ergonomics, 83 against 70; Security & auth, 71 against 30; Payments & pricing, 35 against 20; Maintenance & community, 73 against 46.

| Category | DeepSeek API | Tencent Cloud TokenHub |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 60 | 46 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 49 | 73 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 70 | 83 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 30 | 71 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 20 | 35 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 46 | 73 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 65 | 54 |

| Fact (where they differ) | DeepSeek API | Tencent Cloud TokenHub |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model API | Model router |
| Vendor | DeepSeek | Tencent Cloud |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.deepseek.com` | `https://tokenhub.tencentmaas.com/v1` |
| Licence | none | Proprietary service under the TokenHub Terms of Service, the TokenHub SLA and the Tencent Cloud Service Agreement, with a special note for third-party deployed models. The `tencent-tokenhub-cli` package is Apache-2.0 |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-17 | 2026-10-24 |
| Popularity | none | 204 npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 2/5 (2) | none |

Why the edge:
- Security & auth, Tencent Cloud TokenHub +41: DeepSeek API 30 (Model reading. One Bearer key per balance, no scoping found (20 of 30). The privacy policy, last updated 10 February 2026, says personal data is used to train models, with an opt-out by email to privacy@deepseek.com (0 of 20). Data kept for as long as needed to provide the services, with no period stated and no zero-retention route (5 of 15). Per-call logs or audit logs not found (5 of 15). No security.txt, and no certification or bug bounty found (0 of 20).); Tencent Cloud TokenHub 71 (Router, read on the model lines. Bearer keys can be limited to chosen models and inference services, up to 200 source IP ranges and daily, monthly or total token quotas, can be disabled or deleted, and can be created in code through CreateApiKey with signed Tencent Cloud credentials. Keys are long-lived with no expiry setting or built-in rotation (26 of 30). Clause 2.17 of the terms says inputs are not used to train Tencent Cloud's own models, and the FAQ says data is not used for training. Inputs to third-party deployed models (DeepSeek's directly supplied ones) go to DeepSeek under its terms (14 of 20). Clause 2.14 keeps data only as long as the service needs, with no periods stated. When a customer asks for generated content without AI labels, Tencent Cloud keeps logs of who received it for at least six months. No zero-retention option was found (7 of 15). Per-call audit logs (request ID, key, client IP, status, tokens, latency) and optional full call logs go to the customer's CLS, billed separately, with usage by key and a monitoring dashboard (14 of 15). No security.txt on cloud.tencent.com, www.tencent.com or tokenhub.tencentmaas.com (404). Tencent's bug bounty through TSRC lists Tencent Cloud in scope. No certification for TokenHub was checked (10 of 20).)
- Maintenance & community, Tencent Cloud TokenHub +27: DeepSeek API 46 (Model reading. V4.1 Flash was upgraded to DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-1017 on 17 October under the same `deepseek-flash` name and price, posted on the updates page the same day (30). No stated notice policy. `deepseek-chat` and `deepseek-reasoner` got three months, announced on 24 April for 24 July (4 of 12). Two shutdown dates in the last 90 days, 24 July and the V4 Flash retirement on 10 September, less 4 because the V4 Pro shutdown set for 14 September was announced on 13 August and withdrawn on 10 September (0 of 8). Dated updates page, and the docs list api-service@deepseek.com and a Discord server for support. We didn't test whether either answers (12 of 15). No official SDK repository to sample (0 of 10). No official SDKs (0 of 15, 0 of 10).); Tencent Cloud TokenHub 73 (Closed service, read on the model lines. The newest release note is dated 24 October 2026 and the price page was updated on 31 October (30). The four retirement notices read gave 21 to 33 days, and eligible callers are switched to a successor at its price. No minimum notice period is written, and DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash (directly supplied) was moved to the 1017 version under the same ids on 17 October 2026 in a notice dated two days later (7 of 12). 18 retirement notices from 21 April to 22 October 2026, 12 of them since 3 August (3 of 8). Dated release notes and announcements, ticket and phone support around the clock and a Q&A community (13 of 15). Replies on the THCLI repository were not sampled (3 of 10). Tencent Cloud SDK 3.0 in several languages covers the control plane and `tencent-tokenhub-cli` 1.0.2 was published on 30 October 2026. No inference SDK of its own (12 of 15). The CLI has four releases since 15 September 2026, lists no runtime dependencies and needs Node.js 18 or later. CI not checked (5 of 10).)
- Schema & documentation, Tencent Cloud TokenHub +24: DeepSeek API 49 (No OpenAPI document and no llms.txt found (0 and 0). API reference covers both the OpenAI and Anthropic formats. The chat completion reference, read on 2 October, describes each parameter with its range and default, such as `max_tokens` from 1 to 393,216 with 8K by default without thinking, but says little on when not to use one (14 of 20). Strict tool calls are documented, in beta at the `/beta` base URL, with a JSON Schema subset (object, string, number, integer, boolean, array, enum, anyOf, `$ref`) where every property must be required. JSON output mode carries no schema guarantee (10 of 15). The error codes page lists seven codes, each with a cause and a fix, but no example bodies (10 of 15). Dated updates page that names model changes (15).); Tencent Cloud TokenHub 73 (Router, scored on the API lines. No OpenAPI file for the inference routes. Field pages document the OpenAI Chat Completions, OpenAI Responses and Anthropic Messages formats as TokenHub implements them, and the control plane is a Tencent Cloud API 3.0 service (version 2026-03-22) with typed parameters, API Explorer and SDKs (12 of 25). An llms.txt at cloud.tencent.com/document/product/1823/llms.txt links a Markdown copy of each docs page (10). The docs say which models support thinking, tools, structured output and caching, how TokenHub departs from each standard protocol, and which DeepSeek model suits which job. The quickstart's examples still use `deepseek-v3`, which is not in the model list, and Qwen3.5 stays in the list with a past shutdown date (13 of 20). Protocol pages list each field with type, required flag and default, and control-plane parameters carry enums and required flags (10 of 15). Examples in curl, Python, Node.js, Java and Go, and an error page listing 30 codes with HTTP status, cause and fix (14 of 15). Paths carry `/v1`, release notes are dated monthly from 7 April to 24 October 2026, and the control-plane API has a dated history of 26 releases to 18 September 2026 (14 of 15).)
- Payments & pricing, Tencent Cloud TokenHub +15: DeepSeek API 20 (No machine payment protocol (0). Per-token prices published without a login and re-read on 17 October, with cache-hit, cache-miss and output rates at peak and off-peak (20). No free tier found. The pricing page mentions a granted balance spent before topped-up funds, but not how one is granted (0). Browser sign-up and a prepaid top-up (0).); Tencent Cloud TokenHub 35 (No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Per-token prices for every model are public in CNY for Guangzhou and Singapore, with DeepSeek's peak and off-peak rates (20). Each account gets 1M free tokens per language model, valid for a year, in a campaign running to 31 December 2026. No card is mentioned, but the account needs real-name verification, so this line takes 15 of 20. A person signs up and completes real-name verification in a browser. Keys can then be created in code or by `thcli auth login`, but only from that account (0).)
- Reliability, DeepSeek API +14: DeepSeek API 60 (Status page at status.deepseek.com, run on Flashduty, with per-API components and a readable feed (20). The feed lists 36 incidents from 22 July to 15 October. Four touch only web search, 27 are degraded performance, and five are partial unavailability, one of them (12 October) the web chat only. Of the four that hit the API, 28 July lasted 7 minutes and 2 September 31 minutes. 14 September (18:30 to 21:30 UTC) left the V4.1 Flash API and chat partly unavailable for three hours, and 15 October (00:11 to 05:04 UTC) left the V4 Pro and V4.1 Flash APIs and chat partly unavailable for 4 hours 52 minutes. Two majors in 90 days sit between one (10) and several (0), so 5 (5). Concurrency caps published per account, 2,500 on Flash and 500 on V4 Pro, and requests that haven't started inference after 10 minutes are closed (15). The rate-limit and error pages document 429, and advise a brief wait and retry on 500 and 503, with no `Retry-After` header or backoff schedule (10 of 15). No SLA found (0). V4 Pro and V4.1 Flash are GA (10).); Tencent Cloud TokenHub 46 (Hosted reading. No public status page was found. status.cloud.tencent.com did not answer and the Tencent Cloud health dashboard documentation answered with a bot check (0). With no page there is no incident record to read (5 of 30). The announcements carry one incident, DeepSeek's directly supplied models unavailable from 9:06 to 13:04 Beijing time on 15 October 2026 after a fault at DeepSeek, compensated with vouchers. Rate limits are per model, shown in the console and returned by DescribeModelQuota. The public docs give numbers only for batch jobs (20 created a minute, 10 active), image models (5 concurrent) and DeepSeek V4 Flash and Pro (2,500 and 500 concurrent), with the rules for self-serve increases (8 of 15). Six 429 codes separate RPM, TPM, TPD, concurrency and upstream capacity, 429s may carry `Retry-After` and the docs advise exponential backoff. No idempotency guidance, though inference calls are not writes (13 of 15). The TokenHub SLA promises 99.5% monthly availability with vouchers of 10, 25 or 50 per cent of the month's fee. It excludes free use and third-party deployed models such as DeepSeek's directly supplied ones (10). Generally available since 7 April 2026, with some models marked preview (10).)
- Agent ergonomics, Tencent Cloud TokenHub +13: DeepSeek API 70 (Model reading of the checklist (tool use, structured output, caching, context, batch, SDKs, errors). Tool calls through both request formats, and the API reference documents `tool_choice` as none, auto, required or a named function (20 of 20). Strict schema-enforced tool calls in beta, JSON output without a schema guarantee (10 of 15). Disk cache on by default with cheaper hits, per the listing (15). 1M-token context and up to 384K output (15). No batch API documented (0). No official SDKs, you use the OpenAI or Anthropic client (0). Seven error codes with a fix for each, 402 for an empty balance (10 of 15).); Tencent Cloud TokenHub 83 (Router, read on the model lines. Function calling is marked on most chat models in the model list, with behaviour depending on the model routed (14 of 20). Structured output is marked per model and missing on the MiniMax and Qwen models, and an unsupported `response_format` returns code 400006 (12 of 15). Cache-hit prices are published per model, Kimi K3.1 Pro lists five-minute and one-hour cache writes, and a guide covers `prompt_cache_key` and the `X-Session-ID` header for instance affinity (14 of 15). Most listed chat models have contexts of one million tokens, a judgement call since a router has no default model (15). Batch at half price covers only Hy3 and Hy4 preview, reads and writes JSONL in the customer's own COS bucket and is documented for the Guangzhou endpoint (5 of 10). No TokenHub inference SDK. The OpenAI and Anthropic SDKs work with a changed base URL, and Tencent Cloud SDK 3.0 and the `thcli` CLI cover the control plane (8 of 10). Errors return a code, English and Chinese messages, the source, the upstream code and status and a request ID, and stream errors arrive as SSE error frames (15 of 15).)