11 Best Deepseek AI Alternatives in 2025 |

The best thing about AI’s rapid growth is that competitors keep raising the bar.

Every new AI model pushes the limits, giving users better options and keeping businesses, CEOs, and investors on their toes.

DeepSeek AI is a prime example. Unlike ChatGPT and other large language models, which thrive on monthly subscription fees, DeepSeek AI offers a free, open-source alternative that challenges the traditional AI revenue model.

DeepSeek AI also boasts lower memory usage, reducing the cost of running AI tasks—something business professionals and data analysts appreciate.

If you’re now reconsidering DeepSeek AI and hunting for multiple AI models that are just as efficient (and won’t burn a hole in your wallet), you’re not alone. Here’s a list of the 11 best DeepSeek AI alternatives you can try out to boost your productivity and work.

What Is DeepSeek AI?

DeepSeek AI is a free, open-source AI platform that taps into real-time web data to generate insights, assist with writing, analyze trends, and even tackle coding tasks.

Developed by Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Basic Technology Research Co., Ltd., DeepSeek was founded in 2023 and launched its chatbot and DeepSeek-R1 model in January 2025.

Here’s a glimpse of what DeepSeek AI can do:

• Processes and generates text with advanced natural language processing, allowing for everything from writing assistance to technical document creation ✅
• Supports multiple programming languages and can handle complex coding challenges, making it a powerful tool for software development ✅
• Performs real-time data analysis, helping data analysts extract insights from large datasets quickly and efficiently ✅
• Competes with top-tier AI models like Perplexity AI and Google Gemini, offering comparable features at a lower cost ✅

Why Go for DeepSeek AI Alternatives?

DeepSeek’s AI capabilities have made waves, but if we go through user reviews, we will begin to find many flaws. Here are the biggest challenges that make people reconsider:

1. Server issues: When “free” means “unavailable” 😥

DeepSeek AI might be open source and cost-effective, but if you’ve ever tried using it during peak hours, you know the struggle. Many users report frequent server downtime and sluggish response times.

2. Privacy concerns: Who’s watching? 👀

DeepSeek AI has sparked concerns over data security and ethical AI practices. While there is no concrete evidence suggests security concerns, businesses handling sensitive customer data or proprietary information may hesitate before integrating it into their workflows.

3. Limited API access: Paywalls lurking in the shadows 👤

Sure, the web chatbot is free, but API key access? Not so much. If you’re a developer using DeepSeek for AI-powered automation, software development, or conversational AI, expect to hit a paywall quickly.

4. Performance gaps: Impressive but not unmatched 📉

While DeepSeek excels in cost efficiency, it still lags behind premium AI tools like OpenAI’s latest large language models when it comes to advanced reasoning and optimal performance.

5. Hardware dependencies: Not everyone has a supercomputer 🧑‍💻

Yes, DeepSeek AI is open source, meaning you can run it locally—if you have a high-end GPU farm. Otherwise, you’re stuck with the web version, which, as we mentioned, is often down or rate-limited compared to other AI tools.

DeepSeek Alternatives at Glance

Tool	Use case	Best for
	AI-powered project management and knowledge management	Business professionals, project managers, and data analysts
Google Gemini	AI-enabled workflow automation and content generation	Teams using Google Workspace, professionals
Perplexity AI	AI-powered search and research insights	Researchers, professionals
ChatGPT	AI-driven project assistance and automation	Business teams, professionals
Meta Llama 3	Open-source AI development and experimentation	Developers, businesses
Claude AI	Programming assistance and idea exploration	Developers, researchers, professionals
Qwen 2.5	Cost-effective AI coding and automation	Developers, enterprises, multilingual AI users
Elicit AI	AI-powered academic research and literature reviews	Academics, researchers, students
Hugging Face Transformers	Machine learning and NLP model deployment	AI researchers, developers, data scientists
Algolia AI	AI-assisted search and discovery	E-commerce, SaaS, businesses
Elasticsearch	Enterprise search and real-time analytics	Large organizations, enterprises

The 11 Best DeepSeek Alternatives to Use

DeepSeek AI might not be your cup of tea, and that’s okay. 

Whether it’s server downtime, privacy concerns, or the urge to try something new, plenty of DeepSeek AI alternatives can match—or even outperform it. Here’s a curated list:

1. (Best for AI-powered project management and knowledge management)

is the everything app for work—a single platform where project management, documents, and team communication collide with next-gen AI automation and search capabilities.

Brain 

Brain, the platform’s AI assistant, answers all your workspace questions by pulling details from Docs, tasks, and even comments.

If you’ve ever felt like everything is due now, Brain brings clarity by sorting tasks based on urgency, dependencies, and deadlines. You can even ask, “What should I work on next?” and get an AI-powered answer. See the magic of Brain below!

🚀 Here’s more about what Brain does for you:

• Automatic summaries = less reading, more doing: Workplace content is overwhelming, and no one wants to scroll through mile-long task threads. Brain summarizes long emails, project updates, and meeting notes
• Personal standups, minus the meetings: AI StandUp generates bite-sized status updates so teams can stay aligned without unnecessary syncs
• Emails, marketing collaterals, and content: Brain writes excellent marketing copy, from emails to presentation content to social media posts, when you get stuck 
• Natural language automations: takes automation to the next level by letting users create workflows just by describing them in plain English

Knowledge Management

One of the biggest reasons business professionals, project managers, and data analysts love is its effortless ability to centralize information. 

’s AI Knowledge Management feature makes real-time information retrieval effortless by pulling relevant information from tasks, comments, docs, and wikis instantly. Say goodbye to endless context-hunting!

🚀 Here’s how it helps: 

• Import team knowledge: Securely import Docs and knowledge from any tool
• Use Wiki templates: Speed up your team’s work with a bunch of wiki templates, which include live editing and integrated comments
• Advanced permissions: Maintain control of your knowledge with comprehensive permissions and version history

Connected Search  

However, ’s knowledge management capabilities are incomplete without the Connected Search feature.

If you’re deep in a critical project and suddenly need a document from two months ago that you barely remember, ’s Connected Search will surface it in seconds. If this were buried in Slack or lost in an email thread, you’d either spend hours searching or end up asking a coworker to resend it.

Connected Search scans all your integrated apps, from Google Drive to Jira and Salesforce, bringing you the right information in seconds. With these features, offers an organized, accessible, and useful workspace. 

best features

• AI-powered knowledge management: Get intelligent searches, automated summaries, and real-time AI-powered insights with Brain
• Connected Search for unified access: Search across Google Drive, Slack, Jira, Salesforce, and other integrated tools to instantly find what you need
• Real-time collaboration: Edit on Docs, assign tasks, and communicate with your team in one place without switching between apps
• Automated workflows and task prioritization: Use AI-powered automation to update statuses, assign tasks, and organize work based on urgency
• Highly customizable workspace: Personalize to your specific project management needs with flexible categories, tags, and dashboards

limitations

• The extensive features and customization options can take time to configure and master
• Brain is only available with paid plans

pricing

• Free Forever
• Unlimited: $7/month per user
• Business: $12/month per user
• Enterprise: Contact for pricing
• Brain: Add to any paid plan for $7 per member per month

ratings and reviews:

• G2: 4.7/5 (9,000+ reviews) 
• Capterra: 4.6/5 (4,000+ reviews)

What are real-life users saying about ?

2. Google Gemini (Best for AI-powered workflow automation and content generation)

Google Gemini works like an extra set of hands inside Google Workspace, handling the busy work so you don’t have to.

One of the advantages of Gemini is its deep integration with Google’s ecosystem. If you already use Gmail, Calendar, or Drive, Gemini seamlessly fits into your workflow and offers real-time data access.

Need to extract action items from a long email thread? Gemini can summarize it for you. Want a quick project timeline? It can generate a structured table in Sheets and outline the project’s key features.  

Google Gemini best features

• Generates task lists, project reports, and summaries in docs, reducing manual work
• Automates email responses and action items in Gmail to keep projects moving
• Extracts insights from long email chains and turns them into organized to-do lists
• Creates custom visuals in Slides using AI-powered text-to-image generation
• Enhances risk assessment and forecasting by analyzing data trends in Sheets

Google Gemini limitations

• Gemini’s advanced AI features require a Google Workspace subscription
• Works best within Google’s ecosystem, with limited integrations for non-Google apps
• Lacks role-specific AI customization compared to some competitors

Google Gemini pricing

• Free
• Gemini Advanced: $24/month per user

Google Gemini ratings and reviews

• G2: 4.4/5 (160+ reviews)
• Capterra: Not enough reviews

What are real-life users saying about Google Gemini?

3. Perplexity AI (Best for AI-powered search and research insights)

Traditional search engines often require users to sift through multiple links to find reliable information. Perplexity AI changes that by acting as an AI-powered research assistant that delivers instant, well-cited responses.

Moreover, unlike standard search engines, Perplexity AI pulls from multiple sources in real time, summarizes key insights, and even refines results through follow-up questions.

Perplexity AI best features

• Provides AI-powered search results with source citations for transparency
• Supports multiple LLMs, including GPT-4, Claude 3, and its own models
• Offers real-time web indexing for real time data retrieval of the latest information
• Enables deep research with Pro Search, which refines answers with follow-ups
• Organizes searches into collections, allowing users to save and categorize insights

Perplexity AI limitations

• Struggles with less-documented topics, occasionally providing surface-level information
• Lacks advanced customization features found in some AI research tools
• Pro Search and access to premium LLMs require a paid subscription

Perplexity AI pricing

• Free
• Pro: $20/month per user
• Enterprise Pro: Custom pricing 

Perplexity AI ratings and reviews

• G2: 4.6/5 (40+ reviews)
• Capterra: Not enough reviews

What are real-life users saying about Perplexity AI?

4. ChatGPT (Best for AI-driven project assistance and automation)

It’s almost a given that you are familiar with ChatGPT, so let’s explore how it can help us in project management.

The thing about projects is that multiple deadlines, teams, and endless updates need to be coordinated and tracked. And this can become overwhelming very soon when done manually. 

ChatGPT simplifies these challenges by acting as a virtual project assistant that automates repetitive tasks, enhances decision-making, and simplifies communication.

ChatGPT best features

• Automates project planning by generating task lists, schedules, and risk assessments
• Provides instant answers and insights, reducing dependency on manual research
• Summarizes reports and meeting notes, improving knowledge sharing within teams
• Assists with task assignments by analyzing workload and team strengths
• Supports predictive analytics, helping managers anticipate project risks

ChatGPT limitations

• Struggles with handling highly specific, industry-tailored project needs
• Accuracy depends on input quality, sometimes requiring manual verification
• Advanced AI-powered features require a paid subscription for full access

ChatGPT pricing

• Free
• ChatGPT Plus: $20/month per user
• Enterprise: Custom pricing

ChatGPT ratings and reviews

• G2: 4.7/5 (680+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.5/5 (100+ reviews)

What are real-life users saying about ChatGPT?

5. Meta Llama 3 (Best for open-source AI development and experimentation)

For businesses and developers looking for a customizable AI model without vendor lock-in, Meta Llama 3 offers a strong open-source alternative.

Unlike proprietary models like GPT-4 or Claude, Llama 3 allows organizations to fine-tune and deploy AI models on their own infrastructure, ensuring greater control over data privacy and cost.

Meta Llama 3 best features

• Enables customization and fine-tuning with open-source availability for businesses
• Enhances reasoning, coding, and instruction-following tasks with strong performance
• Supports multimodal capabilities, including vision-based AI models
• Optimizes efficiency with grouped query attention (GQA) and token compression
• Ensures flexible and scalable deployment on major cloud platforms

Meta Llama 3 limitations

• Lacks native support for real-time chat applications compared to closed-source models
• Requires technical expertise to fine-tune and deploy effectively
• Still catching up to proprietary models in handling nuanced queries

Meta Llama 3 pricing

Meta Llama 3 ratings and reviews

• G2: 4.3/5 (140+ reviews)
• Capterra: Not enough reviews

What are real-life users saying about Meta Llama 3?

6. Claude AI (Best for programming assistance and idea exploration)

Claude AI, developed by Anthropic, is designed with a strong emphasis on reasoning, safety, and ethical AI use. Unlike many AI models focusing on speed and versatility, Claude excels at logic-heavy tasks, coding assistance, and in-depth philosophical discussions, reflected in its user interactions. 

Claude’s ability to handle complex prompts while maintaining a conversational and structured response style makes it a good choice for developers, researchers, and deep thinkers alike.

Claude AI best features

• Supports advanced debugging and code generation with strong programming capabilities
• Handles long documents and multi-turn conversations with a large context window (up to 200,000 words)
• Interprets images and charts with enhanced vision capabilities in newer models
• Minimizes biases and harmful outputs with ethical AI alignment based on constitutional principles
• Provides API access for developers to build custom AI-driven applications

Claude AI limitations

• The free access version has a limited number of messages per session
• Lacks real-time internet access, making it less reliable for fact-checking recent events
• Struggles with specialized domain queries that require deep contextual knowledge

Claude AI pricing

• Free
• Pro: $18/month per user
• Team: $25/month per user
• Enterprise: Custom pricing

Claude AI ratings and reviews

• G2: 4.5/5 (20+ reviews)
• Capterra: Not enough reviews

What are real-life users saying about Claude AI?

7. Qwen 2.5 (Best for cost-effective AI coding and automation)

Developed by Alibaba Cloud, Qwen 2.5 is relatively new in the market but is winning over crowds with its advanced AI model designed for natural language processing, reasoning, and code generation. 

This Chinese AI model competes with top-tier models like GPT-4o, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and DeepSeek V3 while maintaining a significantly lower cost per million tokens.

Qwen 2.5 best features

• Supports text, images, and audio processing with a 128,000-token context window
• Excels in coding with 92.7% accuracy on HumanEval, outperforming GPT-4o and DeepSeek V3
• Open-source flexibility allows developers to fine-tune and integrate it into applications
• Multilingual capabilities with support for 29 languages, including Mandarin, Arabic, and Hindi
• Cost-efficient, priced at $0.38 per million tokens, making it 10x cheaper than GPT-4o

Qwen 2.5 limitations

• Closed-source for enterprise versions, limiting third-party customization
• Slightly weaker performance in creative writing compared to Claude’s 3.5 Sonnet
• Performance degradation beyond 100K tokens in highly complex tasks

Qwen 2.5 pricing

• Free
• API Access: $0.38 per million tokens
• Enterprise Plans: Custom pricing 

Qwen 2.5 ratings and reviews

• G2: Not enough reviews
• Capterra: Not enough reviews

What are real-life users saying about Qwen 2.5?

8. Elicit AI (Best for AI-powered academic research and literature reviews)

Elicit is an AI-powered research assistant designed to facilitate literature reviews and automate tedious academic research tasks.

With access to a database of over 125 million research papers, it helps users find relevant studies, extract key insights, and synthesize findings.

Elicit best features

• Finds relevant papers and provides one-sentence summaries with its AI-powered search engine
• Extracts key data points from papers and organizes them into structured tables
• Generates thematic syntheses across multiple papers for identifying research trends
• Allows users to upload PDFs and receive automated summaries and insights
• Offers systematic review workflows, supporting academic and professional research

Elicit limitations

• Abstract summaries may oversimplify complex research findings
• Data extraction may not always prioritize the most relevant details
• Limited mobile support, making it less accessible for researchers on the go

Elicit pricing

• Basic: Free 
• Plus: $10/month per user
• Pro: $42/month per user
• Team: $65/month per user
• Enterprise: Custom pricing 

Elicit ratings and reviews

• G2: Not enough reviews
• Capterra: Not enough reviews

What are real-life users saying about Elicit?

9. Hugging Face Transformers (Best for machine learning and NLP model deployment)

Hugging Face has become the GitHub of machine learning, providing an open-source platform where developers and researchers can easily share, fine-tune, and deploy natural language processing (NLP) models.

The cool part is that it hosts over a million models and datasets, making it a go-to resource for AI enthusiasts and professionals looking for state-of-the-art pre-trained models.

Hugging Face best features

• Hosts a vast collection of pre-trained models, including GPT, BERT, and RoBERTa
• Provides the Transformers library for seamless NLP model implementation in PyTorch, TensorFlow, and JAX
• Offers fine-tuning capabilities, allowing users to adapt models to specific use cases
• Supports Datasets and Spaces, enabling easy access to datasets and the ability to showcase AI models in interactive applications
• Features Inference Endpoints for deploying models on scalable cloud infrastructure

Hugging Face limitations

• Documentation can be complex for beginners navigating model configurations
• Some features require paid plans, particularly for high-performance GPU access
• Lacks strong AI content detection accuracy compared to specialized tools like Originality.AI

Hugging Face pricing

• Free
• Pro: $9/month per user
• Enterprise: Starting at $20/month per user

Hugging Face ratings and reviews

• G2: Not enough reviews
• Capterra: Not enough reviews

What are real-life users saying about Hugging Face?

10. Algolia AI (Best for AI-powered search and discovery)

If you’re looking for an AI-powered search and discovery platform that delivers fast, accurate, and scalable search experiences, Algolia is the way to go.

Unlike traditional search engines, Algolia uses Neural Search, which combines semantic and keyword-based search. This ensures users find the most relevant results in milliseconds. It is widely used in e-commerce, SaaS, and media industries to enhance search functionality across websites and applications.

Algolia best features

• Dynamic re-ranking to automatically optimize search results based on user behavior
• Personalization and AI Synonyms to tailor results and improve discoverability
• Scalable infrastructure handling billions of searches annually with 99.999% uptime
• Extensive integrations with platforms like Shopify, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, and Adobe Commerce

Algolia limitations

• Pricing can be high compared to other search solutions, especially for large-scale operations
• Complex setup and customization may require technical expertise for full optimization
• Some users report slower indexation times compared to alternatives like Elasticsearch

Algolia pricing

• Build: Free up to 10k search requests/month, 1M records included
• Grow: Free up to 10k search requests/month, then $0.50 per additional 1k requests
• Premium: Custom pricing
• Elevate: Custom pricing

Algolia ratings and reviews

• G2: 4.5/5 (400+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.7/5 (70+ reviews)

What are real-life users saying about Algolia?

11. Elasticsearch (Best for enterprise search and real-time analytics)

Elasticsearch is a powerful, open-source search and analytics engine built on Apache Lucene. It is widely used for full-text search, log, and event data analysis, and scalable data indexing.

Some features that excite you include the AI-powered search relevance and distributed scalability. These features are especially good for organizations managing large datasets that require real-time search capabilities.

Elasticsearch best features

• Handles large volumes of structured and unstructured data with a distributed, scalable architecture
• Enhances search ranking with AI-powered relevance using Elasticsearch Relevance Engine (ESRE)
• Processes logs, metrics, and business intelligence with real-time search and analytics
• Integrates seamlessly with cloud providers, databases, and security tools
• Supports machine learning, anomaly detection, and geospatial search for advanced insights

Elasticsearch limitations

• Steep learning curve, requiring advanced knowledge for optimal configuration
• High resource consumption, demanding significant CPU and memory for large deployments
• Complex licensing model with varied pricing, making cost estimation challenging

Elasticsearch pricing

• Standard: $95/month per user
• Gold: $109/month per user
• Platinum: $125/month per user
• Enterprise: $175/month per user

Elasticsearch ratings and reviews

• G2: 4.3/5 (199+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.6/5 (67+ reviews)

What are real-life users saying about Elasticsearch?

DeepSeek-ing a Better Option? ’s Happy to Help

Remember when we talked about Brain and how all you have to do is ask a question, and it just knows? 

Well, Mike Coon, Program Manager at DISH Network, can vouch for that:

But that’s just another day in ’s world—where AI and automation isn’t just a feature, it’s integrated seamlessly into work.

Once you onboard , it becomes your team’s brain center. It automates tasks, manages knowledge, centralizes search, and keeps projects moving without constant back-and-forth.

So, ready to swap confusion for clarity? Sign up on today!

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