I Tried to Stretch DeepSeek's 5M Free Tokens to 30 Days. R1 Is the Trap. (opens in new tab)

DeepSeek's 5M free API tokens sound generous. The takes I kept seeing were: "That's basically a free month of AI." "R1 is the obvious default because it's smarter." "Just prototype until the balance is gone." Two of those are wrong. The third is how you wake up with an empty token balance and no idea what happened. I spent time digging through a real 14-day burn log from one DeepSeek test account. The numbers changed how I'd use free API credits. TL;DR No, 5M free tokens is not a huge credit ...