DeepSeek AI Guide: Chat, Models, API & Official Links
DeepSeek is an AI company and product ecosystem with an official chat assistant, mobile apps, an API platform, and open-weight model releases. As verified on July 16, 2026, DeepSeek’s official website labels the release available on web, app, and API as DeepSeek-V4 Preview.
Chat-Deep.ai is an independent guide and browser chat site. It is not operated by, endorsed by, or affiliated with DeepSeek. When you use Chat-Deep.ai’s browser chat, your prompt and the context needed to answer it are sent to the DeepSeek API. Use official DeepSeek pages for accounts, passwords, API keys, billing, app downloads, and support.
Last verified: July 16, 2026 · Official product, model, pricing, status, and privacy sources checked.
Official DeepSeek Links
Use the destinations below when you need an official DeepSeek product or account service. Chat-Deep.ai provides independent explanations, comparisons, safety guidance, and separate browser chat access; it does not replace DeepSeek’s official account, developer, billing, or support systems.
| What you need | Official destination | Use it for |
|---|---|---|
| Official website | DeepSeek.com | Product entry points, research resources, legal pages, app access, chat, and API links. |
| Official chat | chat.deepseek.com | Hosted DeepSeek Chat and official account-based chat access. |
| Official app | DeepSeek app download page | Verified routes to DeepSeek’s mobile app listings. Check the publisher before installing. |
| Developer platform | DeepSeek Platform | API accounts, API keys, balance, billing, usage, and developer access. |
| API documentation | DeepSeek API Docs | Endpoints, request formats, model behavior, features, errors, rate limits, and migration guidance. |
| API pricing | Models & Pricing | Official model names, token rates, context limits, output limits, and billing notes. |
| Service status | DeepSeek Status | Incidents, maintenance, availability, and official service updates. |
| Privacy terms | DeepSeek Privacy Policy | Official information about data collection, processing, retention, transfers, and user rights. |
Account safety: Never enter a DeepSeek password or API key on Chat-Deep.ai or another unofficial page. Use the official chat for hosted-chat accounts and the official platform for API keys, billing, and usage records.
DeepSeek AI at a Glance
What it is
DeepSeek develops AI models and provides access through an official web chat, mobile apps, a developer API, and model repositories. “DeepSeek” may refer to the company, its chat product, the API platform, or a model family.
How access works
Everyday users can use the official chat or app. Developers can use the API. Technical teams can evaluate open-weight releases through DeepSeek’s verified repositories and compatible local or cloud runtimes.
Free chat vs paid API
On July 16, 2026, DeepSeek’s official website presented hosted chat as free to access. API usage is separate and billed by token. Availability, features, or limits can vary by service conditions, region, and product terms.
API models verified on July 16
The official pricing page listed deepseek-v4-flash and deepseek-v4-pro. Both were documented with a 1M context length, a maximum output of 384K, JSON output, and tool-call support.
Open-weight resources
DeepSeek publishes model resources through its verified Hugging Face organization and official repositories. The official V4 Flash and V4 Pro model cards publish checkpoints under the MIT License, but you should still check the model card and license for each release; do not assume every hosted service, dataset, or product component is open.
What to verify
Model names, prices, limits, service availability, privacy terms, and regional restrictions can change. Verify official sources before account, billing, procurement, legal, or production decisions.
What Is DeepSeek AI?
DeepSeek is a Chinese artificial intelligence company founded in 2023. It develops large language models and AI systems for reasoning, coding, text generation, document work, research, and application development. Users can interact with DeepSeek through the official chat and app, while developers can connect products and workflows through the API or evaluate eligible open-weight releases in their own infrastructure.
The name can be confusing because it describes several related things. DeepSeek Chat is the hosted user interface. DeepSeek Platform is the developer account and billing area. The API is the programmable service used by apps and automations. Model names such as V4, R1, V3, Coder, Math, VL, and OCR refer to different releases or research families. These access paths should not be treated as identical products with identical features, privacy terms, or infrastructure requirements.
What can people use DeepSeek for?
- Writing and communication: outlines, drafts, rewrites, translations, summaries, and structured notes.
- Learning and explanation: breaking down concepts, comparing ideas, creating study questions, and exploring examples.
- Coding: explaining code, drafting functions, debugging, generating tests, documenting systems, and planning migrations.
- Document work: extracting themes, comparing passages, organizing information, and drafting source-grounded summaries when the application supplies reliable context.
- Developer applications: chatbots, internal assistants, classification, structured output, tool-using workflows, and controlled automation.
- RAG and knowledge systems: generating answers from approved documents when retrieval, permissions, citations, and evaluation are implemented correctly.
- Open-weight evaluation: testing eligible releases locally or in private infrastructure, subject to model licenses and operational requirements.
Important limitation: DeepSeek can produce incorrect, incomplete, outdated, biased, or fabricated information. Verify consequential outputs against reliable sources and require qualified human review for legal, medical, financial, security, employment, education, and other high-impact decisions.
Choose the Right Way to Use DeepSeek
The appropriate route depends on whether you want a quick conversation, an official account, a developer integration, or control over the infrastructure. Start with the simplest route that meets your needs and data policy.
| Access path | Suitable for | What to know before using it |
|---|---|---|
| Official DeepSeek Chat | Questions, writing, learning, coding help, and account-based hosted chat. | Use the official domain. Review DeepSeek’s privacy terms before sharing personal or business data. |
| Official mobile app | Hosted DeepSeek access on supported mobile devices. | Install only through the official download route or a verified app-store listing. Check the publisher name. |
| DeepSeek API | Apps, agents, automations, internal tools, coding systems, and RAG workflows. | Requires a developer account, secure server-side key storage, token budgeting, monitoring, and production safeguards. |
| Open-weight or self-hosted model | Research, evaluation, customization, private infrastructure, and technical control. | Requires compatible hardware or hosting, model-specific license review, patching, access control, logging, and security operations. |
| Chat-Deep.ai browser chat | Quick independent browser chat without using a DeepSeek account on this site. | Not an official DeepSeek service. Prompts and required context are sent to the DeepSeek API. Ads or usage limits may apply. |
Need practical help? Use the DeepSeek Chat guide, review the app guide, or open the DeepSeek API guide.
DeepSeek Models Explained
DeepSeek has published general-purpose, reasoning, coding, mathematical, vision-language, OCR, and research-oriented model families. A family name does not automatically tell you whether a model is available in the official chat, through the hosted API, or as downloadable weights. Confirm the intended access path before choosing a model.
| Model or family | Practical positioning | Verification note |
|---|---|---|
| DeepSeek-V4 Preview | DeepSeek’s July 16, 2026 web, app, and API release label, with a focus on reasoning and agent capabilities. | Do not confuse the product-release label with the exact API model IDs. |
deepseek-v4-flash | Lower-cost hosted API option for high-volume text tasks, classification, summarization, drafting, and automation. | Listed in the official API pricing table on July 16, 2026. |
deepseek-v4-pro | Hosted API option for more demanding reasoning, coding, document analysis, and tool-using workflows. | Listed in the official API pricing table on July 16, 2026. |
| DeepSeek R1 | Reasoning-focused family associated with mathematical, logical, and coding tasks. | Check the specific repository, model card, license, size, and runtime requirements. |
| V3 and earlier families | Earlier generations used for language, coding, reasoning, and model-evolution comparisons. | Do not assume an older family name remains an active hosted API identifier. |
| Coder, Math, VL, and OCR families | Specialized research and model releases for programming, mathematics, vision-language work, and document or image text tasks. | Features and licenses differ by release; verify the official repository. |
Compare access methods, model families, API names, and use cases in the DeepSeek Models guide.
DeepSeek API and Pricing Snapshot
The DeepSeek API is separate from free hosted chat access. Developers are billed according to API token usage. The official pricing page published the following US-dollar rates per 1 million tokens when this page was verified on July 16, 2026.
| API model | Cache-hit input | Cache-miss input | Output |
|---|---|---|---|
deepseek-v4-flash | $0.0028 | $0.14 | $0.28 |
deepseek-v4-pro | $0.003625 | $0.435 | $0.87 |
These are token rates, not a flat subscription price. A production budget should account for prompt size, output length, cache behavior, retries, concurrency, user growth, monitoring, failed requests, and abuse. DeepSeek states that product prices may vary, so verify the official pricing page before topping up a balance or approving a budget.
Migration notice: The official pricing page states that the legacy model names deepseek-chat and deepseek-reasoner will be deprecated on July 24, 2026 at 15:59 UTC. For compatibility, deepseek-chat maps to the non-thinking mode of deepseek-v4-flash, while deepseek-reasoner maps to its thinking mode. New integrations should use the documented V4 model IDs, and existing integrations should be tested before the deadline.
For worked examples, cache explanations, and cost planning, use the DeepSeek API Pricing guide. For authentication, request formats, and production setup, use the DeepSeek API guide.
Privacy, Security, and Safer Use
DeepSeek can be useful for everyday and business tasks, but the right safety decision depends on the data, access path, jurisdiction, and consequences of an incorrect answer. Official chat, the official API, Chat-Deep.ai, a third-party integration, and a self-hosted model are different environments. Review each environment separately.
Do not paste secrets
Keep passwords, API keys, private signing keys, authentication tokens, confidential contracts, customer records, health data, financial records, and sensitive personal information out of unapproved AI tools.
Verify important answers
Check claims against primary sources. Test code before deployment. Require a qualified reviewer before using AI output for legal, medical, financial, security, employment, compliance, or customer-facing decisions.
Control production access
Store API keys server-side, limit tool permissions, separate users and tenants, log safely, monitor spend, filter sensitive data, defend against prompt injection, and require approval for consequential actions.
Does self-hosting make DeepSeek private?
Not automatically. Downloading eligible model weights can give a team more infrastructure control, but privacy still depends on the complete environment: hosting, network rules, telemetry, plugins, logs, storage, backups, access controls, administrators, patches, and connected tools. Treat a local deployment as private only after reviewing the full system.
Regional and workplace restrictions
Access rules and organizational policies can differ by country, government, employer, school, and regulated sector. A restriction on government devices does not automatically describe consumer access, API access, or every independent self-hosted deployment. Check authoritative local guidance and your organization’s policy instead of relying on a global yes-or-no statement.
Start with the DeepSeek Privacy & Security Center, the What Not to Paste Into DeepSeek checklist, and the DeepSeek safety guide.
DeepSeek for Developers and Business Teams
For organizations, the useful question is not simply whether DeepSeek can generate text. The decision is whether a defined workflow can produce measurable value with acceptable quality, cost, privacy, security, and operational risk.
Application development
Build chat, extraction, classification, coding, summarization, and structured-output features. Start with a small test set, define acceptable errors, estimate token cost, and add monitoring before production traffic.
RAG and internal knowledge
Use retrieval when answers must be grounded in approved documents. Enforce document permissions, tenant isolation, source citations, evaluation, retention rules, and escalation when the evidence is missing.
Agents and automation
Give agents the minimum permissions required. Add tool allowlists, approval gates, rate limits, spending controls, audit logs, rollback paths, and deterministic checks around high-impact actions.
Explore focused implementation guidance in DeepSeek Business Solutions, DeepSeek for Enterprise AI, and the DeepSeek RAG Knowledge Base guide.
How Chat-Deep.ai Verifies This Guide
Chat-Deep.ai separates official facts from independent guidance so readers can see what comes from DeepSeek and what comes from this site.
- Official product facts are checked against DeepSeek’s website, chat, platform, API documentation, pricing page, status page, privacy policy, and verified model repositories.
- Time-sensitive statements include a specific verification date. Prices, model names, limits, and availability should be rechecked before consequential decisions.
- Chat-Deep.ai product statements describe this site only. Our independent browser chat is not presented as the official DeepSeek chat, app, platform, or support channel.
- Editorial guidance explains practical choices, risks, and implementation controls. It is not an official DeepSeek endorsement, benchmark, legal opinion, or guarantee of model performance.
- Corrections and material changes should update the visible verification date only after the affected facts and links have been checked again.
Read the Editorial Policy for sourcing and correction standards, and review Chat-Deep.ai Features for browser-chat behavior, history, privacy mode, and service limits.
DeepSeek AI FAQ
What is DeepSeek AI?
DeepSeek is an AI company that develops language models and provides an official chat, mobile apps, a developer API, research resources, and open-weight model releases. “DeepSeek AI” may refer to the company, its user-facing products, or its model ecosystem.
What is the official DeepSeek website?
The official website is DeepSeek.com. Official hosted chat is at chat.deepseek.com, and official developer accounts and API keys are managed through platform.deepseek.com.
Is DeepSeek free?
DeepSeek’s official website presented hosted chat as free to access when verified on July 16, 2026. API usage is separate and token-billed. Free access does not guarantee unlimited use, identical regional availability, or permanent access to every feature.
Which DeepSeek API models were listed on July 16, 2026?
The official API pricing page listed deepseek-v4-flash and deepseek-v4-pro. It documented a 1M context length and maximum output of 384K for both. Verify the official documentation before implementing or migrating an application.
Can I use Chat-Deep.ai without a DeepSeek account?
Yes. Chat-Deep.ai provides independent browser chat without using a DeepSeek account on this site. It is not the official DeepSeek service. Prompts and the context required to answer them are sent to the DeepSeek API, and ads or usage limits may apply.
Is DeepSeek safe for business data?
Do not assume that any hosted or third-party AI service is approved for confidential or regulated data. Review the access path, official privacy terms, data classification, retention, logging, region, security controls, contracts, and organizational policy. Use only approved workflows and require human review for consequential outputs.
Can DeepSeek run locally?
Eligible open-weight DeepSeek releases can run on compatible local or private infrastructure. Hardware needs vary widely by model size and quantization. Local execution gives you more infrastructure control, but privacy and security still depend on the full runtime, storage, network, telemetry, logging, access-control, and maintenance setup.
Choose Your DeepSeek Route
Use the official chat for an official hosted account experience, Chat-Deep.ai for independent browser chat, or the model and API guides when you are building an application.
Editorial verification: July 16, 2026 · Chat-Deep.ai is independent and is not affiliated with DeepSeek.