DeepSeek Advanced

DeepSeek-Coder-V2

DeepSeek-Coder-V2 is a 236B-total, 21B-active coding MoE family with 128K context. Its old API line was merged into DeepSeek-V2.5 in 2024.

Coding ModelsText Open Source

In plain English

What is this model and why does it matter?

DeepSeek-Coder-V2 is a 236B-total, 21B-active MoE coding family with 128K context and official Base and Instruct weights.

Large-scale coding researchRepository analysisHistorical benchmarkingSelf-hosted code assistants

Model overview

DeepSeek-Coder-V2: features, use cases and important details

DeepSeek-Coder-V2 is DeepSeek’s full-size 2024 coding model family. The official Base and Instruct checkpoints use 236 billion total parameters with 21 billion active parameters and a 128K context window.

What changed from earlier DeepSeek Coder models

DeepSeek says Coder V2 expanded programming-language support from 86 to 338 languages while extending context from 16K to 128K. The model was further pretrained from DeepSeek-V2 with additional code-heavy data to improve programming and mathematical reasoning.

Infrastructure requirements

This is a very large model. DeepSeek’s own documentation notes that BF16 inference for the full model may require eight 80GB GPUs, making it a specialized self-hosting project rather than a lightweight local model.

Lifecycle status

The old deepseek-coder API was merged into DeepSeek-V2.5 in September 2024 and later superseded again. The weights remain relevant for research and compatibility, but this exact model should not be shown as a current DeepSeek API service.

Get started

How to use this model

Choose the Base or Instruct checkpoint.
Provision a high-memory multi-GPU environment.
Install a compatible inference stack and load the official weights.
Use code-focused prompts or chat formatting for the Instruct model.
Use current DeepSeek APIs for new hosted integrations.

Copy and try

Example prompts

Review this large codebase and identify the most likely source of the bug.
Generate a migration plan from this API to the new interface.
Complete this code block while preserving the repository conventions.

Capabilities

What it can do

Code generation
Code reasoning
128K context
338 programming languages
MoE architecture

Best for

Practical use cases

Large codebase analysis
Research
Historical comparison
High-end self-hosted coding assistants

Pricing

What does it cost?

Historical DeepSeek coding model family. The original provider API was superseded by V2.5 and later generations; current DeepSeek pricing does not apply to this exact model.

Simple summaryThe 236B model is expensive to self-host; DeepSeek's own documentation notes BF16 inference may require eight 80GB GPUs.

What stands out

Strong historical coding performance
128K context
Official downloadable weights
Broad language coverage

Things to consider

Very large hardware requirements
Historical API only
Custom model license

Limitations

Important restrictions and trade-offs

DeepSeek documentation notes BF16 inference for the full model may require 8x80GB GPUs
Old API pricing is obsolete
Can still produce unsafe or incorrect code

SimplifyAITools verdict

Our editorial take

Historically significant for code intelligence, but its hardware requirements and superseded API make it a research or compatibility choice rather than a new deployment default.

References