{
    "title": "DeepSeek Alternatives 2027: 11 Paid, Free & Open-Source",
    "url": "https://zekaiwork.com/alternatives/deepseek/",
    "summary": "The best DeepSeek alternatives in 2027 are Claude (best overall, $20/mo), Gemini (best free plan: Limited usage, 5-hour refresh) and Ollama (best open source, MIT). DeepSeek: No subscription; API billed per token on api-docs.deepseek.com. Zekai checked these prices on vendor pages on 13 Nov 2026; 8 more are compared below, including 3 with a free plan and 3 open source.",
    "tool": {
        "name": "DeepSeek",
        "starting_price": "No subscription; API billed per token on api-docs.deepseek.com.",
        "free_plan": "Web and app chat; no limit stated on vendor site",
        "price_checked": "2026-11-13",
        "pricing_url": "https://api-docs.deepseek.com/quick_start/pricing"
    },
    "task": "AI chatbot / general assistant",
    "prices_checked": "2026-11-13",
    "date_modified": "2026-11-13",
    "alternatives": [
        {
            "name": "Claude",
            "type": "Free plan + paid",
            "starting_price": "$20/mo",
            "free_plan_limit": "Limited usage per 5-hour and weekly window",
            "best_for": "Long documents and careful writing",
            "difference": "Claude Pro costs $20 monthly or $17 a month on the annual plan, with a $100 Max tier; DeepSeek lists only per-token API rates and no chat plan.",
            "price_checked": "2026-11-11",
            "pricing_url": "https://claude.com/pricing",
            "website": "https://claude.ai",
            "zekai_score": 9.4,
            "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/claude/"
        },
        {
            "name": "Gemini",
            "type": "Free plan + paid",
            "starting_price": "$4.99/mo",
            "free_plan_limit": "Free with a Google Account; limits refresh every 5 hours up to a weekly cap",
            "best_for": "Free chat inside a Google account",
            "difference": "Gemini's free tier comes with any Google Account, and paid steps are sold as multiples of free usage: AI Plus 2x, AI Pro 4x, Ultra up to 20x of Pro.",
            "price_checked": "2026-11-11",
            "pricing_url": "https://gemini.google/subscriptions/",
            "website": "https://gemini.google.com",
            "zekai_score": 8.7,
            "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/gemini/"
        },
        {
            "name": "Mistral Le Chat",
            "type": "Free plan + paid",
            "starting_price": "$14.99/mo",
            "free_plan_limit": "Limited messages and web searches; 5 scheduled tasks",
            "best_for": "Chat plan from a European lab",
            "difference": "Le Chat Pro is $14.99 a month before taxes with up to 6x the free messages and 15 GB of library storage; a Team plan is $24.99 per user.",
            "price_checked": "2026-11-11",
            "pricing_url": "https://mistral.ai/pricing",
            "website": "https://mistral.ai",
            "zekai_score": 9.1,
            "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/mistral-ai/"
        },
        {
            "name": "Perplexity",
            "type": "Free",
            "starting_price": "Free plan; paid price not published",
            "free_plan_limit": "3 Pro searches a day, 1 research query a month",
            "best_for": "Cited answers from live web search",
            "difference": "Perplexity's free Standard plan gives practically unlimited basic searches, 3 Pro searches a day and 1 research query a month; Education Pro is $10 a month.",
            "price_checked": "2026-11-11",
            "pricing_url": "https://www.perplexity.ai/help-center/en/articles/11187416-which-perplexity-subscription-plan-is-right-for-you",
            "website": "https://perplexity.ai",
            "zekai_score": 9.3,
            "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/perplexity/"
        },
        {
            "name": "Microsoft Copilot",
            "type": "Free",
            "starting_price": "Free plan; paid price not published",
            "free_plan_limit": "Free baseline experience; usage limits apply",
            "best_for": "Copilot inside Word, Excel and PowerPoint",
            "difference": "Copilot offers a free baseline experience, and Microsoft 365 Premium adds Copilot in Word and Excel with the highest usage limits; usage cannot be shared.",
            "price_checked": "2026-11-11",
            "pricing_url": "https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-copilot/for-individuals",
            "website": "https://copilot.microsoft.com",
            "zekai_score": 6.8,
            "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/microsoft-copilot/"
        },
        {
            "name": "Qwen",
            "type": "Paid",
            "starting_price": "Not checked",
            "free_plan_limit": "No free plan",
            "best_for": "Chatbot with image and video understanding",
            "difference": "Qwen's site describes a chatbot with image and video understanding from Alibaba's Qwen model family; the home page lists no plan prices or free limits.",
            "price_checked": "2026-11-11",
            "pricing_url": "https://qwen.ai",
            "website": "https://qwen.ai",
            "zekai_score": 7.5,
            "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/qwen/"
        },
        {
            "name": "Grok",
            "type": "Paid",
            "starting_price": "Not checked",
            "free_plan_limit": "No free plan",
            "best_for": "Chat with live web and X answers",
            "difference": "Grok describes itself as an assistant that chats, creates images, writes code and answers in real time from the web and X; private chats are not used for training.",
            "price_checked": "2026-11-11",
            "pricing_url": "https://grok.com",
            "website": "https://grok.com"
        },
        {
            "name": "Ollama",
            "type": "Open source",
            "starting_price": "Free (self-hosted)",
            "free_plan_limit": "No limit (self-hosted)",
            "licence": "MIT",
            "best_for": "Running open models on your computer",
            "difference": "Ollama runs open models on your hardware without limits and sells optional cloud access: Pro at $20 a month with $60 of usage credits, Max at $100.",
            "price_checked": "2026-11-11",
            "pricing_url": "https://ollama.com/pricing",
            "repository": "https://github.com/ollama/ollama",
            "zekai_open_source_page": "https://zekaiwork.com/free-open-source/ollama/",
            "zekai_score": 9.1,
            "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/free-open-source/ollama/"
        },
        {
            "name": "Open WebUI",
            "type": "Open source",
            "starting_price": "Free (self-hosted)",
            "free_plan_limit": "No limit (self-hosted)",
            "licence": "Open WebUI License (branding-preserving)",
            "best_for": "Self-hosted chat UI for Ollama",
            "difference": "Open WebUI is a self-hosted chat interface that points at Ollama or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, so DeepSeek's API can sit behind your own login screen.",
            "price_checked": "2026-11-11",
            "repository": "https://github.com/open-webui/open-webui",
            "zekai_score": 9,
            "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/open-webui/"
        },
        {
            "name": "LibreChat",
            "type": "Open source",
            "starting_price": "Free (self-hosted)",
            "free_plan_limit": "No limit (self-hosted)",
            "licence": "MIT",
            "best_for": "Self-hosted multi-provider chat interface",
            "difference": "LibreChat is an MIT-licensed web app that connects to many providers at once with agents, MCP and search, so you pay each provider's own API rates.",
            "price_checked": "2026-11-11",
            "repository": "https://github.com/danny-avila/LibreChat",
            "zekai_open_source_page": "https://zekaiwork.com/free-open-source/librechat/",
            "zekai_score": 7.7,
            "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/free-open-source/librechat/"
        },
        {
            "name": "Jan",
            "type": "Open source",
            "starting_price": "Free (self-hosted)",
            "free_plan_limit": "No limit (self-hosted)",
            "licence": "Apache-2.0",
            "best_for": "Offline desktop chat with local models",
            "difference": "Jan is an Apache-2.0 desktop app that runs offline, downloads models from Hugging Face and exposes a local OpenAI-compatible server on port 1337.",
            "price_checked": "2026-11-11",
            "repository": "https://github.com/janhq/jan",
            "zekai_open_source_page": "https://zekaiwork.com/free-open-source/jan/",
            "zekai_score": 8.2,
            "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/free-open-source/jan/"
        }
    ],
    "faq": [
        {
            "q": "What is the best alternative to DeepSeek in 2027?",
            "a": "Claude is the best overall DeepSeek alternative on this page ($20/mo). For no cost, Gemini has a free plan (Free with a Google Account; limits refresh every 5 hours up to a weekly cap). To self-host, Ollama is open source (MIT)."
        },
        {
            "q": "Is there a free version of DeepSeek?",
            "a": "Yes. DeepSeek has a free plan: Web and app chat; no limit stated on vendor site. Paid plans start at No subscription; API billed per token on api-docs.deepseek.com., checked on 13 Nov 2026."
        },
        {
            "q": "Is there a 100% free alternative to DeepSeek?",
            "a": "Yes. Ollama, Open WebUI, LibreChat, Jan are open source and free to self-host. Claude, Gemini, Mistral Le Chat, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot have a free plan with limits, shown in the table."
        },
        {
            "q": "How much do DeepSeek alternatives cost for a team of 5?",
            "a": "If each of 5 people buys the entry paid plan, at the prices Zekai checked on 13 Nov 2026, the monthly cost is Gemini $24.95/mo, Mistral Le Chat $74.95/mo, Claude $100/mo. Team and business plans can cost more per seat. The Zekai Cost Finder on this page recalculates for any team size."
        },
        {
            "q": "Which is better, Claude or DeepSeek?",
            "a": "Claude Pro costs $20 monthly or $17 a month on the annual plan, with a $100 Max tier; DeepSeek lists only per-token API rates and no chat plan. Choose Claude if you want a fixed monthly chat subscription with a higher Max tier instead of metering tokens. Stay with DeepSeek if you build on an API billed per million tokens and want open weights you can download."
        },
        {
            "q": "Why are people leaving DeepSeek?",
            "a": "The documented reasons are: DeepSeek introduced peak and off-peak API pricing, with off-peak prices set at half of peak-hour prices, effective 16 August 2026 (13 Aug 2026); With the V4.1-Flash release, the previous V4 Flash and V4 Flash Vision Exp models were retired and API prices were reduced (10 Sep 2026). Each is sourced in the section above."
        },
        {
            "q": "What is better than DeepSeek?",
            "a": "It depends on the job. Claude suits long documents and careful writing, Gemini suits Google account users, and Perplexity returns cited web answers. For open weights you run yourself, Ollama and Jan are the local options."
        },
        {
            "q": "Can I run DeepSeek locally?",
            "a": "DeepSeek states its models are open-source and available on Hugging Face and ModelScope. Local runtimes such as Ollama, Jan and Open WebUI can serve open models on your own computer, subject to your memory and GPU."
        }
    ],
    "publisher": "Zekai (zekaiwork.com) — independently reviewed; prices read on vendor pages on the dates shown.",
    "licence": "Free to quote with a link to https://zekaiwork.com/alternatives/deepseek/. Bulk copying or republishing the dataset is not permitted."
}