Reading Chinese AI pricing pages

As of 2026-11-04.

• Cache hit vs miss: repeated prefixes can be far cheaper (DeepSeek, StepFun).
• Peak / off-peak: DeepSeek documents UTC windows where rates double vs off-peak.
• Currency: match the cloud account currency; do not FX CNY screenshots into USD budgets casually.
• Modality units: speech may bill per minute or character; video per clip/second.