DeepSeek

What is DeepSeek?

DeepSeek is an AI company from Hangzhou, China, that made headlines by releasing models that matched much more expensive Western systems on reasoning and coding benchmarks while being far cheaper to train and use. It offers a free chat assistant on the web and mobile, a low-cost API for developers, and publishes many of its models as open weights that anyone can download and run.

Key features

• Free chat assistant. Ask questions, write and analyse text, and get coding help at chat.deepseek.com or in the apps.
• Thinking mode. Turn on deep reasoning to see the model work through a problem before answering.
• Web search. Let the assistant search for current information.
• File reading. Upload documents and images containing text to ask questions about them.
• Open weights. Download models to run privately on your own servers.
• Affordable API. Build DeepSeek into apps and automations at low cost.

How to get started

1. Visit chat.deepseek.com or install the app.
2. Sign up with an email or supported account.
3. For a maths or logic problem, switch on the thinking mode and paste the full task.
4. For coding, paste the error message together with the relevant code.
5. Developers can create an API key on the DeepSeek platform and use it with OpenAI-compatible libraries.

Who DeepSeek is for

DeepSeek appeals to students and professionals solving technical problems, developers who want strong coding help or cheap API access, and companies that prefer to self-host open models to keep data in-house. It’s less suited to people who need rich media features or who handle sensitive data in the hosted app.

Tips for using DeepSeek

• Use thinking mode for hard problems and normal mode for quick questions.
• Validate generated JSON with the free JSON formatter before feeding it into your code.
• Test regular expressions the model writes in the regex tester instead of trusting them blindly.
• Self-host for privacy. If data residency matters, run an open model on your own server rather than using the public app.

DeepSeek vs alternatives

ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini offer more complete products, with file workspaces, integrations and media generation, plus clearer data policies for business use. For coding inside an editor, Cursor lets you choose between several models. DeepSeek’s strengths are price, reasoning quality and the freedom of open weights.

Is DeepSeek worth it?

As a free reasoning and coding assistant, DeepSeek is impressive, and its open models have changed what companies expect to pay for AI. The main question is data: use the hosted app only for non-sensitive tasks, or run the open models yourself when privacy matters. For developers building AI features on a budget, the API is well worth testing.

Developers will also find Holsha’s free developer tools useful alongside any coding assistant, including the hash generator for verifying downloaded model files. Compare coding AIs in the AI tools catalog.