Chinese AI providers are hiking prices by up to 463%. The era of dirt-cheap AI tokens may be ending.（中国AI厂商涨价高达463%。超低价AI Token的时代可能要结束了）
Chinese AI providers are hiking prices by up to 463%. The era of dirt-cheap AI tokens may be ending.
正文：
Everyone talks about how cheap Chinese AI models are, but something important is happening that few people notice — they're raising prices, fast.
Here's what I've been tracking:
• Tencent Hunyuan: prices surged 463%+, with another 5% increase starting May 9
• Alibaba: quietly removed their budget-tier pricing plans
• Zhipu (GLM series): cumulative 32% increase
• Even DeepSeek's V4-Flash ultra-low pricing ($0.14/$0.28 per MTok) is a limited-time 75% discount expiring May 31
What's driving this? Simple — these companies were burning cash to grab market share. That's not sustainable. As the market matures, prices are converging toward actual costs.
What this means for the AI ecosystem:
• The massive price gap between Chinese and Western providers still exists (6-8x for mid-tier models)
• But the gap is narrowing, especially at the budget tier
• If you've been waiting to explore alternative providers, the window might not stay open forever
• Mid-tier models (DeepSeek V3, Qwen-2.5) still offer the best value-to-performance ratio
The 67% year-over-year drop in enterprise token costs is real, but the steepest declines may be behind us.
Anyone else noticing this trend? Are you locking in pricing with any providers?
🇨🇳 中文版（参考理解）：
标题： 中国AI厂商涨价高达463%。超低价AI Token的时代可能要结束了。
正文：
所有人都在说中国AI模型多便宜，但有个重要变化很少有人注意——它们在快速涨价。
我一直在追踪的数据：
• 腾讯混元：暴涨463%+，5月9日起再涨5%
• 阿里：悄悄下架了低价套餐
• 智谱：累计涨32%
• 连DeepSeek V4-Flash的超低价（$0.14/$0.28）也是限时75折，5月31日到期
原因很简单——这些公司之前烧钱抢市场，这不可持续。市场成熟后，价格会回归成本。
对AI生态意味着：
• 中外价差仍然存在（中端模型6-8倍）
• 但价差在收窄，尤其预算级
• 如果你一直在观望替代供应商，窗口不会永远开着
• 中端模型（DeepSeek V3、Qwen-2.5）仍然是性价比最优选
企业Token成本同比下降67%是真的，但最大跌幅可能已经过去了。
有人注意到这个趋势吗？你们在锁定供应商价格吗？
