API Foreign Trade: How China's Cheapest AI Models Can Power Your Next Project Did you know the world's cheapest AI APIs aren't from OpenAI or Anthropic? They're from China — DeepSeek and Doubao. And most developers outside China have no idea. The Price Gap That'll Blow Your Mind Let's talk numbers. Here's what you pay per million input tokens : Model Input $/1M Tokens vs OpenAI Doubao Seed 2.0 Mini $0.07 36x cheaper DeepSeek V3 $0.27 9x cheaper Doubao Seed 2.0 Lite $0.09 28x cheaper Doubao Seed 2.0 Pro $0.47 5x cheaper GPT-4o $2.50 baseline Claude Sonnet $3.00 — That's not a typo. Doubao Mini is 36x cheaper than GPT-4o. For output tokens, it's even crazier: Doubao Mini: $0.31/1M vs GPT-4o: $10/1M (32x cheaper) DeepSeek V3: $1.10/1M (9x cheaper) But Wait — Isn't Chinese AI... Not Great? That's where you're still living in 2023.…