# DeepSeek

According to OpenAITools.app telemetry verified on 2026-11-07, DeepSeek (deepseek.com) is an AI platform indexed under AI Assistant (ranked #5 globally) generating 357.4M monthly visits with a month-over-month traffic delta of +3.6M (+1%). Its primary geographic market is China (50.5% traffic share), and it operates on a Freemium pricing model. Top competing alternatives by monthly volume include ChatGPT (5.92B visits/mo), Google Gemini (2.64B visits/mo), Claude (1.01B visits/mo).

High-efficiency open-weight and hosted reasoning AI powered by DeepSeek-V4 and R1 at ultra-low token costs.

## Key Telemetry & Specifications

| Metric | Value |
| :--- | :--- |
| Tool Name | DeepSeek |
| Handle | deepseek |
| Official Domain | deepseek.com |
| Website URL | https://www.deepseek.com |
| Categories | Large Language Models (LLMs), Open Source AI Models, AI API, AI Chatbot, AI Code Generator, AI Assistant, AI Translate, AI Writing |
| Pricing Model | Freemium |
| Monthly Visits | 357,399,386 |
| MoM Traffic Change | 3,597,280 |
| MoM Growth Rate | +1% |
| Primary Market | China |
| Market Share | 50.5% |
| Direct Visits | 280,059,676 |
| Organic Search Visits | 0 |
| Social Visits | 0 |
| Referral Visits | 10,570,000 |
| Email Visits | 2,211,842 |
| Review Score | 3.8 |
| Saved Count | 44 |
| Supported Platforms | Website |
| Billing Platforms |  |
| Attributes | Features: Website; Pricing: Paid |
| Tags | LLM, Large Language Model, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning, Machine Learning, API, Code Generation, MoE, Open Source, Chatbot, Reasoning, Mathematics |

## Overview

DeepSeek (Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Co., Ltd.) is a frontier AI research organization that disrupted the global LLM market by pairing open-weight transparency with breakthrough Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) and reinforcement-learning reasoning efficiency. Following the landmark releases of DeepSeek-V3 and the peer-reviewed DeepSeek-R1 reasoning model, DeepSeek introduced the DeepSeek-V4 generation in 2026—featuring a hybrid attention architecture and a native 1-million-token context window across DeepSeek-V4-Pro (1.6T total parameters, 49B active per token) and DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash (284B total parameters, 13B active per token).

Users can interact with DeepSeek in three ways: completely free through the consumer web portal (chat.deepseek.com) and mobile apps with one-click toggles for deep thinking and live web search; via DeepSeek's hosted, OpenAI-compatible developer API; or by self-hosting DeepSeek's open-weight checkpoints (including V3, R1, Prover-V2, and distilled Qwen/Llama variants) on private infrastructure. The models excel at competitive mathematics, algorithm design, repository-level software engineering, and structured data extraction, with automatic context caching on the API that slashes repeated prompt costs by over 95%.

In late 2026, DeepSeek remains the price-performance benchmark for developers and automation workflows. While the consumer chat interface remains free without a mandatory $20/month subscription tier, the developer API transitioned in late 2026 to two primary endpoints—`deepseek-flash` and `deepseek-v4-pro`—with time-of-day pricing. Off-peak API calls cost just $0.15 per million input tokens ($0.003 on cache hits) and $0.60 per million output tokens on Flash, and $0.66 input / $1.98 output on V4-Pro, making it a fraction of the cost of comparable Western frontier models.

## Pricing & Plans

Free web and mobile chat app at chat.deepseek.com; pay-as-you-go OpenAI-compatible API with off-peak rates at $0.15/1M input ($0.003 cache hit) and $0.60/1M output for deepseek-flash (V4.1-Flash), and $0.66/1M input ($0.022 cache hit) and $1.98/1M output for deepseek-v4-pro (peak weekday UTC hours bill at 2x).

## Key Features & Capabilities

- **DeepSeek-V4 Hybrid Attention & 1M Context:** Leverages a sparse Mixture-of-Experts architecture (49B active parameters out of 1.6T on V4-Pro) to process up to 1 million tokens with minimal latency and memory overhead.
- **Transparent Chain-of-Thought Reasoning:** Pioneered by DeepSeek-R1 and integrated into V3.2 and V4 thinking modes, exposing step-by-step self-verification for complex math, logic, and code debugging.
- **Automatic Context Caching & Off-Peak API Pricing:** Drops input token costs to $0.003/1M on Flash and $0.022/1M on V4-Pro for cache hits, with 50% lower rates during off-peak UTC hours.
- **Free Consumer Web & Mobile Assistant:** Provides free access at chat.deepseek.com and on iOS/Android with document uploads, reasoning mode, and web search without paywalling core models.
- **Open-Weight Ecosystem & Self-Hosting Freedom:** Offers open weights for DeepSeek-V3, R1, Distill variants, and Prover models on Hugging Face and GitHub so enterprises can deploy within air-gapped environments.

## Primary Use Cases

- **High-Volume Agentic Pipelines at 1/10th the Cost (AI Application & Workflow Developers):** Point existing OpenAI SDKs to DeepSeek's API (`deepseek-flash` and `deepseek-v4-pro`) to run large-scale document extraction, classification, and coding agents on a minimal token budget.
- **Mathematical Proof & Algorithm Verification (Quantitative Researchers & Competitive Programmers):** Use DeepSeek's reasoning mode and Prover-V2 lineage to inspect transparent step-by-step derivations for complex mathematical modeling and algorithmic optimization.
- **On-Premises Deployment of Open-Weight Models (Privacy-Conscious Enterprises):** Run DeepSeek open-weight models or distilled 32B/70B checkpoints on private GPU clusters via vLLM or BentoML to keep sensitive data completely in-house.

## Strengths

- Completely free consumer web and mobile app with deep reasoning and web search included
- Ultra-low API token rates ($0.15/$0.60 on Flash, $0.66/$1.98 on V4-Pro off-peak) with up to 98% savings on cached inputs
- Drop-in OpenAI API compatibility makes switching or routing between models effortless
- Strong open-weight lineage allows teams to self-host or fine-tune models without vendor lock-in

## Limitations

- Hosted API and web app store data on servers in China, prompting compliance restrictions for some Western enterprises and government agencies
- Peak-hour API pricing (01:00–04:00 and 06:00–10:00 UTC on weekdays) doubles per-token costs compared to off-peak rates
- Lacks native voice mode, video generation, and productivity suite integrations offered by ChatGPT and Google Gemini

## Frequently Asked Questions

### Is DeepSeek really free to use in 2026?
Yes. The DeepSeek consumer web interface (chat.deepseek.com) and mobile apps remain free to use. Only developers and businesses calling the DeepSeek API programmatically pay per million tokens.

### What are DeepSeek's latest models in 2026?
In April–September 2026, DeepSeek introduced the DeepSeek-V4 series (DeepSeek-V4-Pro with 1.6T total / 49B active parameters and DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash with 284B total / 13B active parameters), both supporting a 1-million-token context window alongside its famed DeepSeek-R1 and V3.2 open-weight families.

### How much does the DeepSeek API cost in 2026?
As of October 2026, DeepSeek bills by cache state and time of day. Off-peak rates for `deepseek-flash` are $0.15/1M input tokens (cache miss), $0.003/1M (cache hit), and $0.60/1M output tokens. Off-peak rates for `deepseek-v4-pro` are $0.66/1M input (cache miss), $0.022/1M (cache hit), and $1.98/1M output. Weekday peak UTC hours cost double.

### What happened to the deepseek-chat and deepseek-reasoner API model names?
DeepSeek upgraded `deepseek-chat` and `deepseek-reasoner` to DeepSeek-V3.2 in December 2025 and deprecated those legacy endpoint aliases in July 2026 in favor of `deepseek-flash` and `deepseek-v4-pro`.

### What is DeepSeek's monthly traffic and growth trend?
DeepSeek currently receives 357.4M monthly visits, with a month-over-month traffic change of +3.6M (+1% growth rate). Its primary source market is China (50.5% share), including 280.06M direct visits/mo and 0 organic search visits/mo.

### Is DeepSeek free? What is its pricing model?
DeepSeek operates on a Freemium pricing model. Free web and mobile chat app at chat.deepseek.com; pay-as-you-go OpenAI-compatible API with off-peak rates at $0.15/1M input ($0.003 cache hit) and $0.60/1M output for deepseek-flash (V4.1-Flash), and $0.66/1M input ($0.022 cache hit) and $1.98/1M output for deepseek-v4-pro (peak weekday UTC hours bill at 2x). Supported billing and checkout platforms include: not listed.

### What are the best DeepSeek alternatives in 2026?
Based on OpenAITools.app category traffic and feature fit, the top five alternatives to DeepSeek are: 1. ChatGPT (5.92B visits/mo); 2. Google Gemini (2.64B visits/mo); 3. Claude (1.01B visits/mo); 4. Grok (205.46M visits/mo); 5. Hostinger AI Website Builder & Hosting (52.47M visits/mo).

### Which platforms and core AI capabilities does DeepSeek support?
DeepSeek is classified under AI Assistant, AI Chatbot, Large Language Models (LLMs), AI API, supports the following platforms: Website, and its core capability tags include: LLM, Large Language Model, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning, Machine Learning.

## Alternatives

| Tool Name | Monthly Visits | Pricing Model | Compare |
| :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- |
| [ChatGPT](https://openaitools.app/tool/chatgpt-4) | 5,920,597,264 | Freemium | [Compare](https://openaitools.app/compare/chatgpt-4-vs-deepseek) |
| [Google Gemini](https://openaitools.app/tool/gemini-gemini-advanced) | 2,641,252,633 | Freemium | [Compare](https://openaitools.app/compare/deepseek-vs-gemini-gemini-advanced) |
| [Claude](https://openaitools.app/tool/claude-2) | 1,012,660,998 | Freemium | [Compare](https://openaitools.app/compare/claude-2-vs-deepseek) |
| [Grok](https://openaitools.app/tool/grok) | 205,461,132 | Freemium | [Compare](https://openaitools.app/compare/deepseek-vs-grok) |
| [Hostinger AI Website Builder & Hosting](https://openaitools.app/tool/hostinger-1-click-openclaw) | 52,472,801 | Paid | [Compare](https://openaitools.app/compare/deepseek-vs-hostinger-1-click-openclaw) |
| [Qwen 4 (Alibaba Qwen4)](https://openaitools.app/tool/qwen-4) | 48,650,000 | Freemium | [Compare](https://openaitools.app/compare/deepseek-vs-qwen-4) |
| [Jotform AI Agents](https://openaitools.app/tool/jotform-ai-agents) | 43,703,114 | Freemium | [Compare](https://openaitools.app/compare/deepseek-vs-jotform-ai-agents) |
| [Studocu Global](https://openaitools.app/tool/studocu-global) | 38,866,656 | Freemium | [Compare](https://openaitools.app/compare/deepseek-vs-studocu-global) |
| [Meta AI](https://openaitools.app/tool/meta-ai) | 34,415,895 | — | [Compare](https://openaitools.app/compare/deepseek-vs-meta-ai) |
| [Airtable AI Assistant](https://openaitools.app/tool/airtable-ai-assistant) | 25,813,226 | Freemium, Free Trial, Paid, Contact for Pricing | [Compare](https://openaitools.app/compare/airtable-ai-assistant-vs-deepseek) |
| [Beacons AI 2.0](https://openaitools.app/tool/beacons-ai-2-0) | 24,710,405 | Freemium | [Compare](https://openaitools.app/compare/beacons-ai-2-0-vs-deepseek) |
| [Manus](https://openaitools.app/tool/manus) | 19,535,567 | Free Trial | [Compare](https://openaitools.app/compare/deepseek-vs-manus) |

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Source: https://openaitools.app/tool/deepseek