DeepSeek
by DeepSeek · chatbot · coding
Verified Jul 6, 2026
DeepSeek made waves with open-weight models that deliver strong reasoning and coding at a tiny fraction of the API cost of Western frontier labs. The web chat is free, and developers can either call the low-cost API or self-host the weights.
The trade-offs are a smaller ecosystem and, for some organizations and regions, data-governance concerns worth weighing before sending sensitive data. For cost-conscious builders, the value is hard to beat.
Pros & Cons
- +Excellent price-to-performance
- +Open weights (self-hostable)
- +Free consumer chat
- –Data-privacy concerns for some users/regions
- –Smaller ecosystem and tooling
Latest models & API cost
DeepSeek-V3.2Near-frontier chat and coding quality at the lowest API price of any major provider.$0.28 in / $0.42 out · per 1M tokens
DeepSeek-R1Open-weight reasoning model — shows its chain of thought; self-hostable.Open weights; also available via the low-cost API.
What it can do
✓Live web search◐Image understanding (limited)—Image generation—Voice conversations✓File upload & analysis—Code execution / data analysis◐Deep research / agentic mode (limited)—Custom bots / assistants—Persistent memory✓Mobile apps—Desktop app✓Developer API✓Open-weight models◐Opt out of data training (limited)
Highlights
- ›Strong reasoning and coding
- ›Open-weight models you can self-host
- ›Extremely low API pricing
- ›Free web chat