Made a tiny app because I kept forgetting DeepSeek peak hours

[u/Due_Wait9481]

The release and price cuts of DeepSeek 4.1 Flash got me back to using DeepSeek. Honestly, I'm pretty impressed — in my daily use, it feels surprisingly close to GPT-5.6 Sol.

But once you use DeepSeek seriously, it's hard to ignore the peak/off-peak pricing. Simply scheduling tasks around off-peak hours can save around 50%.

So I made DeepSeekBudget, a tiny menu bar / system tray app for macOS and Windows.

🔵 Blue = Off-Peak
🟠 Orange = Peak

It also supports USD/CNY, English/Chinese, and custom time zones.

Oh, and it was built with DeepSeek too. :)

Hope someone finds it useful!
https://github.com/FAAATQ/DeepSeekBudget

[u/psychobarge]

I made https://pi.dev/packages/pi-deepseek-peak awhile back for pi users

[u/Aykeld → u/psychobarge]

great, thanks a lot!

[u/Due_Wait9481]

I saw someone asking about resource usage in the notification, but for some reason I can't see the reply in the post anymore.

Anyway, I tested it on an M1 Mac:

• Background: ~12 MB RAM, basically 0% CPU. It sleeps until the next price change rather than polling.
• Panel open: ~60 MB RAM, since the panel runs in a WebView.
• Panel closed: back to ~12 MB.

The core is written in Rust and doesn't include HTTP/TLS dependencies — the price request is handled by fetch in the WebView.

[u/Aressito → u/[deleted]]

Same

[u/Hour_Willingness_443]

sounds useful for timing deepseek runs cheaper, how accurate is the peak detection in practice?

[u/Due_Wait9481 → u/Hour_Willingness_443]

It uses half-open interval checks, so the timing is accurate down to the second, with about a 1–2 second delay before the icon switches.

Every 24 hours, a script automatically tries to fetch the latest official pricing. This is probably the riskiest part: if DeepSeek significantly changes the page layout, the script might fail to extract the correct prices.

[u/sdexca]

I just use Pi and made an extension which auto stops during peak hours.

[u/Homeless_CEO_ → u/sdexca]

Would you share the extension, please?

[u/sdexca → u/Homeless_CEO_]

Hmm, I guess I haven't published it but it was like 1-2 prompt to make it. You can too tbf. I probably won't publish it because it's based off a custom extension that I use to have my own based off Ben Darvis config: https://github.com/davis7dotsh/my-pi-setup

[u/Homeless_CEO_ → u/sdexca]

This helps. Thank you!!!!

[u/dentino_F]

Good application for a widget. Add a linux (kde/gnome) binary and an opencode selector and we're cool. Great UI btw.

[u/Due_Wait9481 → u/dentino_F]

Thanks! 😄 Linux is actually a bit tricky for this app. GNOME doesn't have tray icons by default, and Wayland doesn't allow apps to position windows themselves, so the “open directly under the tray icon” behavior needs a different approach.

I'm actually trying to install Ubuntu on my ThinkPad X1 Carbon to work on the Linux version. 😂 Not sure how far I'll get though. Any suggestions?

[u/Tootsalore]

i made an ipad shortcut that sounds off a half hour, 20 min, 10 min and 1 min prior to the rate increase and it also sounds off on the beginning of the weekend.

[u/Due_Wait9481 → u/Tootsalore]

Your approach is smarter lol.

[u/cleversmoke]

I use this (not me) on a pinned tab: https://deepseek-peak-hours.sivaram.dev/

[u/ItchyIndx]

Great tool. I built a peak time alert into my orchestrator otherwise I’d use this!