DeepSeek vs Chat GPT: The year 2025 dawned with a bang in the world of generative Artificial Intelligence. The launch of the DeepSeek R1 model and its free Chatbot on January 10, 2025, left the AI behemoths in utter shock, shuttering the narrative that Silicon Valley is unassailable. The news that a Chinese startup, DeepSeek with a shoestring budget has come up with an AI model that can produce better or the same results than ChatGPT plunged the US stock market, the biggest casualty was NVIDIA that lost $600 billion in a day. Amidst this hype and chaos, people are frantically asking whether DeepSeek is going to replace ChatGPT as a leading AI model or which AI model is better-suited to evolving needs of businesses.
In this article, we help you understand the ins and outs of DeepSeek, allowing you to know which AI model you can use to perform your varying tasks. We will make a comprehensive comparison between the two in areas like cost, performance, applications, accuracy, and more.
Ready?
Let’s get the ball rolling!
First, we see what is DeepSeek and what are unique features of this disruptive AI language model are.
What is DeepSeek?
DeepSeek is a Chinese AI startup that produces open-source Large Language Models or LLM. LLMs are machine learning models that are trained on large amounts of text so that they can produce human-like text. DeepSeek-R1 is one such AI language model or AI language Chatbot that DeepSeek has developed and it can produce similar results as that of widely-adopted Chat GPT, CoPilot of Microsoft Edge, or Google Gemini.
Salient Features of DeepSeek:
Many features make DeepSeek unique in comparison with other LLMs. For instance:
Mixture of Experts or MoE Architecture
DeepSeek has come up with an approach dubbed technically Mixture of Experts or MoE, employing only a subset of parameters while performing a task. It uses necessary neural networks, rather than the whole set of parameters. DeepSeek-R1 model activates only 37 billion parameters out of 671 billion total parameters to perform a specific task. This selective usage leads to the following advantages:
Judicious and efficient utilization of resources as only 6% of total parameters remain in usage, reducing computation costs.
It helps in rendering specialized tasks, tailored to the professional-grade generative AI needs in various areas such as business processes, code generation, education, content writing
Multilanguage AI Model:
Unlike other LLMs such as ChatGPT, DeepSeek is a multilanguage model trained in both English and Chinese Mandarin languages. This feature enables this AI Chatbot to provide equally useful and professional-grade results in Chinese and English, making it useful for Chinese people in particular.
Handling Long Context:
This is another salient feature of DeepSeek that sets it apart from other LLMs. It can support up to 128K tokens which makes it suitable for tasks that demand extensive information processing such as code generation, data analysis, and complex problem-solving.
The Open-Source Accessibility:
DeepSeek-R1 is an open source, implying that anyone can see, replicate, and use AI algorithms, models, and training. This allows any developer to view its code or even modify it without any licensing fee. Smaller teams and startups that are often forced out of competition in AI due to proprietary AI models can now deploy their own AI tools without breaking the bank.
This open-source nature has caused jitters among AI titans, forcing them to review their approach. The CEO of OpenAI, the company that launched ChatGPT, Sam Altman has announced embracing this strategy and incorporating some aspects of open sources into upcoming ChatGPT models. This shows that the proprietary nature of AI language models is set to be replaced with open source, thanks to DeepSeek’s revolutionary approach.
Having discussed the unique features of DeepSeek, now we see how this incredibly cost-effective LLM is faring in comparison with ChatGPT, which once took the tech world by storm with its human-like capabilities.
DeepSeek vs ChatGPT: Which AI Language Model is Best-Suited for You?
Here is a feature-by-feature comparison between these two leading AI chatbots.
Coding & Technical Assistance:
Ever since the launch of ChatGPT by OpenAI, life has become easy for software developers as it helps a lot in understanding complex implementations. It provides comprehensive code assistance, along with providing explanations and code suggestions. Therefore, in this context, it becomes very important for coders to know whether DeepSeek can offer the same or better coding assistance capabilities.
The answer is yes. DeepSeek has certainly come up with a direct approach to coding. Various experts believe that it produces code generation much more quickly and in a modular style, making it more useful for quick and efficient solutions for complex coding challenges.
Winner:
Both ChatGPT o1 and DeepSeek are capable of offering coding assistance, but it is always useful to combine multiple AI models to come up with effective coding solutions. Overall, it is free to access DeepSeek which makes it stand out from other code-assisting models such as Cloude Sonnet
Writing Assistance
Both these models are capable of producing engaging content and formal documentation but with varying approaches.
ChatGPT is good at producing content that is explanatory and easy to understand for non-technical readers as well. It is also good at producing documents and content in proper contextual background.
DeepSeek on the other hand can produce content that is way more formal, precise, and contains technical jargon.
Winner
Both are good. The ultimate choice depends upon your specific needs. If you are looking for technical content suitable for data project documentation, go for DeepSeek, otherwise, ChatGPT is a good fellow, meeting your everyday personal or professional needs effectively
Accuracy & Reliability:
Accuracy and reliability are also some features that must be ensured in every AI language chatbot. DeepSeek has also shown exceptional performance when it comes to accuracy in structured reasoning tasks. For instance:
DeepSeek has scored 90% accuracy in mathematics-related problems. It has therefore defeated the ChatGPT 4 model by a wide margin and scored 83% in STEM-related queries.
DeepSeek has scored 97% when it comes to success in logic puzzles. This high success rate makes the DeepSeek-R1 model suitable for programming and debugging tasks.
ChatGPT, on the other hand, is good at multi-stage reasoning and general knowledge queries.
Winner
The performance is situational, both AI chatbots offer respective sets of strengths in some particular area.
Having made the feature-by-feature comparison, we now see the applications of these AI language models to make it easy for you to choose the model.
Choosing the Right AI Platform:
Here are areas where you should one platform over another to ensure enhanced productivity and improved resource efficiency.
Areas Where DeepSeek Performs Better:
- Customization needs
- Cost-effective AI solutions
- Technical and STEM-focused tasks
Areas where ChatGPT performs better
- Customer support
- Multimodal functionality
- Productivity and Automation
Final Thoughts:
There is no denying that DeepSeek has broken the ceilings of the AI world. It has effectively shuttered the narrative that billions of dollars are required to build a requisite infrastructure to develop LLMs. DeepSeek has allowed smaller teams and startups to incorporate AI into their operations and design and implement domain- and niche-specific AI models. It is certainly a great triumph for the world because now resource-deficit organizations and countries can take part in the race for supremacy of AI, paving the way for a competitive AI landscape that would ensure cost-effectiveness and increased accessibility for broader segments of organizations.