Chinese AI firm DeepSeek is restricting its application programming interface (API) services due to server capacity limits.

Customers can no longer add to their API credits, though existing credits remain unaffected.

These restrictions follow a surge in demand for DeepSeek’s services after the January launch of its AI chatbot, which competes with OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

DeepSeek had already limited new user signups to individuals with a mainland China phone number.

Starting Feb. 8, DeepSeek will also end discounts for access to its AI models.

Pricing will be set at 2 yuan (US$0.27) per million input tokens and 8 yuan (US$1.10) per million output tokens, while its upcoming reasoning model will cost 4 yuan (US$0.55) per million input tokens and 16 yuan (US$2.20) per million output tokens.

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