ChatGPT vs. DeepSeek: I’ve Used Both, and the Winner Is Obvious

Price

Although DeepSeek is completely free and ChatGPT isn’t, the latter’s free version still has more features, such as deep research, image generation and recognition, voice chatting, and more. 

ChatGPT’s paid plans increase usage limits and add even more perks, such as expanded memory, Sora video generation, and a wider model selection. These tiers start at $20 per month (ChatGPT Plus) and scale up to $200 per month (ChatGPT Pro). ChatGPT Plus unlocks the vast majority of the chatbot’s capabilities, however, so you likely won’t feel the need to upgrade beyond that.

DeepSeek doesn’t have premium chatbot plans, but it does offer affordable API access pricing. Its flagship V3 model costs $0.07 for input and $1.10 for output (per a million tokens), whereas access to OpenAI’s flagship GPT-4.1 model (without any customization) goes for $2 for input and $8 for output. If API access is important to you, then DeepSeek gives you massive savings. 

Winner: Tie

Platforms

You can access ChatGPT and DeepSeek on the web or via mobile apps (Android and iOS). ChatGPT also has desktop apps (macOS and Windows) and an official Chrome extension. DeepSeek doesn’t have either, though many unofficial extensions are available to try.

ChatGPT and DeepSeek are available elsewhere, like through Siri. Note that many of DeepSeek’s (the company) offerings are available on other apps and sites, but not via the chatbot itself. Perplexity, for example, has a deep research feature that uses DeepSeek’s R1 model, while Hugging Face takes advantage of DeepSeek’s Janus-Pro image generation model. This is the natural result of DeepSeek’s business model, but the decoupling of features can be confusing.

The interfaces for ChatGPT (first slide above) and DeepSeek (second slide) are very similar and consistent across their apps and sites. Without much to fiddle with, they’re both easy to use, too. Still, ChatGPT gives you more settings to adjust, including those related to memory and personality. You also get some extra quality of life features, such as an easy way to share chats with others.

Winner: ChatGPT

AI Models

ChatGPT has two primary model series: the 4-series (its conversational flagship line) and the o-series (its complex reasoning line). The latest models are o3 Pro and o4-mini. DeepSeek has the V3 model for general tasks and the R1 model (R2 is on the way) for more complicated endeavors; both are the most recent ones available. Other DeepSeek models exist, such as DeepSeek Coder V2, DeepSeek Math, and DeepSeek VL (vision learning), but these aren’t accessible through the chatbot.

Outside of coding or solving a particularly challenging equation, you spend most of your time with ChatGPT’s 4o model and DeepSeek’s V3 model. Below, you can see how they perform across different tasks. The model you should use depends on the task at hand, but most tasks don’t require complex reasoning.

Winner: Tie

5 Ways to Get More Out of Your ChatGPT Conversations

Web Search

Both ChatGPT and DeepSeek can search the web for information on current events, and both can do so without issue in most cases. However, ChatGPT (first slide) handles sourcing better, offering up icons that display the name of a source at a glance and in-text highlights that tie sources to specific claims in responses. DeepSeek (second slide) doesn’t have highlights, and its source icons are merely footnote-style numbers. 

ChatGPT also automatically includes pictures in its responses when relevant, whereas DeepSeek can’t display pictures even if you ask. Finally, ChatGPT includes article tiles, complete with headlines and images, at the bottom of responses for further reading. DeepSeek provides links you can click to learn more about a topic, but doesn’t present them nearly as elegantly.

Shopping is another feature of ChatGPT: If you ask for buying advice, it presents clickable product tiles with links to retailers. In testing, ChatGPT’s recommendations weren’t quite as good as those from Gemini, but DeepSeek doesn’t have anything similar.

Winner: ChatGPT

Deep Research

With ChatGPT, you can generate reports that run dozens of pages long and cite upward of 50 sources on any topic imaginable for free. Its best-in-class sourcing goes a long way to elevate this function. DeepSeek can’t do deep research at all, limiting you to web searches.

Winner: ChatGPT

Image Generation

Although ChatGPT’s image generation feature isn’t perfect, it routinely provides pictures with fewer errors and less distortion than competitors. ChatGPT can even handle complicated prompts, such as maintaining a narrative across comic panels. Other chatbots struggle to do the same. DeepSeek doesn’t generate images. Below is an example of a ChatGPT image generation.

(Credit: OpenAI/PCMag)

Winner: ChatGPT

Video Generation

If you sign up for ChatGPT Plus, you get access to its Sora video generation feature. Sora isn’t as advanced as Gemini’s Veo 3 model (which can also generate audio), but it can create lifelike videos if you spend time carefully tweaking prompts and go through enough iterations. DeepSeek can’t generate videos.

Winner: ChatGPT

File Processing

DeepSeek can process files, but only for text extraction. ChatGPT excels at image recognition, identifying computer components even when they were behind a glass panel with reflections. When it comes to understanding documents, DeepSeek generally performs well, as does ChatGPT. For example, neither had trouble answering questions about my motherboard and watercooling pump based on the manuals I provided, but DeepSeek did force me to upload these documents one at a time. More problematically, however, DeepSeek is far slower than ChatGPT, especially when it comes to uploading files. Both chatbots can sometimes hallucinate and make up quotes.

Winner: ChatGPT

Creative Writing

ChatGPT and DeepSeek are both capable of generating monologues, plays, stories, and more. In testing, I prompted them with the following: “Without referencing anything in your memory or prior responses, I want you to write me a free verse poem. Pay special attention to capitalization, enjambment, line breaks, and punctuation. Since it’s free verse, I don’t want a familiar meter or ABAB rhyming scheme, but I want it to have a cohesive style or underlying beat.” Both chatbots delivered acceptable results, which you can see below.

DeepSeek’s poem (second slide) reads quite similarly to ChatGPT’s poem (first slide), particularly its beginning. Chatbots tend to have trouble generating creative writing that feels distinct from prior generations, but different models almost always produce different results. The similarities here are especially worth noting, since OpenAI accused DeepSeek of stealing or illicitly using ChatGPT tech.

Winner: Tie

Complex Reasoning

Both chatbots can answer questions across computer science, math, and physics topics, thanks to their complex reasoning models. However, DeepSeek gets answers wrong significantly more often than ChatGPT. DeepSeek also took considerably longer to process the images with the questions I uploaded in testing. ChatGPT can and will get things wrong occasionally, but it’s more reliable overall. Regardless of which chatbot you use, make sure to double-check any answers you get.

Both chatbots can help with coding, but that’s outside the scope of our coverage. However, you can still test a chatbot’s coding ability for yourself.

Winner: ChatGPT

AI Assistants

ChatGPT offers Custom GPTs, which are customizable AI assistants. You don’t get any major benefits versus just talking to ChatGPT directly, but they do enable some unique functionality with third-party services. One such example is a Custom GPT for Wolfram Alpha, which gives you access to Wolfram Alpha’s computational power and math knowledge within ChatGPT. You can also set up Custom GPTs to do things outside the ChatGPT ecosystem and source information from the broader internet. DeepSeek doesn’t have AI assistants.

Winner: ChatGPT

Context Windows and Usage Caps

ChatGPT and DeepSeek both have context windows of up to 128,000 tokens. Usage caps are largely dynamic, changing based on server load. Anecdotally, I was able to hit usage caps on ChatGPT’s free plan (but not its paid plan). I didn’t manage the same with DeepSeek. However, in my testing, DeepSeek was often slower than ChatGPT and regularly failed to return responses. The latter instances felt like they could be a form of rate limiting after sustained use.

Winner: Tie

Privacy

Data collection on ChatGPT and Gemini is a mixed bag. Both collect tons of user data (including the contents of all your chats) and use it to train their models by default. Both at least give you the option to opt out. Neither DeepSeek nor OpenAI is a stranger to data leaks and shady digital practices, either.

However, the US government considers DeepSeek “the CCP’s latest tool for spying, stealing, and subverting US export control restrictions” and found that it funnels Americans’ data to the Chinese government, manipulates its results to align with CCP propaganda, and likely stole from US AI models to create its own, among other things.

I don’t recommend sharing sensitive information with any chatbot, but DeepSeek’s privacy concerns go far above those I have with ChatGPT. 

Winner: ChatGPT

Disclosure: Ziff Davis, PCMag’s parent company, filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in April 2025, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.