What does "hybrid inference" mean for DeepSeek V3.1?

The same model weights support both a thinking mode (extended chain-of-thought) and a non-thinking mode (direct completion). Select the mode by calling `deepseek-reasoner` for thinking or `deepseek-chat` for non-thinking. No separate model switch is needed.

Is DeepSeek V3.1's thinking mode faster than DeepSeek-R1?

Yes. DeepSeek-V3.1-Think reaches answers in less time than DeepSeek-R1-0528 on equivalent tasks.

Does DeepSeek V3.1 support the Anthropic API format?

Yes. Existing Anthropic-format integrations can route to DeepSeek V3.1 without additional conversion.

What is strict function calling and is it available in DeepSeek V3.1?

It's in beta for DeepSeek V3.1. Strict function calling requires tool call arguments to match the provided JSON schema exactly.

What is the context window for DeepSeek V3.1?

163.8K tokens for both thinking and non-thinking modes.

DeepSeek

DeepSeek V3.1

DeepSeek V3.1 is DeepSeek's August 21, 2025 model update introducing hybrid inference with selectable thinking and non-thinking modes in one endpoint. It strengthens tool use and multi-step agent capabilities over DeepSeek-V3. Your use is subject to DeepSeek's Terms & Privacy Policies.

View API reference

Input and output price: Prices from: Input $0.25, Output $0.95, Per 1M tokens
24h uptime: Loading AI Gateway uptime

Get API key Read the docs

import { streamText } from 'ai'

const result = streamText({
  model: 'deepseek/deepseek-v3.1',
  prompt: 'Why is the sky blue?'
})

Read docs

Overview Playground Providers Uptime Status Throughput Latency API Similar About FAQ

Copy link to headingPlayground

Try out DeepSeek V3.1 by DeepSeek. Usage is billed to your team at API rates. Free users (those who haven't made a payment) get $5 of credits every 30 days.

DeepSeek V3.1

Copy link to headingProviders

Route requests across multiple providers. Copy a provider slug to set your preference. Visit the docs for more info. Using a provider means you agree to their terms, listed under Legal.

Provider

Context	Max Output	Latency	Throughput	Input	Output	Cache	Web Search	Capabilities	ZDR	No Training	Free Tier	Release Date

DeepInfra

Legal:Terms•Privacy

164K

128K

0.7 s

14 tps

$0.25/M

$0.95/M

Read$0.13/M

—

08/21/2025

Novita AI

Legal:Terms•Privacy

164K

$0.27/M

$1/M

Read$0.14/M

—

08/21/2025

SambaNova

Legal:Terms•Privacy

128K

$3/M

$4.50/M

—

08/21/2025

Getting started

Call DeepSeek V3.1 through AI Gateway with the AI SDK generateText and streamText functions, or through the OpenAI Chat Completions, OpenAI Responses, and Anthropic Messages APIs by changing the base URL. AI Gateway authenticates the request and routes it to an available provider.

Install the AI SDK (pnpm add ai dotenv), create an API key from the API Keys page, and set it as AI_GATEWAY_API_KEY in your environment. Full setup is covered in the text generation quickstart.

index.ts

import { generateText } from 'ai';
import 'dotenv/config';

async function main() {
  const result = await generateText({
    model: 'deepseek/deepseek-v3.1',
    prompt: 'Why is the sky blue?',
  });

  console.log(result.text);
}

main().catch(console.error);

Top-level parameters

The same DeepSeek V3.1 request in each API format AI Gateway supports.

top-level-params.ts

import { generateText } from 'ai';
import 'dotenv/config';

async function main() {
  const result = await generateText({
    model: 'deepseek/deepseek-v3.1',
    system: 'You are a concise technical assistant.',
    prompt: 'Summarize the tradeoffs between static generation and SSR.',
    maxOutputTokens: 1024,
  });

  console.log(result.text);
}

main().catch(console.error);

Standard parameters like prompt, messages, temperature, and tools work as documented in the AI SDK docs. These are the parameters with model-specific behavior.

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
`model`	`string`	Yes	Model ID in the form `creator/model`, e.g. `deepseek/deepseek-v3.1`. AI Gateway routes the request to an available provider.
`maxOutputTokens`	`number`	No	Hard cap on generated tokens. DeepSeek V3.1 supports up to `163,840` output tokens. Reasoning tokens count toward this limit.
`reasoning`	`'provider-default' \| 'none' \| 'minimal' \| 'low' \| 'medium' \| 'high' \| 'xhigh'`	No	Provider-agnostic reasoning effort, available in AI SDK 7 or later. Maps to the provider’s native reasoning configuration; reasoning settings under `providerOptions` take precedence when both are set. See the Reasoning section below.
`providerOptions`	`Record<string, JSONValue>`	No	AI Gateway routing options under `gateway`, plus any provider-native options under the provider’s own namespace — see the table below.

Input limits

Input	Formats	Sources	Max count	Max size	Limits
Text	—	—	—	—	Prompt and response share the 164K-token context window

Provider options

Set AI Gateway routing options under providerOptions.gateway. For provider-specific options, pass them under the provider’s namespace as documented by the AI SDK.

Learn more in the AI SDK deepseek provider docs.

provider-options.ts

import { generateText } from 'ai';
import 'dotenv/config';

async function main() {
  const result = await generateText({
    model: 'deepseek/deepseek-v3.1',
    prompt: 'Why is the sky blue?',
    providerOptions: {
      gateway: {
        only: ['deepinfra', 'novita'],
      },
    },
  });

  console.log(result.text);
}

main().catch(console.error);

These AI Gateway routing options apply to every model. Provider-specific options pass through under the provider’s own namespace (for example providerOptions.anthropic) exactly as documented by the AI SDK.

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
`providerOptions.gateway.only`	`string[]`	No	Restrict routing to these provider slugs. Requests fail over only within the listed providers.
`providerOptions.gateway.order`	`string[]`	No	Preferred provider order. Listed providers are tried first; unlisted providers remain available as fallbacks.
`providerOptions.gateway.sort`	`'cost' \| 'ttft' \| 'tps'`	No	Rank candidate providers by price, time to first token, or tokens per second instead of the default routing order.
`providerOptions.gateway.zeroDataRetention`	`boolean`	No	Route only to providers with a zero-data-retention policy for this model.

Routing across providers

AI Gateway serves the same model through multiple providers and fails over automatically. order expresses a preference while keeping every provider eligible; only is a hard allowlist — if none of the listed providers are available the request fails instead of falling back.

Options under a provider's own namespace (for example providerOptions.anthropic) are forwarded to that provider with the request. Providers ignore option namespaces that don't apply to them, so it is safe to set provider options alongside gateway routing options.

Reasoning

AI Gateway bridges reasoning across every API format. The AI SDK exposes a provider-agnostic top-level reasoning level (none, minimal, low, medium, high, or xhigh); the Chat Completions and Responses formats take the same effort under reasoning.effort; and the Anthropic Messages format uses a native thinking token budget. Whichever you send, the gateway maps it to the target model’s native configuration, converting between effort levels and token budgets as needed. Reasoning-related settings under providerOptions take full precedence over the top-level reasoning value and are never merged. Reasoning tokens typically count toward your output-token usage, though how they’re reported and billed varies by provider.

Learn more in the AI Gateway reasoning guide.

reasoning.ts

import { generateText } from 'ai';
import 'dotenv/config';

async function main() {
  const result = await generateText({
    model: 'deepseek/deepseek-v3.1',
    prompt: 'Explain the Monty Hall problem step by step.',
    reasoning: 'high',
  });

  console.log(result.text);
}

main().catch(console.error);

Tool calling

Expose tools the model can call. Define each tool’s inputs with a Zod schema.

tool-calling.ts

import { generateText, tool } from 'ai';
import { z } from 'zod';
import 'dotenv/config';

async function main() {
  const result = await generateText({
    model: 'deepseek/deepseek-v3.1',
    prompt: 'What is the weather in San Francisco?',
    tools: {
      getWeather: tool({
        description: 'Get the current weather for a location',
        inputSchema: z.object({ location: z.string() }),
        execute: async ({ location }) => ({ location, temperatureC: 18 }),
      }),
    },
  });

  console.log(result.text);
}

main().catch(console.error);

Copy link to headingMore models by DeepSeek

Model

Context	Latency	Throughput	Input	Output	Cache	Web Search	Capabilities	Providers	ZDR	No Training	Free Tier	Release Date

deepseek/deepseek-v4.1-flash

0.4 s

379 tps

$0.15/M

$0.60/M

Read$0.003/M

—

+12

09/08/2026

deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash-vision-exp

0.3 s

242 tps

$0.22/M

$0.65/M

Read$0.007/M

—

08/21/2026

deepseek/deepseek-v4-pro-0813

0.2 s

154 tps

$0.66/M

$1.98/M

Read$0.02/M

—

08/12/2026

deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash-0731

0.5 s

455 tps

$0.06/M

$0.12/M

Read$0.007/M

—

+14

07/31/2026

deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash

0.5 s

327 tps

$0.06/M

$0.18/M

Read$0.007/M

—

04/23/2026

deepseek/deepseek-v4-pro

0.5 s

127 tps

$0.66/M

$1.98/M

Read$0.02/M

—

04/23/2026

Copy link to headingAbout DeepSeek V3.1

DeepSeek V3.1 was released August 21, 2025. Its central change consolidates thinking and non-thinking inference into one model. Access non-thinking mode via the deepseek-chat API identifier and thinking mode via deepseek-reasoner. Previously these required separate deployments. The dual-mode design lets you route requests to different inference behaviors without maintaining separate integrations, simplifying agent architectures where some steps need reasoning and others don't.

The thinking mode offers improved efficiency over prior reasoning models. Strict function calling is available in beta, alongside Anthropic API format compatibility, expanding the range of infrastructure that can route to DeepSeek V3.1 without modification.

DeepSeek V3.1 targets stronger multi-step reasoning for complex search tasks, better performance on SWE-Bench and Terminal-Bench, and a new tokenizer with a refreshed chat template. Current AI Gateway rates appear on this page.

Copy link to headingWhat To Consider When Choosing a Provider

Configuration: Two usage modes share the same model. Test both thinking and non-thinking paths in your integration to confirm your application correctly interprets response structure under each mode.
Zero Data Retention: Zero Data Retention is available for this model. It is offered on a per-provider and model basis. See the documentation for details.
Authentication: AI Gateway authenticates requests using an API key or OIDC token. You do not need to manage provider credentials directly.

Copy link to headingWhen to Use DeepSeek V3.1

Best for

Mixed agent pipelines: Combine reasoning-heavy steps (tool planning, code generation) with fast-response steps (parsing, classification) through a single endpoint
Software engineering automation: SWE-Bench and Terminal-Bench improvements translate to better code generation and execution performance
Anthropic API compatibility: Existing Anthropic-format integrations route to DeepSeek V3.1 with minimal integration change
Complex multi-step search: The thinking mode's improved efficiency reduces total response latency for multi-step workflows
Upgrading from DeepSeek-V3: Backward-compatible API routing plus optional thinking mode

Consider alternatives when

Pure reasoning workloads: DeepSeek-R1 remains the dedicated reasoning specialist
Multilingual stability critical: DeepSeek-V3.1 Terminus addresses reliability issues for Chinese-English code-switching output consistency
Straightforward chat or completion: DeepSeek-V3 may be more cost-efficient for high-volume workloads without hybrid inference needs

Copy link to headingConclusion

DeepSeek V3.1 consolidates thinking and non-thinking modes into a single endpoint, simplifying deployment for reasoning-capable systems. It adds capability over DeepSeek-V3 for agentic and software engineering tasks.

Copy link to headingFrequently Asked Questions

What does "hybrid inference" mean for DeepSeek V3.1?
The same model weights support both a thinking mode (extended chain-of-thought) and a non-thinking mode (direct completion). Select the mode by calling deepseek-reasoner for thinking or deepseek-chat for non-thinking. No separate model switch is needed.
Is DeepSeek V3.1's thinking mode faster than DeepSeek-R1?
Yes. DeepSeek-V3.1-Think reaches answers in less time than DeepSeek-R1-0528 on equivalent tasks.
Does DeepSeek V3.1 support the Anthropic API format?
Yes. Existing Anthropic-format integrations can route to DeepSeek V3.1 without additional conversion.
What is strict function calling and is it available in DeepSeek V3.1?
It's in beta for DeepSeek V3.1. Strict function calling requires tool call arguments to match the provided JSON schema exactly.
What is the context window for DeepSeek V3.1?
163.8K tokens for both thinking and non-thinking modes.

Agent Stack

Core Platform

Tools

Learn

Build

Explore

DeepSeek V3.1

Copy link to headingPlayground

Copy link to headingProviders

Copy link to headingUptime24 hours

Copy link to headingThroughput24 hours

Copy link to headingLatency24 hours

Getting started

Top-level parameters

Input limits

Provider options

Routing across providers

Reasoning

Tool calling

Copy link to headingMore models by DeepSeek

Copy link to headingAbout DeepSeek V3.1

Copy link to headingWhat To Consider When Choosing a Provider

Copy link to headingWhen to Use DeepSeek V3.1

Best for

Consider alternatives when

Copy link to headingConclusion

Copy link to headingFrequently Asked Questions