As a technology enthusiast, I was very excited and curious when I read the news of DeepSeek and the apparent havoc it created in the AI space. I dug deeper and was amazed to learn that DeepSeek was built at a fraction of the cost of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and reportedly performs the same and, in some cases, even better than the most powerful AI tools in the market. So, I decided to try out the DeepSeek AI assistant on my iPhone and compare it to my experience with ChatGPT. Here’s how it went.
What is DeepSeek?
DeepSeek is an artificial intelligence company owned by a China-based hedge fund, High-Flyer. It is in the news because of its latest release, the DeepSeek R1. R1 is a large language model (LLM), just like OpenAI’s o1, and it outperforms it while reportedly costing just under $6 million to train. This is a huge deal because all its competitors took almost 10 to 20 times more money.
In its research document, DeepSeek said that one of the reasons it was able to achieve this was the self-evolution process, in which the model improved its reasoning capabilities autonomously during training.
To put it in simple words, DeepSeek is a low-cost alternative to ChatGPT that largely offers a similar performance. This has shocked the AI world, and since the official release of its R1 model on 20 January, the official DeepSeek app has been trending #1 on the App Store in the US.
Comparing official apps of DeepSeek and ChatGPT on an iPhone
Now that you know what DeepSeek is, here’s a quick comparison between the DeepSeek AI Assistant and the ChatGPT iPhone app.
User Interface (UI)
The ChatGPT app has been in the market for quite some time, so it has evolved over time to offer a great UI that is simple yet elegant and works flawlessly. On the other hand, despite being in its early stage, DeepSeek has an excellent UI, though it resembles ChatGPT and most other AI chatbot apps. 
In both these apps, you are greeted with a chat screen where you can type in your query for the AI to answer. Even navigating through the app is the same, with access to chat history and settings available with a left swipe along the edge.
Therefore, UI would be a tie for me.
Features
This is where the tie breaks. ChatGPT currently has a lot more to offer than DeepSeek. For instance, ChatGPT supports image generation, speech recognition, voice mode, and the ability to interpret images. Hence, it can take input in many more ways than just text.
With Voice Mode, you can have a conversation with ChatGPT almost like you would talk to a human, and it responds well. Similarly, you can also ask ChatGPT to generate almost real-looking images. These features make ChatGPT a more versatile AI tool between the two.
While DeepSeek might get these features in the future, it currently only takes chat, documents, and OCR images (reads only text from images) as input, which significantly limits its capabilities.
Open source vs. Closed source
OpenAI is the company that makes ChatGPT, but DeepSeek is the one that is truly open, as it’s an open-source LLM. That means DeepSeek’s source code is freely available and anyone can download and run it locally on their computers. Making software open source is still a very good step to build users’ trust in the company. For ChatGPT, you always need to rely on the OpenAI servers and an internet connection to run it. However, this wouldn’t affect regular users like you and me.
Output speed
To check the output speed, I used multiple prompts in both apps. One such was “Show me the best places to visit in Australia.” Here’s how fast I got the answer:
ChatGPT took just 15 seconds, but it also provided a brief output suggesting only 5 places. DeepSeek, on the other hand, took a lot more time, at around 90 seconds. However, it did put out a lot more info, suggesting 18 travel destinations.
It is also important to note that the ChatGPT app uses the 4o model, which is faster but much weaker than the DeepThink (R1) model that DeepSeek uses. The R1 model’s real competitor is the o1 model, which is only available on the paid version of ChatGPT. On DeepSeek, you can also visibly notice its thought process as it displays the steps it took to arrive at the answer, which you can’t do on ChatGPT.
Factual accuracy
To check the factual accuracy of both these AI tools, I asked them to show me the timeline of iPhone launches from the first to the latest one. I got 100% accurate results from both tools, with exact launch dates even.
Next, I asked them to give me a list of all the British monarchs and their reigns. DeepSeek gave me the list from 1603, when the Kingdom of England and Scotland were united, while ChatGPT started the list from 1707, when the political union of the two kingdoms was established.
I liked DeepSeek’s approach here as it gave me more comprehensive information compared to ChatGPT’s basic response.
Accessibility
When it comes to accessibility, you can access DeepSeek and ChatGPT on the web and native app. DeepSeek gets bonus points for being completely free to use. ChatGPT, while not completely free, does offer more features, so there is a plus point going for it.
Subscriptions
As of writing this, the DeepSeek app is completely free to use, even with its R1 model. ChatGPT is also free to use, but the free version has certain limitations, like a much older and weaker model, limited usage in a specific time period, and limited image creation. As such, you can subscribe to either of its two paid plans: ChatGPT Plus at $20/month or ChatGPT Pro at $200/month.
Results and conclusion: Which one comes out on top?
After trying out both AI tools, I am leaning towards DeepSeek here. ChatGPT has a lot more features, but I am hopeful that DeepSeek will get most of those features very soon. If we combine that with a free, open-source, and better model of DeepSeek, it surely comes out on top.
That said, the debate about whether AI is a boon or bane to humanity will go on for a long time. New and better AI models like DeepSeek will keep coming to the market. We can only learn to incorporate AI into our lives and use it efficiently and ethically to make our work easier and better.
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