C
CGeneral-purpose AI chat assistant for writing, research, coding and everyday tasks
Free, from $8/mo
DeepSeek vs OpenRouter
Pricing, features, platforms and who each one suits — side by side.
D
Choose DeepSeek if…
- you work on iOS, Android
- you're in its core audience: developers, ai app builders
O
Choose OpenRouter if…
- you're in its core audience: software developers, ai app and agent builders
Side by side
Feature DeepSeek OpenRouter
Pricing modelFreemiumFreemium
Starting price——
Free plan
Free trial
API
Open source
Web search—
File upload & analysis—
Runs locally—
PlatformsWeb, iOS, Android, APIWeb, API
CategoryAI ChatbotsLLM APIs & Model Hosting
CompanyDeepSeekOpenRouter
Full feature lists
D DeepSeek
- Web chat at chat.deepseek.com
- Mobile app and DeepSeek Harness desktop client
- OpenAI- and Anthropic-compatible API
- 1M-token context window, 384K max output
- Thinking mode with adjustable reasoning effort
- Web search and page fetch through the API
- Discounted pricing for cache hits and off-peak hours
O OpenRouter
- OpenAI-compatible chat completions endpoint
- Access to 600+ models from 80+ providers
- Automatic fallbacks around provider outages and rate limits
- Image, video, text-to-speech and speech-to-text endpoints
- Bring your own provider keys
- Budgets, spend controls and activity log export
- EU and US in-region routing
- Hosted MCP server for agent tooling
Their home pages
What each vendor shows first: the pitch, the plans and the sign-up.
DeepSeek · deepseek.com
OpenRouter · openrouter.aiWhat you'd pay
The cheapest plan that fits, per month, billed yearly where the plan offers it.
DeepSeek
ChatFree
deepseek-flash API$0.15/1M input tokens (cache miss, off-peak), $0.6/1M output tokens off-peak; peak rates are double
deepseek-v4-pro API$0.66/1M input tokens (cache miss, off-peak), $1.98/1M output tokens off-peak; peak rates are double
Search & Fetch$0.75 per 1,000 successful requests
OpenRouter
FreeFree
Standard5.5% fee on credit purchases
Business8% fee on credit purchases
EnterpriseCustom
Price changes we've recorded
We re-read each pricing page every month and log what changed.
DeepSeek
- Nov 5, 2026Pricing model: Paid → Freemium; New plan: Chat (Free)
OpenRouter
- Nov 8, 2026Standard: Pay-as-you-go, 5.5% fee on credit purchases → 5.5% fee on credit purchases; Business: Pay-as-you-go, 8% fee on credit purchases → 8% fee on credit purchases
Strengths and limitations
DeepSeek
- Off-peak API prices are 50% of peak prices
- 1M-token context on both API models
- Works with OpenAI and Anthropic API formats
- Available on web, mobile, and desktop
- Peak-hour API rates are twice the off-peak rates
- Web search and fetch through the API cost extra per request
- The site does not state free-tier terms or limits for the chat apps
OpenRouter
- No markup on provider token prices
- Free plan with 25+ free models
- BYOK fee-free up to $25,000 of monthly inference
- Payment by card, AliPay or USDC
- 5.5–8% platform fee on credit purchases
- Free plan limited to 50 requests per day
- SSO/SAML and SLAs only on Enterprise
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Facts from each vendor's public pages, prices checked Oct 26, 2026. Editorial policy