I thought the DeepSeek price increase wouldn’t matter until my n8n workflow turned 1 task into 3 billable model runs

Description and use

<p>I used to think model pricing changes were mostly a finance problem.</p> <p>Then I watched a “cheap” automation stop being cheap the second it hit real production behavior.</p> <p>That’s why the recent DeepSeek pricing discussion matters.</p> <p>Not because one provider changed a rate card.</p> <p>Because it exposes the thing a lot of devs learn too late: the cost you benchmark in staging is often not the cost you pay when agents start looping, calling tools, and dragging context through multiple steps.</p> <p>If you run AI automations in n8n, Make, Zapier, OpenClaw, or your own workers, th

Problem

<p>I used to think model pricing changes were mostly a finance problem.</p> <p>Then I watched a “cheap” automation stop being cheap the second it hit real production behavior.</p> <p>That’s why the recent DeepSeek pricing discussion matters.</p> <p>Not because one provider changed a rate card.</p> <p>Because it exposes the thing a lot of devs learn too late: the cost you benchmark in staging is often not the cost you pay when agents start looping, calling tools, and dragging context through multiple steps.</p> <p>If you run AI automations in n8n, Make, Zapier, OpenClaw, or your own workers, th

Outcome

<p>I used to think model pricing changes were mostly a finance problem.</p> <p>Then I watched a “cheap” automation stop being cheap the second it hit real production behavior.</p> <p>That’s why the recent DeepSeek pricing discussion matters.</p> <p>Not because one provider changed a rate card.</p> <p>Because it exposes the thing a lot of devs learn too late: the cost you benchmark in staging is often not the cost you pay when agents start looping, calling tools, and dragging context through multiple steps.</p> <p>If you run AI automations in n8n, Make, Zapier, OpenClaw, or your own workers, th

Evidence

I thought the DeepSeek price increase wouldn’t matter until my n8n workflow turned 1 task into 3 billable model runs

Source