Pick ChatGPT if
everyone who wants a hosted general assistant — writing, Q&A, light research, images.
Read the ChatGPT pageChatGPT vs DeepSeek
Our take
Pick ChatGPT if everyone who wants a hosted general assistant — writing, Q&A, light research, images. Pick DeepSeek if developers and power users who want a low-cost API or a free chat window with thinking + search. Skip ChatGPT if teams that cannot send prompts to OpenAI, or developers who need a repo-aware IDE (Cursor) or a local runtime (Ollama). Skip DeepSeek if teams that cannot send prompts to a China-hosted
Best for
ChatGPT A general-purpose conversation
DeepSeek Cheap reasoning/coding tokens
Free plan
ChatGPT $0 · unlimited everyday text chats (abuse guardrails). Limited uploads, images, voice, deep research, memory, Codex, and desktop Work. Confirmed as the free plan on chatgpt.com/pricing copy and Help
DeepSeek No free plan
Lowest paid
ChatGPT Plus $20/mo, monthly only
DeepSeek Cache $0.003
Next step up
ChatGPT Pro $100 / $200 / $500 per month
DeepSeek Cache $0.022
Coding agent
ChatGPT Codex, rate-limited on Free
DeepSeek
Runs where
ChatGPT Local or hosted
DeepSeek Local or hosted
Watch out
ChatGPT chatgpt.com/pricing HTML still hides $
DeepSeek Chat is login-gated
Last checked
ChatGPT 2026-10-19 · help.openai.com
DeepSeek 2026-10-19 · api-docs.deepseek.com/quick_start/pricing
Which one, then?
Pick DeepSeek if
developers and power users who want a low-cost API or a free chat window with thinking + search.
Read the DeepSeek page