DeepSeek vs. ChatGPT: How They Compare in 2025 after GPT-5 Update
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The AI scene today feels like a nonstop race, and lately, the pace has only accelerated. When DeepSeek dropped its R1 model in January 2025, it took over the internet. Not only did it match OpenAI’s GPT-4 and o1 on tough reasoning and math benchmarks, but it cost only around 6% as much to train! Meanwhile, OpenAI’s GPT-5 release in August promised smarter, faster, more accurate answers, and live coding.
In this article, we’ll compare DeepSeek and ChatGPT side by side across some use cases like general conversations, research and planning, content creation, and coding. You’ll see exactly what each one brings to the table in 2025, with real prompts, screenshots, and verdicts.
DeepSeek: Why Everyone’s Talking About It
Unlike most Silicon Valley tech products, DeepSeek comes from a China-based AI startup specializing in open-source large language models (LLMs). In January 2025, it caught global attention with its reasoning model, DeepSeek-R1, which scored on par with and in some cases outperformed OpenAI’s o1 and GPT-4 on reasoning, math, and coding benchmarks.
Not only that, it was trained at a significantly lower cost, reportedly around US$6 million compared to OpenAI’s $100 million for GPT‑4, thanks to its innovative design that requires less computing power. It’s also open source—anyone can access the model weights, fine-tune it, or even host it themselves. This gives developers full control and flexibility without having to pay ongoing subscription fees, while also pushing AI innovation forward for everyone.
GPT-5: The Upgrade Everyone’s Talking About
ChatGPT is one of the most widely used AI assistants, and you’ve probably tried it whether you’re tech-savvy or not. Since its launch in late 2022, it has evolved from a simple conversational AI into a powerful, multimodal, and deeply integrated digital assistant that can handle text, images, and audio in real time, and even connect with other apps!
Its latest model, GPT-5 (as of August 2025), is said to be the smartest version yet. It uses a real-time routing system to automatically pick the best AI model for your query, reduces mistakes, cuts down on fabricated answers, and avoids being overly agreeable. On top of that, it also introduces a new live code feature, which you can run and preview code generated from your prompt directly in the chat.
DeepSeek vs. ChatGPT: How They Compare After the GPT-5 Update
In this section, we’ll share real-world test results from putting DeepSeek and ChatGPT through some common tasks. For each category, we gave both DeepSeek and ChatGPT the same prompt, using their default settings.
1. General Conversational Assistance
People turn to conversational AI for all sorts of questions, from random things they wonder about, comparisons between two choices, to academic queries, and more. In casual situations, these questions are usually short, often just a single sentence.
For example, we asked both DeepSeek and ChatGPT the same question: “Explain programming like I’m 10 years old.”….
DeepSeek
DeepSeek followed the instructions and used examples that would appeal to a 10-year-old, like “writing a recipe for a robot” and “making a peanut butter sandwich”. However, the response was mostly in point form, and the way it’s put together felt a bit boring to really engage a kid that age.
ChatGPT
ChatGPT also used the “robot friend” example, but its explanation was more detailed than DeepSeek’s. It described what programming is, and used fun metaphors like “playing a game, solving a puzzle, or drawing a picture” to help the kid get it. The tone felt more engaging too!
🤔 Our take: We preferred ChatGPT here. Its tone felt more fun and engaging, and the answer was easier to understand!
2. Research and Planning
Conversational AIs are also great for research and planning, especially now that most can search the web. To test this, we asked DeepSeek and ChatGPT to plan a 7-day trip to Japan.
When a request needs more context or current information, like planning a trip, ChatGPT automatically searches the web and cites its sources. DeepSeek, on the other hand, only does this if you manually enable “Web Search”. Otherwise, it relies solely on its training data. Even so, for this example, both tools gave almost identical suggestions, recommending the same cities and highlighting the cherry blossom season, even when DeepSeek didn’t use web search. Both even followed up with travel tips after the itinerary!
DeepSeek (without Web Search)
DeepSeek (with Web Search)
ChatGPT
ChatGPT’s answer was a bit more detailed. It included the weather, which is pretty important for planning a trip, and wrapped things up with a summary table that makes the whole plan easy to see at a glance.
🤔 Our take: Both gave similar answers but structured them differently. DeepSeek listed the route first, then the detailed plan, while ChatGPT did the reverse. Both added extra travel tips, even though we didn’t ask. However, ChatGPT went further by including details like the weather and automatically citing sources, which is handy if you want to read more from the original site.
3. Content Creation
LLMs like DeepSeek and ChatGPT are also useful tools for content creation, whether it’s for planning, drafting, repurposing, or optimizing content. For written formats like articles, captions, and X posts (tweets), they can handle drafting, writing, and editing. For other types of content, such as short-form or long-form videos, they’re great for brainstorming ideas, writing scripts, or captions.
In the example below, we’ve used both to turn this article into a short-form video:
DeepSeek
DeepSeek’s response is very detailed. It gives you a fully structured short-form video script, broken down into scenes with visuals, narration, style, and timestamps. You could basically film the video directly from its reply!
ChatGPT
ChatGPT also provided a script divided into sections, including the duration for each part and the narration. However, unlike DeepSeek, it didn’t offer visual suggestions, which is a key element for video content and would be extremely helpful during the creation process if provided.
As for creating content from scratch, we tested them by asking for some witty X posts. Here’s what they came up with:
DeepSeek
Everyone’s sense of humor is different, but I think DeepSeek did a pretty good job here. Aside from the jokes themselves, it nailed the structure. It ends each one with a question and a “👇” emoji to encourage comments and also adds hashtags for extra reach.
ChatGPT
ChatGPT’s replies with a similar structure to DeepSeek. The jokes are short—usually one to two sentences. However, even when there’s an emoji before the CTA, the tone feels a bit dull and less genuine compared to DeepSeek.
🤔 Our take: This one’s a clear win for DeepSeek. The video script was detailed, and the X post felt more natural while adapting the writing style for the platform.
4. Coding
DeepSeek and ChatGPT might not be the go-to choices for coding compared to more developer-focused tools like Claude Code, Cursor or Windsurf, but let’s test their coding skills anyway to see what we can learn.
We asked DeepSeek and ChatGPT to build a simple to-do list app, and here’s what they created:
DeepSeek
DeepSeek built a simple app using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, with basic features like adding and deleting tasks. Just enough to get the job done.
ChatGPT
ChatGPT built an app with a React frontend, even without me specifying the language or framework. Compared to DeepSeek’s basic version, ChatGPT’s app offered more features. Other than adding and deleting tasks, you can also edit them. Tasks can be viewed in “All”, “Active”, and “Completed” views, and it displays how many tasks are still pending.
🐱 Meow Memo: Both DeepSeek and ChatGPT give you the code, and you can preview it right in the chat. And they are functional!
Let’s take it a step further and ask DeepSeek and ChatGPT to make the app more colorful…
DeepSeek
The app was enhanced with more color as requested. However, it also changed the design, which I never requested.
ChatGPT
ChatGPT followed the request exactly, and it looked good! It made the app more colorful while keeping the rest of the design and features unchanged.
🐱 Meow Memo: Since ChatGPT returns React code, the preview might take longer to load and could occasionally get stuck.
🤔 Our take: Compared to DeepSeek, ChatGPT built a more complete app and followed instructions more closely, especially when asked to modify the original code. If you’d prefer it not to use React for the frontend by default, make sure to state that clearly in your request.
5. Other Features
Aside from handling general inquiries, research and planning, content creation, and coding, both DeepSeek and ChatGPT also offer additional features that complement these tasks.
Here are some of those extra capabilities, along with other important details you should know:
| Feature | DeepSeek | ChatGPT |
|---|---|---|
| Multimodality | Text only | Fully multimodal (text, images, documents) |
| Context Length | 128K | 400k |
| Max Output Token | 64K | 128k |
| Openness | Open-weight (MIT License) | Closed-source |
| Privacy & Control | Can be self-hosted for full control | Cloud-based, less direct control |
| Image Generation | Not supported | Supported via DALL·E model |
| File Uploads | Docs and images (for text extraction only) | Text files, spreadsheets, presentations, and documents (for synthesis, extraction, and transformation) |
| Voice Mode | Not supported | Supported |
| Third-party App Integration | Not supported | Connect to Google Drive, OneDrive, SharePoint, and more |
| Cost | Free | Free + paid plans from $20/month (GPT-5 available only on paid plans) |
What People Think About DeepSeek and ChatGPT
We’ve compared their results in this article, but what about everyone else’s experience? To get a better sense of how DeepSeek and ChatGPT hold up in real-world use, we checked forums, social media, and developer communities to see what other users are saying.
DeepSeek
👍🏻 The Good
- "…it's as good as O1 but 1/50th the cost. You can use it all day and spend the same amount of money as you were with O1"
- "Being playing with reasoning on deepseek chat and it really blows me the quality that it outputs comparing with lead providers. Well done deepseek."
- "Been using R1 for technical writing and documentation. It's surprisingly good at explaining complex topics clearly and catches technical inconsistencies better than other models I've tried."
🙅🏻♀️ The Bad
- "I tried asking about <a sensitive issue> - immediately got the "sorry out of scope message". "
- "…it’s so freakin repetitive. Like every answer is almost word for word the previous one."
- "It's awful at long form writing. Flat-out. Repetitive, stupid, and prone to looping"
ChatGPT
👍🏻 The Good
- "No one comes close to GPT5 in instructions following, long context evaluations, hallucination reductions.Just look at the benchmarks…"
- "(GPT-5) The contextual understanding jump is huge. Tokens per second is way up, and cost per intelligence is way down, which is nice."
🙅🏻♀️ The Bad
- "(GPT-5) It's literally a repainted 4o + o3. Knowledge cutoff is 2024. Voice mode is the exact same. Image generation is the exact same."
- "There is no way this can be the new model? It's worse than ChatGPT was two years ago."
- "I feel that the new model is incredibly limited, slower, worse at analysis, gives half-hearted responses, and has removed the older, more reliable models completely."
Final Thoughts
Both DeepSeek and ChatGPT have their own strengths and weaknesses, and which one works better really depends on the person using it. Regardless of performance, one big advantage of DeepSeek is that it’s free and open source. This not only benefits everyday users but also drives AI advancement by making it easier for developers to build on and improve the technology.
ChatGPT, on the other hand, has seen mixed reactions with GPT-5. But as one of the biggest AI companies, and with previous models like GPT-4o that were widely loved, it’s likely they’ll keep rolling out updates to improve things based on user feedback. And if you need image generation, voice support, or integration with other apps, ChatGPT is the clear choice, since DeepSeek doesn’t offer those.
If you'd like to learn more about other AI tools, check out:
