DeepSeek vs. ChatGPT—A Comprehensive Comparison

In January, DeepSeek caused a lot of fuss in the AI industry. Their R1 model literally crashed the stock prices of major tech companies and caused them to lose trillions of dollars. This release made a big impression not only on investors, but also on ordinary users, and showed that high-quality AI models are actually quite cheap to make.

Of course, this model did not escape comparison with ChatGPT. Besides a similar interface, DeepSeek performs pretty similar functions. You can communicate with it in the same way you do with ChatGPT and get similar results.

So which AI tool is better? Which one should your business choose? This is exactly what we will analyze in today's article.

What are ChatGPT and DeepSeek?

Before we compare these tools, we are going to talk a bit about what they are and how they entered the AI market.

ChatGPT is a Large Language Model (LLM) built by OpenAI, a US-based AI research organization. This model was launched on November 30, 2022, and was based on the GPT-3.5 architecture. It quickly became popular for its detailed and coherent responses, which led to the platform gaining over a million (!) users within just five days.

Throughout the next two years, OpenAI continued to refine ChatGPT’s feature set, and by September 2024, they introduced "o1," an iteration that gave the model reasoning abilities. Right now, it’s probably the most powerful AI tool available for the general public.

In January 2025, DeepSeek joined the competition. DeepSeek is a Chinese AI company that specializes in open-source LLMs. Its origins trace back to 2016, but the most significant results were reached in December 2024 with the release of the V3 model. It was trained on 671 billion parameters over 55 days at a cost of $5.58 million. With such a small use of resources (compared to other models), they showed that AI can be trained faster and cheaper.

On January 20, 2025, DeepSeek released R1 and R1-Zero, both based on the V3 architecture. This release ruffled some feathers of the biggest Western AI market players. And by January 27, DeepSeek's AI assistant surpassed ChatGPT as the top free app on the US App Store.

DeepSeek vs. ChatGPT: Feature-by-Feature Comparison

These two tools are getting compared all the time since they provide quite similar services. But are they really so similar? Let’s find out.

Key features comparison

Here’s a quick overview of the ChatGPT vs DeepSeek comparison.

Performance and accuracy

Now let’s talk more in depth about how DeepSeek and ChatGPT compare to each other. We are going to cover the main benchmarks and features to see what model wins.

• Benchmark: Speed

DeepSeek uses a Mixture of Experts (MoE) architecture. It means that when you enter a query, the model activates only a part of its parameters to generate an answer faster (only 37 billion out of 671 billion, to be exact).

ChatGPT functions on a dense model architecture with 1.8 trillion parameters. It causes higher computational load and potentially slower response times compared to DeepSeek. 

• Benchmark: Accuracy

DeepSeek achieves 90% accuracy in mathematical problem-solving and 97% in coding tasks. This makes it one of the most powerful and capable models for logic puzzles and debugging. 

But ChatGPT definitely shows better results when it comes to general knowledge inquiries and specific industry use cases, like medical diagnosis or scientific research. These abilities earned the model the 89th percentile on Codeforces.

However, remember that any AI model is, unfortunately, can be subjected to misinformation, so you should still treat their results with caution.

• Benchmark: Reasoning

DeepSeek’s specialty includes structured logical reasoning and step-by-step problem-solving. That’s what makes this model the most suitable for math- and programming-related tasks. 

ChatGPT works better with multi-step reasoning, so it can provide complex explanations in a broader range of domains like physics and linguistics.

• Language capabilities

When it comes to “speaking,” both models can communicate and hold extensive conversations pretty well. DeepSeek is optimized for the English language, but other languages provide various end results. This model also can lack fluency in general conversations, but shows exceptional results for technical tasks. On the other hand, ChatGPT supports over 80 languages more or less consistently and shows great natural language understanding.

• Hallucination rates

DeepSeek is more focused on tech accuracy and reasoning, so hallucination rates are lower in these domains. ChatGPT, while generally reliable, can occasionally produce incorrect and/or nonsensical answers, especially when queries are not clear enough.

Cost comparison

Finally, the costs. Which model will be a better business choice? It depends. First of all, both models have free plans. However, if a free plan is not enough, DeepSeek offers one of the lowest input token costs—$0.07/$0.14 per million tokens depending on the model. Just to compare, competitors can charge up to $30 per million tokens.

For ChatGPT, OpenAI offers a subscription-based pricing model. A free tier provides access to older models and a premium subscription ($20/month) unlocks more advanced features. But what differentiates ChatGPT is that it has a platform where businesses can create their own AI agents for specific tasks (technical expertise required).

Use cases and best fit

Technically, both models overlap in some areas (like coding and education), but DeepSeek focuses more on logic-driven AI and efficiency and ChatGPT wins in general conversation and multimodal capabilities. Thus, their use cases will be slightly different.

DeepSeek will be your best choice for:

• Code generation: DeepSeek Coder is optimized for effective software development and quick debugging.

• Mathematical and logical reasoning: DeepSeek-R1 excels in logical inference and problem-solving, so if your business is in finance, engineering, or academic research, this model is for you.

• Data analysis: DeepSeek can be used to process and analyze large datasets for insights and trend predictions.

• Scientific research: The reinforcement learning-based training makes this model ideal for research in physics, biology, and mathematics.

• Open-source development: With its MIT-licensed models, developers can easily integrate DeepSeek into their software apps.

And ChatGPT will come in handy in the following situations:

• Customer support and chatbots: A lot of businesses already use ChatGPT for their customer service workflows to provide instant responses 24/7.

• Content creation and marketing: ChatGPT is used for generating social media posts, ad copies, and SEO-optimized articles (but don’t forget that this content still requires proofreading and factchecking).

• Language translation: ChatGPT supports multiple languages and can help you translate your texts into the language of your choice.

• E-learning: This model can explain complex concepts and generate interactive learning content.

• Brainstorming: With the help of ChatGPT, you can refine your business ideas before investing in them.

Which AI should you choose? Checklist

Taking into account everything we said before, here’s a list of questions (and answers) that will help you determine what artificial intelligence model will suit your task the most.

1. What’s your primary use case?

✔ Coding and software development → DeepSeek (better for code generation & debugging)

✔ Customer support and chatbots → ChatGPT (more natural conversations)

✔ Logical and mathematical problem-solving → DeepSeek (better at reasoning)

✔ Content writing and marketing → ChatGPT (better at storytelling & creativity)

✔ Open-source development → DeepSeek (MIT-licensed models)

2. What matters more to you?

✔ Open-source and customization → DeepSeek

✔ Ease of use and broad adoption → ChatGPT

✔ Cost efficiency and low-priced AI API → DeepSeek

✔ Enterprise-level AI with API access → Choose ChatGPT

3. What’s your industry?

✔ Software development / Engineering → DeepSeek

✔ Marketing / Creative writing → ChatGPT

✔ Finance / Trading → DeepSeek

✔ Healthcare / Medical analysis → ChatGPT

✔ Education / Tutoring → Both (DeepSeek for math/programming, ChatGPT for general learning)

4. Do you need multimodal capabilities?

✔ Yes, I need AI that understands images/audio/video → ChatGPT

✔ No, text-based AI is enough → DeepSeek

5. Do you need the latest cutting-edge AI?

✔ Yes, I want state-of-the-art AI for general use → ChatGPT (GPT-4o)

✔ Yes, but I prefer an efficient, reasoning-heavy AI → DeepSeek (V3/R1)

Conclusion

So, what are the results? How does the DeepSeek vs ChatGPT dilemma end? In short, DeepSeek will be your best choice if you need technical accuracy, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness. ChatGPT, with its broader language support and conversational fluency, will work in customer support and general-purpose applications.

If you want to implement any of these models into your software, we can help you complete this task! Yellow is an AI software development agency with extensive industry experience, so your software project will be safe with us.