DeepSeek is an AI assistants tool for Developers and Small businesses, offered as freemium. Founded in 2023. Popular alternatives include Inception Mercury, MiniMax, RunInfra.
About DeepSeek
DeepSeek is a Chinese AI lab and assistant from Hangzhou, founded in 2023 by Liang Wenfeng and funded by the quantitative hedge fund High-Flyer. It became globally known in January 2025 when its open-weight R1 reasoning model matched leading US models at a fraction of the training cost and pushed the DeepSeek app to the top of app store charts.
There are two products. The chat app on web, iOS and Android is free, with thinking and instant modes, web search and file reading. The API is pay-as-you-go: you top up a balance and pay per million tokens, with cache hits billed far below cache misses and off-peak hours at half price. It accepts both OpenAI and Anthropic request formats, so tools like Claude Code can point at it directly. Model weights are published on Hugging Face, so you can also self-host or use cloud providers.
DeepSeek fits developers and cost-sensitive teams that need strong reasoning and coding at very low token prices. Its weak points are data residency and policy: the hosted service stores data in China, and several governments (Italy, South Korea, Australia, Taiwan) have restricted it. ChatGPT and Claude offer richer apps and enterprise controls, while Mistral Le Chat is the EU-hosted option.
The V4 preview in April 2026 brought 1M-token context, and V4.1-Flash-1017 now serves the flash API. For sensitive data, run the open weights on your own infrastructure instead of the hosted app.
Key features of DeepSeek
- Free chat app with thinking and instant modes on web and mobile
- 1M-token context window on V4 models
- API compatible with OpenAI and Anthropic request formats
- Automatic context caching with much cheaper cache-hit pricing
- Off-peak API rates at half the peak price
- Tool calls, JSON output and FIM completion for coding tools
- Open model weights published on Hugging Face
- Standalone Search and Fetch APIs for web grounding
Pros and cons
Pros
- Consumer chat is completely free
- Among the cheapest frontier-class API token prices
- Open weights allow self-hosting and fine-tuning
- Drop-in replacement for OpenAI or Anthropic SDK calls
Cons
- Hosted service stores user data on servers in China
- Banned on government devices in several countries
- Answers on politically sensitive Chinese topics are censored
- Fewer app features and enterprise admin controls than ChatGPT
DeepSeek pricing
DeepSeek uses a freemium model.
| Plan | Price | Includes |
|---|---|---|
| Chat app | $0 | Web, iOS and Android; no paid consumer tier |
| deepseek-flash API | $0.30 / 1M input tokens | Peak cache-miss rate; output $1.20/1M; off-peak rates are half |
| deepseek-v4-pro API | $1.32 / 1M input tokens | Peak cache-miss rate; output $3.96/1M; off-peak rates are half |
| Search & Fetch API | $0.75 / 1,000 requests | Billed per successful request |
Source: api-docs.deepseek.com · checked on Oct 20, 2026
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Price changes for DeepSeek
Verified changes to DeepSeek's prices and plans, newest first.
DeepSeek to bill search and fetch endpoints at $0.75 per 1,000 calls from October 31, 2026
DeepSeek's October 17, 2026 note lists search and fetch endpoints at $0.75 per 1,000 calls each. Server-side tool calls through DeepSeek Harness, Claude Code and Codex are currently free, and billing begins at 16:00 UTC on October 31, 2026.
Sources:DeepSeek API docs, V4.1-Flash-1017 release, October 2026
DeepSeek cuts API prices with V4.1-Flash and moves V4-Pro requests to Flash rates
DeepSeek's changelog said API prices were reduced with the V4.1-Flash release, new pricing taking effect at 04:00 UTC on September 10, 2026. From September 14, deepseek-v4-pro requests route to V4.1-Flash at Flash rates. Peak and off-peak tiers continue.
Sources:DeepSeek API docs, V4.1-Flash release, September 2026DeepSeek API change log
DeepSeek raises V4-Pro and V4-Flash API prices and adds peak and off-peak rates
DeepSeek said new API pricing with peak and off-peak rates (off-peak 50% lower than peak) takes effect at 16:00 UTC on August 16, 2026. Reuters, citing a company statement, put the new rates at 50% to 1,100% above current prices depending on model, token type and time of use, effective August 17 (Beijing).
Sources:DeepSeek API docs, V4-Pro GA release, August 2026Reuters via The Star, August 13, 2026
DeepSeek API starts new pricing and ends off-peak discounts on September 5, 2025
With the V3.1 release DeepSeek said new API pricing starts and off-peak discounts end at 16:00 UTC on September 5, 2025; until then the current pricing applied. The page shows the price figures only in an image, so no amounts are given here.
How DeepSeek compares in AI assistants
- Rank by votes
- #1 / 48
- Starting price
- $0
- Free alternatives
- 4
0 votes from members
Category median is $20/mo
Free or open-source tools in AI assistants
DeepSeek ranks #1 of 48 ai assistants tools by community votes and is not directly comparable on price.
Common use cases
- 1Running coding agents on a cheap OpenAI-compatible API
- 2Batch summarisation and extraction jobs during off-peak hours
- 3Self-hosting an open-weight model for private data
- 4Free everyday chat, maths and reasoning help
- 5Prototyping LLM features before committing to a provider
Best for
Developers and cost-conscious teams who want strong reasoning and coding models at very low API prices or as open weights.
Not ideal for
Organisations with strict data residency or public-sector rules (Mistral Le Chat, Claude, ChatGPT Enterprise).
Integrations
- Hugging Face
- Ollama
- OpenRouter
- Amazon Bedrock
- Microsoft Azure AI Foundry
- Claude Code
Our take
DeepSeek is the price-performance pick for API workloads and the strongest open-weight family to self-host. Use the hosted app for non-sensitive work only, and run the weights yourself when data cannot leave your control.
FAQ
- What is DeepSeek?
- DeepSeek is an AI assistants tool: Free AI chat app and low-cost API built on open-weight models.
- How much does DeepSeek cost?
- DeepSeek uses a Freemium model; see the vendor's pricing page for current plans.
- What are the best alternatives to DeepSeek?
- Community-listed alternatives to DeepSeek include Inception Mercury, MiniMax, RunInfra, Cursor.
- What does DeepSeek integrate with?
- DeepSeek integrates with Hugging Face, Ollama, OpenRouter, Amazon Bedrock, Microsoft Azure AI Foundry, Claude Code and more.
- Which platforms does DeepSeek support?
- DeepSeek is available on web, ios, android.
- Who is DeepSeek for?
- Developers and cost-conscious teams who want strong reasoning and coding models at very low API prices or as open weights.
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