# DeepSeek sells agents web search at $0.75 per 1,000 calls. Your page arrives as Markdown.

*2026-10-20 ⬩ 11:30 AM ET | bryn*

DeepSeek opened its own web search to agents on October 17, and its Fetch API hands them your page as Markdown. [DeepSeek's October 17 release note](https://api-docs.deepseek.com/news/news261017) prices each endpoint at $0.75 per 1,000 calls. Per [DeepSeek's Search and Fetch guide](https://api-docs.deepseek.com/guides/search), Search returns structured results for a query, and Fetch retrieves a single web page and returns its content as Markdown. Failed requests, empty results and timeouts aren't billed. Calls made through Anthropic's Claude Code or OpenAI's Codex stay free until billing starts on November 1, Beijing time.

At that price, reading the web becomes a line item an agent can run all day. It also tells you what the agent sees. Not your layout, not your animation: the text that survives the conversion. The guide counts a page with no extractable Markdown as a failed fetch.

Here's what I'd do this week. Take your pricing page and your most-read docs page. Convert each one to Markdown with any tool, then read the result cold. If the price, the plan names or the next step went missing, an agent comparing you to a rival is missing them too.

Agents don't scroll. They read what's left.

## Sources

1. [DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-1017: Wish-Driven Programming Made Real](https://api-docs.deepseek.com/news/news261017). DeepSeek API Docs, Oct 17, 2026.
2. [Search & Fetch](https://api-docs.deepseek.com/guides/search). DeepSeek API Docs, read Oct 20, 2026.

See also: https://www.civic.com/field-notes/when-the-buyer-is-an-agent

Source: https://www.civic.com/bin/deepseek-fetch-reads-markdown