ChatGPT
AI Assistants & LLMs
OpenAI's all-rounder: chat, images, voice, web search and agents in one app.
What is it?
DeepSeek comes from a Chinese AI lab of the same name. Its app chats, reasons through problems step by step, reads files and searches the web, and there's no paid plan to unlock.
It's on this list because it shook up the whole industry. DeepSeek showed it could get close to the big American models for far less money, and it releases its models openly so anyone can download and run them. It's especially good at maths, logic and code.
The catch is privacy. What you type into the app is stored on servers in China, and Australia and several other governments have banned it on their own devices. Keep sensitive work out of it, or use the open models through a provider you trust.
Who it's for
Anyone who wants a strong reasoning assistant for free, and developers watching their API costs.
Best for
- Maths, logic and step-by-step problems
- Coding help
- A capable free assistant
- Cheap API access for your own apps
Why it made the list
It's the best-known assistant from outside the US, and the free app holds its own against paid plans elsewhere.
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