Pick DeepSeek if
developers and power users who want a low-cost API or a free chat window with thinking + search.
Read the DeepSeek pageDeepSeek vs Kimi
Our take
Pick DeepSeek if developers and power users who want a low-cost API or a free chat window with thinking + search. Pick Kimi if people who want a signed-out Kimi window, or developers who will pay per 1M on the API. Skip DeepSeek if teams that cannot send prompts to a China-hosted API, or people who need a repo-aware IDE (Cursor). Skip Kimi if people who need a local runner (Ollama) or a multi-vendor shelf (Poe).
Best for
DeepSeek Cheap reasoning/coding tokens
Kimi Talk to Kimi (or call the API)
Free plan
DeepSeek No free plan
Kimi No free plan
Lowest paid
DeepSeek Cache $0.003
Kimi kimi-k2.6 $0.16
Next step up
DeepSeek Cache $0.022
Kimi kimi-k2.7-code $0.19
Coding agent
DeepSeek
Kimi Signed-out composer
Runs where
DeepSeek Local or hosted
Kimi Hosted
Watch out
DeepSeek Chat is login-gated
Kimi No membership dollar on the API table
Last checked
DeepSeek 2026-10-19 · api-docs.deepseek.com/quick_start/pricing
Kimi 2026-10-21 · platform.kimi.ai/docs/pricing/chat
Which one, then?
Pick Kimi if
people who want a signed-out Kimi window, or developers who will pay per 1M on the API.
Read the Kimi page