DeepSeek's Agent App Harness Says It Has 1.54 Million Daily Users, Each Burning About 60 Million Tokens a Day
DeepSeek says Harness, its open-source agent application, had 1.54 million daily active users on its official API in the week ended November 4, up from about 271,000 at the end of September, and that users consume about 92 trillion tokens a day, according to Yicai and Bloomberg. Bloomberg puts that at about 60 million tokens per user per day. The figures are DeepSeek's own and have not been independently checked.
The user count is the headline, but the token count is the news. DeepSeek says people using Harness, its open-source agent application, consume about 92 trillion tokens a day, which Bloomberg works out to roughly 60 million tokens per daily user, an early, company-supplied look at how much more compute agents eat than chatbots.
What DeepSeek disclosed#
Harness had 1.54 million daily active users on DeepSeek's official API in the week ended November 4, up from 429,000 in the week ended October 7 and 271,000 in the week ended September 30, Yicai reported, citing the Hangzhou company. Bloomberg, via The Business Times, reported the same 1.54 million figure and said Harness launched on August 13, putting it under three months old. Bloomberg describes the count as based on users connecting to DeepSeek's own servers.
DeepSeek also counts about 35,000 third-party plug-ins, Yicai reported, and is preparing a support programme for plug-in authors; Bloomberg adds that it plans an official marketplace and that support may include token grants, technical assistance and promotion, with no further details disclosed.
Reading the numbers#
Bloomberg calls the scale "among the first available evidence" of agents sharply raising demand for compute, since agents run for hours reading and writing code, calling tools and browsing. Our own arithmetic matches its per-user figure: 92 trillion tokens over 1.54 million users is just under 60 million a day each. A heavy minority of users could account for much of that; DeepSeek gave no distribution.
Harness is the platform beneath the dsh-superagent coding agent DeepSeek open-sourced on October 31, which ships as a bundle for it. The usage numbers suggest DeepSeek is building its agent strategy around an open plug-in ecosystem rather than a single flagship app.
Limits#
- All figures are DeepSeek's own, counted on its official API, and unaudited; users reaching Harness through other model providers would not be included.
- The sources differ on timing and detail: Yicai says DeepSeek released the data on November 5, while Bloomberg says DeepSeek disclosed it on X on November 8. Yicai says 60% of users created or installed at least one plug-in; Bloomberg says 60% built one.
- The per-user token figure is an average and says nothing about how usage is spread.