DeepSeek

Chinese AI lab's open-weight reasoning model with frontier performance at extremely low cost

DeepSeek is a Chinese AI research lab whose R1 reasoning model shook the industry with frontier-level performance at a fraction of competitors' costs. The current V3.2 model unifies chat and reasoning into a single model at $0.28/$0.42 per MTok. R1 is free to use on their platform and available as open weights. DeepSeek V4, a multimodal trillion-parameter model, has been announced but not yet released as of March 2026.

Last updated: 2026-03-12 00:09:18

Company Size
Solopreneur to Enterprise
Free Trial
No
Free Plan
Yes
Deployment
Cloud

AI Models Powering DeepSeek

2 models from 1 vendor

DeepSeek V3.2

Primary Current
DeepSeek · DeepSeek V3 · deepseek-chat
$0.28 / $0.42
per MTok in/out
Context Window
131.1K tokens
Max Output
8.2K tokens
Input
text
Output
text
Web Search API

Extremely cost-efficient. Unified architecture supports both fast chat and deep reasoning via parameter toggle. 90% cache hit discount.

Source ↗ Verified 2026-03-09 high confidence

DeepSeek R1

Current
DeepSeek · DeepSeek R1 · deepseek-reasoner
$0.28 / $0.42
per MTok in/out
Context Window
131.1K tokens
Max Output
65.5K tokens
Input
text
Output
text
API

Extremely cost-efficient reasoning model. Explicit chain-of-thought. Open-weight (can self-host). Pricing unified with V3.2 — dramatically cheaper than original R1 pricing.

Source ↗ Verified 2026-03-11 high confidence

Model data sourced from official vendor documentation. View all models →

Recent Model Updates

2025-12-01
release DeepSeek V3.2 released, unifying chat and reasoning into a single model at one price point. source ↗
2025-01-20
release DeepSeek R1 released as open-weight reasoning model, dramatically undercutting competitors on price. source ↗
See all recent model changes →

DeepSeek Pricing

Free

Free

API

Free

Pay-per-use, significantly cheaper than competitors

Pricing verified as of research date. Contact vendor for current pricing.

DeepSeek Features

Code & Development

Code Generation

Conversation & Chat

File Upload & Analysis
Natural Language Chat
Reasoning & Chain of Thought

Platform & Infrastructure

API Access
Mobile App
On-Premise / Self-Hosted

DeepSeek Pros & Cons

Pros

  • + Free web interface with strong capabilities
  • + Open-source models can be self-hosted
  • + Extremely cheap API pricing — fraction of OpenAI costs
  • + Strong reasoning and maths capabilities

Cons

  • - Data privacy concerns — servers in China
  • - English language quality behind Western competitors
  • - Less polished interface and user experience
  • - Smaller feature set than ChatGPT or Claude

DeepSeek Integrations

DeepSeek API

Company Info

Company
DeepSeek
Founded
2023
Headquarters
Hangzhou, China
Deployment
Cloud

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