DeepSeek vs. ChatGPT: Which is best? [2025]

OpenAI's ChatGPT has been the biggest name in AI chatbots since it launched in 2022. Now, though, the Chinese chatbot DeepSeek is coming for its crown. After announcing a couple of big technological achievements at the start of 2025, DeepSeek rocketed up the app store charts. But just how does it stack up to ChatGPT?

Before we dig in, a note on naming conventions. I've been writing about AI models for a decade, and things continue to be confusing:

• DeepSeek is the name of a family of AI models, a chatbot that uses them, and the company that developed them all.
• ChatGPT is a chatbot developed by OpenAI that uses models called things like GPT-4o and o1-mini. (And yes, that's the correct capitalization).

I'll try to keep things as clear as possible, but the main two things we're comparing today are ChatGPT the chatbot and DeepSeek the chatbot.

Table of Contents

• ChatGPT vs. DeepSeek at a glance
• Both ChatGPT and DeepSeek offer powerful models
• ChatGPT is far more polished and feature-filled
• DeepSeek wins on price and access
• But DeepSeek has more quirks
• Is DeepSeek better than ChatGPT?

ChatGPT vs. DeepSeek at a glance

ChatGPT and DeepSeek are both easy-to-use AI chatbots, so they're broadly similar. Here's a quick look at how they stack up, but I'll dive deeper into some of the bigger differences below.

Both ChatGPT and DeepSeek offer powerful models

One of ChatGPT’s biggest advantages is its refinement and usability. OpenAI has continuously updated ChatGPT, adding new features such as voice interactions, memory capabilities, and plugins that extend its functionality. The user experience is smoother, with fewer glitches and more intuitive responses.

Both ChatGPT and DeepSeek offer powerful, modern AI models. As I write this in February 2025, ChatGPT currently offers:

• GPT-4o
• GPT-4o mini
• o1
• o3-mini

While DeepSeek offers:

• DeepSeek V3
• DeepSeek R1

o1, o3-mini, and DeepSeek R1 are reasoning models. They take more time to respond but use chain-of-thought reasoning. This makes them better at challenging reasoning, scientific, and coding problems, but less useful for drafting an email.

In the charts above from Artificial Analysis, you can see how the various models stack up on different benchmarks. The performance differences between the different models is slight. By far, the largest gap is between the reasoning models and the typical language models, so again, unless you're really pushing the limits of these chatbots, chances are you'll get great results with whatever model you use—so long as it's appropriate to the task.

ChatGPT is far more polished and feature-filled

ChatGPT has been one of the most important apps of the past few years, and it shows. Compared to DeepSeek, it's packed with additional features. Here are some of the big ones:

• Image support. You can talk to ChatGPT. Advanced voice mode even allows you to interrupt the AI or use your camera for live vision support.
• Voice mode You can give ChatGPT specific instructions or ask it to remember details about you. It will then use these to tailor its responses.
• Custom instructions and memory. ChatGPT is built in to a lot of apps you use every day, and it even integrates with Zapier, so you can access it from any app you use. Learn more about how to automate ChatGPT, or try one of these templates.

DeepSeek wins on price and access

DeepSeek shot to popularity for three main reasons:

• Its models are essentially as good as OpenAI's.
• Its models are open, so anyone can download them, run them, and even customize them.
Its models are significantly cheaper to run.

But DeepSeek has more quirks

DeepSeek is an incredibly impressive accomplishment. Because of international sanctions, the Chinese team had to use less powerful graphics cards to develop their models. To still be able to match OpenAI's model performance shows the level of technical innovation that was involved.

But just because I really appreciate DeepSeek as a technological innovation, doesn't mean I think the app is perfect. The explosive growth shows. Occasionally, the servers just won't respond for a few minutes. And it really is missing a lot of very useful features, like vision. I use ChatGPT to pull information from images almost as often as I use it to do anything else.

Then there's the elephant in the room. DeepSeek is based in China, so anything you enter in DeepSeek could be accessed by the Chinese government and intelligence services. If you're just using DeepSeek to write emails, this might not be a big deal. But if you're using it for anything professional or sensitive, it probably rules DeepSeek out. There's also a non-zero chance that the US or EU will crack down on DeepSeek in the next couple of months, so relying on it could be a bad idea. Similarly, every chatbot has some level of content filtering and censorship. ChatGPT will try to avoid telling you how to do something violent or commit fraud, for example. With DeepSeek, that censorship extends to topics the Chinese government finds objectionable. This includes things like tank man, Taiwan, and the Dalai Lama.

Is DeepSeek better than ChatGPT?

DeepSeek demonstrates some fascinating technological achievements. If you have the skills to download the models and run them yourself, it's really exciting. Similarly, if you just want to try out a powerful AI chatbot for free, then it's worth a look.

But ChatGPT really wins in most instances. While the free plan comes with a few limitations, the $20/month ChatGPT Plus plan offers great value. It's packed with features, the data handling is more transparent than with DeepSeek, you can use it professionally, and it's just a lot more useful. I use it daily and plan to continue doing so.