# DeepSeek vs Melius

DeepSeek records 372,761,591 monthly visits with +4.3% month-over-month growth and Freemium pricing. Melius records 240,817 monthly visits with +60.3% growth and Freemium pricing.

| Metric | [DeepSeek](https://openaitools.app/tool/deepseek) | [Melius](https://openaitools.app/tool/melius) |
| :--- | :--- | :--- |
| Website URL | https://www.deepseek.com | https://www.melius.com |
| Categories | Large Language Models (LLMs), Open Source AI Models, AI API, AI Chatbot | AI Workflow, AI Agent, AI Image Generator, AI Video Generator |
| Pricing Model | Freemium | Freemium |
| Monthly Visits | 372,761,591 | 240,817 |
| MoM Growth Rate | +4.3% | +60.3% |
| Primary Market | China | United States |
| Direct Visits | 291,585,405 | 99,122 |
| Review Score | 4.8 | 4.4 |
| Saved Count | 44 | 0 |
| Supported Platforms | Website | Website |

## DeepSeek

DeepSeek (Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Co., Ltd.) is a frontier AI research organization that disrupted the global LLM market by pairing open-weight transparency with breakthrough Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) and reinforcement-learning reasoning efficiency. Following the landmark releases of DeepSeek-V3 and the peer-reviewed DeepSeek-R1 reasoning model, DeepSeek introduced the DeepSeek-V4 generation in 2026—featuring a hybrid attention architecture and a native 1-million-token context window across DeepSeek-V4-Pro (1.6T total parameters, 49B active per token) and DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash (284B total parameters, 13B active per token).

Users can interact with DeepSeek in three ways: completely free through the consumer web portal (chat.deepseek.com) and mobile apps with one-click toggles for deep thinking and live web search; via DeepSeek's hosted, OpenAI-compatible developer API; or by self-hosting DeepSeek's open-weight checkpoints (including V3, R1, Prover-V2, and distilled Qwen/Llama variants) on private infrastructure. The models excel at competitive mathematics, algorithm design, repository-level software engineering, and structured data extraction, with automatic context caching on the API that slashes repeated prompt costs by over 95%.

In late 2026, DeepSeek remains the price-performance benchmark for developers and automation workflows. While the consumer chat interface remains free without a mandatory $20/month subscription tier, the developer API transitioned in late 2026 to two primary endpoints—`deepseek-flash` and `deepseek-v4-pro`—with time-of-day pricing. Off-peak API calls cost just $0.15 per million input tokens ($0.003 on cache hits) and $0.60 per million output tokens on Flash, and $0.66 input / $1.98 output on V4-Pro, making it a fraction of the cost of comparable Western frontier models.

**Pricing & Plans:** Free web and mobile chat app at chat.deepseek.com; pay-as-you-go OpenAI-compatible API with off-peak rates at $0.15/1M input ($0.003 cache hit) and $0.60/1M output for deepseek-flash (V4.1-Flash), and $0.66/1M input ($0.022 cache hit) and $1.98/1M output for deepseek-v4-pro (peak weekday UTC hours bill at 2x).

- **DeepSeek-V4 Hybrid Attention & 1M Context:** Leverages a sparse Mixture-of-Experts architecture (49B active parameters out of 1.6T on V4-Pro) to process up to 1 million tokens with minimal latency and memory overhead.
- **Transparent Chain-of-Thought Reasoning:** Pioneered by DeepSeek-R1 and integrated into V3.2 and V4 thinking modes, exposing step-by-step self-verification for complex math, logic, and code debugging.
- **Automatic Context Caching & Off-Peak API Pricing:** Drops input token costs to $0.003/1M on Flash and $0.022/1M on V4-Pro for cache hits, with 50% lower rates during off-peak UTC hours.
- **Free Consumer Web & Mobile Assistant:** Provides free access at chat.deepseek.com and on iOS/Android with document uploads, reasoning mode, and web search without paywalling core models.
- **Open-Weight Ecosystem & Self-Hosting Freedom:** Offers open weights for DeepSeek-V3, R1, Distill variants, and Prover models on Hugging Face and GitHub so enterprises can deploy within air-gapped environments.

**Strengths:** Completely free consumer web and mobile app with deep reasoning and web search included; Ultra-low API token rates ($0.15/$0.60 on Flash, $0.66/$1.98 on V4-Pro off-peak) with up to 98% savings on cached inputs; Drop-in OpenAI API compatibility makes switching or routing between models effortless; Strong open-weight lineage allows teams to self-host or fine-tune models without vendor lock-in

**Limitations:** Hosted API and web app store data on servers in China, prompting compliance restrictions for some Western enterprises and government agencies; Peak-hour API pricing (01:00–04:00 and 06:00–10:00 UTC on weekdays) doubles per-token costs compared to off-peak rates; Lacks native voice mode, video generation, and productivity suite integrations offered by ChatGPT and Google Gemini

[Profile (Markdown)](https://openaitools.app/tool/deepseek.md)

## Melius

Melius is an AI-native operating system for creative work. Instead of juggling separate image, video and audio tools, you describe what you want and Melius routes the request to the right model, runs the workflow, and keeps every prompt visible so you can steer the output until it lands exactly as you imagined. The company has raised $25M in funding and is used by creative teams across advertising, e-commerce, filmmaking, fashion and branding.

The workspace is built around a node-based canvas. Rather than accepting a single one-shot generation, you assemble tunable, multimodal nodes that each handle a specific part of the job. Scenarios include product mockups, pack shots, PDP and lifestyle imagery, on-model fashion visuals, storyboards, animated statics, lookbooks, treatment decks, website mockups, OOH billboards and localized marketing content, all with prompt visibility and consistency across frames.

Melius also adds collaboration and channel reach: shared workspaces, agents you can connect to Slack, custom AI voices including ElevenLabs voices, AI search and prompt enhancement. Pricing moves from individual Creator and Growth tiers through Professional and pooled Team seats, with credit allowances scaled so heavier video work can be increased as needed.

**Pricing & Plans:** Freemium with a free start, then monthly or annual individual tiers (roughly $17 Creator, $43 Growth, $248 Professional at annual pricing, each with a monthly credit allowance) plus pooled Team seats and custom Enterprise pricing. Credits are shared across available models, with image and video generation consuming them at different rates.

- **Intelligent model routing:** Melius selects the appropriate image, video or audio model for each step, so you are not locked to a single vendor's capabilities.
- **Node-based creative canvas:** Work happens on a node-based canvas where prompts stay visible and each generation is a tunable step you can re-run or adjust.
- **Multimodal generation:** Go from product mockups and pack shots to ad variants, storyboards, lookbooks and animated statics without leaving the workspace.
- **AI agents and collaboration:** Built-in agents plus Slack access, custom voices, prompt enhancement and AI search support both solo creators and shared team workspaces.
- **Campaign-scale workflows:** Agencies and in-house teams can run concept boards and full campaign-volume variants on the same canvas.

**Strengths:** Model routing means access to the best model per task instead of one fixed engine; Prompt visibility and node-based tuning give real creative control; Covers image, video and audio in one workspace rather than separate subscriptions; Shared workspaces, Slack agent and custom voices suit team workflows

**Limitations:** Credit consumption varies a lot by model, so heavier video work burns credits quickly; Best value comes from learning the node-based canvas, which has a learning curve; Individual tiers have monthly credit ceilings that larger teams outgrow

[Profile (Markdown)](https://openaitools.app/tool/melius.md)

## Frequently Asked Questions

### How do DeepSeek and Melius compare in monthly traffic?

DeepSeek has 372,761,591 monthly visits, while Melius has 240,817. Traffic estimates describe audience size, not product quality.

### How do their growth rates compare?

DeepSeek has a month-over-month growth rate of +4.3%; Melius has +60.3%.

### How does pricing compare?

DeepSeek: Freemium. Free web and mobile chat app at chat.deepseek.com; pay-as-you-go OpenAI-compatible API with off-peak rates at $0.15/1M input ($0.003 cache hit) and $0.60/1M output for deepseek-flash (V4.1-Flash), and $0.66/1M input ($0.022 cache hit) and $1.98/1M output for deepseek-v4-pro (peak weekday UTC hours bill at 2x). Melius: Freemium. Freemium with a free start, then monthly or annual individual tiers (roughly $17 Creator, $43 Growth, $248 Professional at annual pricing, each with a monthly credit allowance) plus pooled Team seats and custom Enterprise pricing. Credits are shared across available models, with image and video generation consuming them at different rates.

## Alternatives

| # | Tool Name | Monthly Visits | MoM Growth Rate | Pricing Model | Summary | Profile (Markdown) |
| :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- |
| 1 | [ChatGPT](https://openaitools.app/tool/chatgpt-4) | 6,048,022,723 | +2.2% | Freemium | Provides stronger multi-modal reasoning and agentic tools, but lacks DeepSeek's ultra-low-cost API pricing. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/chatgpt-4.md) |
| 2 | [Google Gemini](https://openaitools.app/tool/gemini-gemini-advanced) | 2,637,398,242 | -0.1% | Freemium | Offers an enormous context window and deep Google ecosystem integration, but feels less specialized for pure reasoning tasks. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/gemini-gemini-advanced.md) |
| 3 | [Claude](https://openaitools.app/tool/claude-2) | 1,253,439,413 | +23.8% | Freemium | Delivers superior long-form coding artifacts and nuanced writing, but lacks DeepSeek's specialized open-weight reasoning models. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/claude-2.md) |
| 4 | [Grok](https://openaitools.app/tool/grok) | 203,846,050 | -0.8% | Freemium | Features real-time X social data integration, but is less cost-effective for dedicated developer coding workflows. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/grok.md) |
| 5 | [Perplexity](https://openaitools.app/tool/perplexity-ai) | 88,310,223 | -3.7% | Freemium | Real-time AI answer engine and research workspace combining live web citations with frontier reasoning models. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/perplexity-ai.md) |
| 6 | [Higgsfield](https://openaitools.app/tool/higgsfield) | 47,127,865 | +16.2% | Freemium, Free Trial | Delivers powerful cinematic video and image creation, but lacks the intricate node-based workflow orchestration found in Melius. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/higgsfield.md) |
| 7 | [Qwen 4 (Alibaba Qwen4)](https://openaitools.app/tool/qwen-4) | 35,101,353 | -6.2% | Freemium | Provides comparable open-weight foundation models and multilingual performance, but requires self-hosting or third-party inference setup. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/qwen-4.md) |
| 8 | [Cursor](https://openaitools.app/tool/cursor) | 23,297,751 | +8.4% | Freemium | The AI coding agent for building ambitious software | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/cursor.md) |
| 9 | [Kimi AI](https://openaitools.app/tool/kimi-chat) | 19,632,261 | -23.4% | Free | Excels at ultra-long document analysis and research, but lacks the same level of open-weight developer community support. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/kimi-chat.md) |
| 10 | [Ollama](https://openaitools.app/tool/ollama) | 9,421,973 | +4.3% | Free, Freemium, Paid | Enables running open-source models locally on consumer hardware, but lacks DeepSeek's cloud-scale hosted reasoning power. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/ollama.md) |

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Source: https://openaitools.app/compare/deepseek-vs-melius

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