DeepSeek is a free chatbot with nothing to upgrade to, and its own privacy policy says your chats are stored in China. ChatGPT is a full product with four personal plans, image creation, projects and a coding agent, and it also trains on your chats until you switch that off. You are choosing the product and where your data sits, not a benchmark winner.
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Pick DeepSeek if you want a capable chatbot that is free with no plan to outgrow, or cheap API tokens with a 1 million token context, and nothing you type would matter if someone else read it.
Pick ChatGPT if you want images, projects, Codex and a desktop app in one place, or you care where your chats end up, since ChatGPT has a training opt-out on every plan and removes deleted chats within 30 days.
Pick neither if the chat would contain client, patient or employer data, since DeepSeek stores it in China and the ChatGPT plans most people use carry no HIPAA agreement. That work belongs on a business plan with a contract.
prices checked 2026-10-13 · by dan scutaru
| DeepSeek | ChatGPT | |
|---|---|---|
| price | free | free tier · from $8/mo |
| free tier | The chat app is free on web, iOS and Android with no paid tier and no in-app purchases. No message limit is published. Chats are stored in China and used for training unless you opt out. | Unlimited text chats with GPT-6 Luna (subject to abuse guardrails), with limited uploads, image generation, voice, deep research, memory and Codex access. |
| runs on | web, ios, android, api | web, ios, android, mac, windows |
| Top plan | None. The app has no paid tier | Pro, $100, $200 or $500 a month |
| Context window | Not published for the app. 1M tokens on the API | 27K on Free, 54K on Go and Plus (256K with reasoning), 128K on Pro (400K) |
| Images | Reads images. No image generation listed on any official page | Image creation on every plan, limited on Free |
| Training on your chats | On until you turn off Improve the model for everyone | On by default, opt-out on every plan |
| How long chats are kept | Stored in China for as long as you have an account | Deleted chats removed within 30 days, legal holds aside |
| Smallest current API model, per 1M tokens | deepseek-flash: $0.15 in, $0.60 out off-peak, double at peak | gpt-6-luna: $0.10 in, $0.50 out |
Reddit blocks our reader, so this comes from Hacker News. The common view is that for everyday questions the two are interchangeable. One user who rotates between five chatbots, both of these included, said they "canceled all my paid subscriptions to chatbots because they are interchangeable". Another falls back on the free tiers of ChatGPT and DeepSeek and says they will drop whichever one starts showing ads.
The complaint aimed at DeepSeek is censorship. One user asked ChatGPT, Claude and DeepSeek to criticise both the US and China, and DeepSeek refused to criticise China.
This is the biggest difference. DeepSeek's privacy policy says it collects, processes and stores your personal data in the People's Republic of China, and keeps it for as long as you have an account. Turning off training there stops training, not storage.
ChatGPT trains on chats by default too, on every personal plan. But the opt-out exists on every plan, deleted chats are scheduled for removal within 30 days, and Temporary Chat keeps a conversation out of history and training. Our pages on whether DeepSeek and ChatGPT are safe have the full record.
In the app, DeepSeek costs nothing and has nothing to upgrade to. ChatGPT is free too, with unlimited text chats, and charges $8 for Go, $20 for Plus and $100 to $500 for Pro for more uploads, images, reasoning models and Codex.
On the API, the idea that DeepSeek is far cheaper no longer holds at the low end. deepseek-flash lists at $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.60 output off-peak, double at peak, which falls on US evenings and early mornings, Eastern time. OpenAI's gpt-6-luna lists at $0.10 and $0.50. Price per token says nothing about answer quality, so test both on your own prompts.
For explaining an error or writing a function, both free tiers will show you your preference within a day. The split is what comes bundled. ChatGPT includes Codex on every plan, limited on Free and Go. The DeepSeek app has no coding agent; DeepSeek's offer to developers is the API, with a 1 million token context you plug into the tool you already use, and DeepSeek Harness, a desktop agent listed on its homepage.
One flag before you ship DeepSeek-written code: CrowdStrike found an older model, DeepSeek-R1, wrote severely flawed code more often when a prompt mentioned topics sensitive to Beijing.
Not as a product. For everyday questions both are capable and DeepSeek costs nothing, but ChatGPT does more around the answer: image creation, projects, Codex and desktop apps. If you would ever paste something private, ChatGPT is the safer of the two, because DeepSeek stores chats in China.
Yes. The app on web, iOS and Android has no paid tier, and you need an account to use it. Only the API costs money, billed per token from a prepaid balance. The full answer →
Not according to DeepSeek. Its current model, V4.1-Flash, reads images, which DeepSeek calls native visual understanding, and none of its official pages lists image generation. ChatGPT creates images on every plan, with a limit on Free that OpenAI does not publish.
Yes, with unlimited text chats on GPT-6, subject to abuse guardrails. Uploads, image creation, voice, deep research, memory and Codex are limited, and the free plan may show ads. The full answer →