FAQ: DeepSeek vs. OpenAI (Jan 2026): How the Free Model War is Changing

Question 1

Is DeepSeek-V4 free to use?

Accepted Answer

Yes, the basic chat interface on the official DeepSeek website and mobile app remains free for standard queries. However, access to the high-performance API for developers is paid, though priced significantly lower ($0.80/1M tokens) than competitors like OpenAI or Anthropic.

Question 2

Can I run DeepSeek-V4 locally on my computer?

Accepted Answer

It depends on the version. The full 600B MoE model requires enterprise-grade GPUs (like H100 clusters). However, the quantized 7B and 33B distilled versions released today are optimized for consumer hardware. The 7B model can run natively on modern smartphones with SnapDragon Gen 5 chips or laptops with at least 16GB of RAM.

Question 3

How does DeepSeek-V4 compare to GPT-4.5?

Accepted Answer

According to the January 2026 benchmarks, DeepSeek-V4 scores higher in Coding (HumanEval) and Mathematical Reasoning (MATH). While GPT-4.5 still holds a slight edge in creative writing and nuance, DeepSeek offers a better price-to-performance ratio for technical tasks.

Question 4

What is the "Silent Reasoning" feature?

Accepted Answer

Silent Reasoning is a new protocol where the model "thinks" through a problem step-by-step internally before generating the final answer. Unlike previous "Chain of Thought" methods that printed the steps, this happens in the background to save token costs while maintaining high logical accuracy.

Question 5

Is DeepSeek safe for corporate data?

Accepted Answer

DeepSeek offers a "Privacy Mode" for enterprise API users where data is not used for model training. Additionally, because the weights are open-source (Apache 2.0), companies can host the model on their own private servers (on-premise) for maximum security, completely avoiding external data transmission.

Alyvro

FAQ: DeepSeek vs. OpenAI (Jan 2026): How the Free Model War is Changing

Alyvro

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FAQ: DeepSeek vs. OpenAI (Jan 2026): How the Free Model War is Changing