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DeepSeek Review

Open-weight, remarkably cheap and genuinely capable. Where DeepSeek fits and what to watch for.

AI HQ EditorialEditorial opinion; prices live
Two NVIDIA graphics cards with exposed cooling fans on a dark surface.
Two NVIDIA graphics cards with exposed cooling fans on a dark surface.Illustrative photographPhoto: Nana Dua / Unsplash

DeepSeek changed the pricing conversation. Its open-weight models deliver a large share of frontier capability at a small fraction of the cost, and because the weights are open you can run them through many hosts or on your own infrastructure.

The trade-offs are governance and consistency: hosted endpoints vary in speed and reliability, and organisations with strict data-residency requirements should choose a host accordingly.

Strengths

  • Exceptional price-to-performance
  • Open weights: many hosting options
  • Strong at code and maths

Watch out for

  • Host quality varies
  • Data-handling depends entirely on where you run it
  • Less polished for consumer-style chat

Best for

Bulk processingBackground coding tasksSelf-hosted deployments

Verdict

A serious option for cost-sensitive workloads. Pick your host carefully and validate output quality on your own tasks.

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