DeepSeek recently officially raised its prices. As someone whose token usage was closing in on 100M tokens last quarter (see [My Token Usage Exploded 13× in Three Months]), I didn’t pay much attention at first — after all, DeepSeek was already very cheap, and even the raised price was still lower than the official price announced when V4 first launched. But I underestimated my usage: after a day of real-world testing at the new prices, it became clear that the cost is genuinely hard for an individual to bear. If I didn’t find a way around it, I’d be working just to pay for tokens.

When I handed my workspace over to Multica back in May, I was happily picturing how letting AI take on more of the work would mean fewer late nights for me. The work did get done — but my token bill went through the roof. The other day I pulled a three-month usage report for the workspace out of curiosity, and I had to double-check that I was reading it right: about 38M tokens in May, jumping to nearly 500M in July, with a three-month total of 883M. So here’s a data-driven look at how my token consumption exploded over those three months — and why. Because my AI tasks have gone from “trying it out” to “can’t live without it”.