DeepSeek Brings the Full App Experience to Its API, With Search, Files, Voice, OCR, ASR and TTS
馃殌 The full DeepSeek App experience, now via API Search, files, links, safety, and voice. The capabilities behind the DeepSeek App are now available through the DeepSeek API. Enable built-in features with a few parameters, or call standalone APIs such as OCR, ASR, and TTS. Build richer conversations or recreate the full DeepSeek App in your own application. Try our open-source frontend demo, with support for importing DeepSeek conversation history. 馃敆 Demo: t.co/TI0Iw5qLQK 馃摝 Code: t.co/ImA0LrgUgX 馃摉 Details: t.co/t0dJxXM6Lk 1/4
Context
Developers can now turn on DeepSeek's search, file, voice and safety features in the API, or call OCR, speech to text and text to speech on their own, instead of rebuilding those pieces.
DeepSeek already offered a consumer App and an API for its models. On November 13, the official DeepSeek account said the capabilities behind the App, including search, files, links, safety and voice, are now available through the DeepSeek API. The company also posted an open source frontend demo and a guide to building a chatbot with those features.
Deep dive
DeepSeek posted on November 13 that the full DeepSeek App experience is now available through its API. The lead post lists search, files, links, safety and voice, and says developers can enable built in features with a few parameters or call standalone APIs such as OCR, ASR and TTS, including to recreate the full App in their own application. The post also links to an open source frontend demo that can import DeepSeek conversation history, to the demo's GitHub repo, and to DeepSeek's Build a Chatbot guide.
In a follow up post, DeepSeek said V4.1 Flash, the model listed as deepseek-flash, now supports these capabilities across the Messages, Responses and Chat Completions APIs, with tool calls and context assembly handled on the server. The post lists web search (web or images, with citations, when thinking is off), deep thinking search (search and read pages through multi step reasoning), file input (PDFs, Office files, images and more), URL reading (fetching links in user messages) and safety checks that screen inputs and outputs and return refusal indicators when risks are found. DeepSeek said public facing apps must enable safety checks, and that developers remain responsible for content moderation, applicable model registration and AI generated content labeling. Search, Fetch, OCR, ASR and TTS are also offered as standalone APIs.
A third post in the thread said extended capabilities incur tool usage fees on top of standard token charges. The pricing image DeepSeek shared lists Search and Fetch at $0.75 per 1,000 requests, OCR at $0.225 per 1,000 pages, ASR at $0.058 per hour (marked 50% off for a limited time, down from $0.116 per hour) and TTS at $0.225 per 10,000 characters (also marked 50% off for a limited time, down from $0.45 per 10,000 characters).
DeepSeek's API docs describe the same feature set and say the service runs the searches and URL reading, while the client shows the returned blocks and passes them back unchanged. The docs also say the open source demo stores the API key, conversations and uploaded images only in the browser.
What to expect next
Watch for developers to ship apps that reuse the DeepSeek App's search, file and voice features, and for whether the standalone OCR, ASR and TTS APIs get used outside chat products. The limited time ASR and TTS discounts may end, which would change the cost of voice features. It is also worth watching whether DeepSeek extends the same built in tools to models beyond V4.1 Flash, and how safety check requirements are enforced for public apps.