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DeepSeek

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Open-weight reasoning models with frontier-class results at a fraction of the API cost.

Free Plan Available Freemium API Available Mobile App
4.5 Rating
500 reviews
14.2K+ visits
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About DeepSeek

High-performance open reasoning and coding models from DeepSeek.
  • Conversational Chat AI Capabilities
  • Text Generation Content & Media
  • File Uploads Data & Files
  • Public API Developer & Automation
  • Shareable Links Collaboration
  • Encryption at Rest & in Transit Security & Compliance

Key Features

AI Capabilities

  • Conversational Chat

    Multi-turn natural-language conversation with follow-up context.

  • Reasoning Mode

    Visible chain of thought

    A deliberate "thinking" mode that works through multi-step problems before answering.

  • Web Search & Live Answers

    Searches the live web and cites sources instead of relying on training data alone.

  • Multilingual Support

    Understands and replies in dozens of languages, including translation between them.

  • Long-Context Understanding

    Large context

    Handles very long documents and conversations without losing earlier context.

Content & Media

  • Text Generation

    Drafts, rewrites and edits long-form and short-form copy.

  • Image Understanding

    Reads photos, screenshots, diagrams and handwriting and answers questions about them.

Data & Files

  • File Uploads

    Attach files to a conversation for the model to read and work with.

  • Document Analysis

    Summarises, extracts from and answers questions about PDFs, DOCX and slides.

  • Spreadsheet & Data Analysis

    Cleans, pivots and analyses tabular data and explains what it found.

  • Code Execution Sandbox

    Runs code in an isolated sandbox to compute real answers, not just write code.

Security & Compliance

  • Encryption at Rest & in Transit

    Traffic and stored data are encrypted with industry-standard ciphers.

DeepSeek Pricing

Prices are set by the vendor and may change.

API

Pay as you go usage

What's included

  • Per-million-token pricing
  • Substantially cheaper than most frontier APIs
  • Off-peak discount pricing
  • Context caching to cut costs further
Get API key

Self-hosted

Free

What's included

  • Open model weights under a permissive licence
  • Run on your own GPUs, fully offline
  • Fine-tune on your own data
  • No per-token cost
Get the weights

What Users Say

4.5/5
Based on 500 reviews

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Real-World Use Cases

  • Coding
  • Maths
  • reasoning
  • Research
  • Self-hosting
  • Cost-sensitive API workloads
  • Learning

What is DeepSeek?

DeepSeek is a Chinese AI lab that became widely known for releasing open-weight models that compete with far more expensive closed systems, particularly on mathematics, reasoning and code.

You can use it three ways: the free chat assistant at chat.deepseek.com, an API priced well below most Western providers, or by downloading the weights and running them on your own hardware. That last option is the differentiator — few frontier-class models can be self-hosted at all.

Its reasoning models expose their chain of thought, so you can see how an answer was reached rather than just receiving it.

Benefits of DeepSeek

DeepSeek is chosen mainly on economics and control:

  • Dramatically cheaper API. Token pricing is a fraction of comparable frontier models.
  • Open weights. Download, fine-tune and self-host — no vendor lock-in.
  • Excellent at maths and code. Among the strongest available on reasoning benchmarks.
  • Visible reasoning. The thinking trace is shown, which helps verification and teaching.
  • Free consumer chat. The web and mobile assistant costs nothing.
  • Runs offline. Self-hosting suits air-gapped and privacy-critical environments.

Who Should Use DeepSeek?

DeepSeek fits technical and cost-conscious users.

  • Developers shipping AI features who need per-token costs to work at scale.
  • Researchers who need weights they can inspect and fine-tune.
  • Teams with data-residency rules that rule out sending data to a third party.
  • Students and educators using the visible reasoning trace as a teaching aid.
  • Startups where API spend is a real constraint.

Organisations with policies about where data is processed should review DeepSeek's hosted-service terms carefully, or self-host instead.

Pros & Cons

6Pros 4Cons

Pros

6
  • Open weights you can download, fine-tune and self-host.
  • API pricing far below comparable frontier models.
  • Outstanding mathematics, reasoning and code performance.
  • Shows its chain of thought, which aids verification.
  • The consumer chat assistant is completely free.
  • Viable for air-gapped and data-residency-restricted deployments.

Cons

4
  • Hosted service is subject to Chinese jurisdiction — review terms before sending sensitive data.
  • Content moderation behaves differently from Western assistants on some topics.
  • Smaller integration and plugin ecosystem.
  • Self-hosting the largest models needs serious GPU hardware.

What's New

  1. Context caching for the API

    Pricing

    Repeated prompt prefixes are cached, cutting costs significantly on multi-turn workloads.

  2. Improved reasoning models

    Feature

    Higher scores on maths and competitive-programming benchmarks with the visible thinking trace retained.

  3. Web search in chat

    Feature

    The consumer assistant can now browse for current information.

  4. Open weights release

    News

    Model weights published for download, fine-tuning and self-hosting.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is DeepSeek free?

The web and mobile chat assistant is free. The API is pay-as-you-go at a very low per-token rate, and the open model weights can be downloaded and run on your own hardware at no licence cost.

Can I run DeepSeek on my own hardware?

Yes — that is one of its main attractions. Weights are published openly and can be run through Ollama, vLLM or LM Studio. The larger models need substantial GPU memory; distilled versions run on far more modest setups.

How does DeepSeek compare on quality?

On mathematics, reasoning and coding benchmarks it is competitive with much more expensive frontier models. General writing and broad world knowledge are good but not always class-leading.

Is DeepSeek safe for confidential data?

The hosted service processes data under Chinese jurisdiction, so review the terms against your compliance requirements. If that is a blocker, self-hosting the open weights keeps everything on your own infrastructure.

Why is the API so cheap?

A combination of efficient model architecture, off-peak discount pricing and context caching that avoids re-charging for repeated prompt prefixes.

What does "visible reasoning" mean?

The reasoning models output their intermediate thinking before the final answer, so you can follow the logic and spot where it went wrong.

Tool Information

  • Category AI Chatbots & Assistants
  • PricingFreemium
  • Free PlanYes
  • API AvailableYes
  • Mobile App
  • Language Support16+ Languages
  • Starting Price$0
  • DeveloperDeepSeek
  • Founded2023
  • Websitewww.deepseek.com
  • StatusActive
  • Last UpdatedAug 16, 2026
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Best For

CodingMathsreasoningResearchSelf-hostingCost-sensitive API workloadsLearning

Platforms

Web iOS Android Linux API

Languages

Arabic Chinese Dutch English French German Hindi Indonesian Italian Japanese Korean Polish Portuguese Russian Spanish Turkish

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