Analyst verdictOpen-weight models with a free chat app and a very cheap API
The value pick: a free chat app and MIT-licensed open weights at a fraction of rival API prices. Check your data policy before using it at work.
What it is
DeepSeek is a Chinese AI lab whose web and mobile chat apps are free. Its current model, DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash (September 2026, updated October 17), has a one-million-token context window and MIT-licensed weights on Hugging Face. The API is billed per token, with off-peak rates at half the peak price. Checked November 2026.
Best for
- Free everyday chat
- Low-cost API workloads
- Self-hosting open weights
What we like
- Free chat app
- MIT-licensed open weights
- Among the cheapest frontier-class APIs
What to watch
- Hosted service stores data in China under its privacy policy, which many companies restrict
- Fewer agent, plugin and workspace features than ChatGPT or Claude
- Self-hosting the full model needs multi-GPU hardware
Rankings
Where DeepSeek ranks
Alternatives
Alternatives and head-to-heads
DeepSeek vs ChatGPT
A free, open-weight challenger against the market leader. DeepSeek wins on price and openness; ChatGPT wins on features, polish and data controls for work.
ChatGPT
OpenAI's general-purpose assistant
9.1Freemium
Claude
Anthropic's assistant for writing and reasoning
9.2Freemium
Gemini
Google's assistant wired into Workspace
8.6Freemium
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