Many people have been using ChatGPT since its launch, and it still maintains its pioneering edge in the AI chatbot space. However, some have decided to switch to its latest direct competitor, DeepSeek , and for good reason.
1. DeepSeek Free
DeepSeek is the name of a Chinese artificial intelligence company and its eponymous chatbot. The company's flagship models, DeepSeek-V3 and DeepSeek-R1, have made waves because they are cheaper to train and use than comparable models.
Unlike ChatGPT and other AI tools, DeepSeek is completely free. There are no paid tiers, and the free plan gives users access to the best versions of DeepSeek’s models. While ChatGPT has a free tier, its powerful and flexible models are locked behind a paywall. ChatGPT Plus costs $20/month, while ChatGPT Professional costs $200/month. Paying a premium for AI applications is great for many people, but it’s hard to justify paying so much when there are so many great free AI applications.
DeepSeek provides performance comparable to ChatGPT and other leading AI tools without costing a dime. If an AI tool can provide high-quality results for free, why not use it?
2. DeepSeek is almost open source
Another big advantage of DeepSeek is that it exposes some of its inner workings. While OpenAI’s ChatGPT is pretty much a black box, DeepSeek has shared the model’s training parameters (weights). However, this does not make the models open source. The training code and data remain private, and only the model’s training results are public.
While this means the project can’t be fully replicated, DeepSeek and other open weighting models are a step in the right direction. You can directly change the weights in the DeepSeek model and essentially retrain the model on your own custom data. With enough examples, you’ll have a custom model that responds better to specific instructions.
3. Can run locally
The biggest advantage of DeepSeek is that it can run locally. One of the biggest frustrations with ChatGPT and other online AI chatbots is that you need an internet connection to use them. Your prompts and responses go through OpenAI’s servers, meaning you’re at the mercy of their infrastructure, privacy policies, and potential downtime.
You can install and run a version of DeepSeek on your computer. It won’t have access to your Internet connection, and you won’t have to send sensitive information to a large corporation’s servers. Running large language models (LLMs) locally means you can test your model offline with continuous, consistent availability. The ability to run DeepSeek locally is a huge advantage for those who want complete control.
4. The reasoning model reveals more about its thought process
Both ChatGPT-o1 and DeepSeek-R1 add a “thought train” to the final output that shows how the model thought about the input before coming to a conclusion. ChatGPT is trained to hide most of this reasoning and instead provides a shortened version. DeepSeek-R1, on the other hand, reveals more of its “thought train” and makes it easier to identify any flaws in the model’s reasoning process and further optimize the train.
There are many alternatives to ChatGPT. While ChatGPT is still the most popular AI chatbot, DeepSeek is a great and free alternative.
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