DeepSeek is making waves in the AI space with its competitive pricing and open-weight models. But how does it compare to giants like OpenAI and Meta’s LLaMA? Let’s break it down.
DeepSeek offers API access to its models at straightforward per-token rates. Here’s a look at the pricing:
DeepSeek Chat is an AI-powered chatbot designed for natural language conversations, answering questions, and assisting with various tasks.
DeepSeek Coder is an AI coding assistant specialized in generating, completing, and debugging code across multiple programming languages.
Tokens roughly equate to words, with 1 million tokens covering around 750,000 words. So, DeepSeek’s 8B model offers GPT-3.5-like performance at a fraction of the cost.
OpenAI’s GPT-4-turbo (the cheaper variant of GPT-4) costs:
That means DeepSeek Chat (67B) is 10x cheaper than GPT-4-turbo for both input and output. Even DeepSeek Coder (33B) undercuts OpenAI’s pricing significantly. See how DeepSeek compares with Llama, ChatGPT, & Claude.
For developers running large-scale AI applications, DeepSeek is a cost-effective alternative to OpenAI while still delivering strong performance.
Meta doesn’t officially provide an API for LLaMA models, so you have to host them yourself. That means you’ll pay for GPU instances instead of per-token pricing.
For comparison, running LLaMA 2 70B on AWS can cost $3–$5 per hour on high-end GPUs like the A100. If you process a similar amount of tokens, DeepSeek’s API is often cheaper and easier to scale.
DeepSeek removes the hassle of infrastructure management, making it a more accessible option for startups and dev teams.
✅ Cheaper than OpenAI – Up to 10x lower costs than GPT-4-turbo.
✅ No GPU setup required – Unlike LLaMA, you don’t need to host the models yourself.
✅ Multiple model sizes – Choose between 6.7B, 8B, 33B, and 67B based on your needs.
For developers looking for affordable, high-performance AI models, DeepSeek is a strong contender.
Would you switch to DeepSeek? Let me know your thoughts! 🚀
DeepSeek’s pricing varies by model. The DeepSeek Chat 8B model costs $0.20 per million input tokens and $0.60 per million output tokens, while the DeepSeek Chat 67B model costs $1.00 per million input tokens and $3.00 per million output tokens. DeepSeek Coder has similar pricing, with the 6.7B model at $0.20/$0.40 per million tokens and the 33B model at $1.00/$2.00 per million tokens.
Yes, DeepSeek is significantly cheaper than OpenAI’s ChatGPT. For example, GPT-4-turbo costs $10 per million input tokens and $30 per million output tokens, while DeepSeek Chat 67B is just $1 per million input tokens and $3 per million output tokens—making it about 10x cheaper.
DeepSeek R1 is an open-weight model, meaning it’s completely free to use if you host it yourself. However, if accessed via API, standard DeepSeek pricing applies based on token usage.
No, DeepSeek Coder is not free if you use the API. The 6.7B model costs $0.20 per million input tokens and $0.40 per million output tokens, while the 33B model costs $1.00 per million input tokens and $2.00 per million output tokens. However, if DeepSeek Coder is available as an open-weight model, you can host it yourself for free (though you’d need to cover infrastructure costs).