DeepSeek
About
DeepSeek is an AI research company based in Hangzhou, China, founded in 2023. It became widely known in January 2025, when its R1 reasoning model matched leading Western models on several benchmarks while being released with open weights and far lower costs.
People use the DeepSeek chat app for writing, coding, maths and reasoning tasks, much like other AI assistants. Developers value DeepSeek because its models are released with open weights, so they can be downloaded, self-hosted and fine-tuned, and because its API is among the cheapest available.
As of October 2026, the DeepSeek chat app on the web and mobile is free, with no paid consumer plan and no ads. The developer API is billed per token at low rates. Some governments and organisations restrict its use over data-privacy concerns, so check your own policies first.
Features and integrations
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Free Chat App: The web and mobile apps give free access to DeepSeek's latest chat and reasoning models without a subscription.
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DeepThink Reasoning Mode: A reasoning mode shows step-by-step thinking for harder maths, logic and coding problems.
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Web Search: The app can search the web to answer questions about current topics.
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File Upload: Users can upload documents and extract text for summarising or question answering.
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Open-Weight Models: DeepSeek releases model weights publicly, so organisations can run them on their own servers and fine-tune them for specific tasks.
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Low-Cost API: The DeepSeek API offers some of the lowest per-token prices among capable models, which makes it popular for high-volume applications.
Pros and cons
Pros
- Completely free chat: There is no paid tier for the consumer app, so individuals get capable AI at no cost.
- Open weights: Developers can download, inspect, self-host and fine-tune DeepSeek models.
- Very cheap API: Per-token prices are a fraction of many Western competitors, which suits cost-sensitive projects.
- Strong at maths and code: DeepSeek models perform well on reasoning, mathematics and programming tasks.
Cons
- Privacy and compliance concerns: Data processed through DeepSeek's hosted services is subject to Chinese law, and some governments and companies restrict its use.
- Fewer product features: The chat app lacks many extras found in ChatGPT or Claude, such as image generation and rich project workspaces.
- Less predictable service: Users have reported capacity issues and changes with little notice during periods of high demand.
Founder
Liang Wenfeng
Founder, DeepSeek
Liang Wenfeng founded DeepSeek in Hangzhou in 2023. He is also a co-founder of High-Flyer, the Chinese quantitative hedge fund that funded DeepSeek's early research.
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Last updated October 5, 2026