# DeepSeek vs Poly

DeepSeek records 372,761,591 monthly visits with +4.3% month-over-month growth and Freemium pricing. Poly records 724 monthly visits with -71.5% growth and Contact for Pricing pricing.

| Metric | [DeepSeek](https://openaitools.app/tool/deepseek) | [Poly](https://openaitools.app/tool/poly) |
| :--- | :--- | :--- |
| Website URL | https://www.deepseek.com | https://poly.app |
| Categories | Large Language Models (LLMs), Open Source AI Models, AI API, AI Chatbot | AI Browsers, AI Files, AI Search Engine, AI Image Recognition |
| Pricing Model | Freemium | Contact for Pricing |
| Monthly Visits | 372,761,591 | 724 |
| MoM Growth Rate | +4.3% | -71.5% |
| Primary Market | China | Spain |
| Direct Visits | 291,585,405 | 295 |
| Review Score | 4.8 | 4.2 |
| Saved Count | 44 | 4 |
| 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)

## Poly

Poly is a cloud file browser built around the idea that you should be able to ask for a file the way you would ask a colleague. Instead of memorizing folder structures, you describe what you need in natural language and Poly searches across images, video, audio, PDFs and documents — even finding a specific scene inside a clip or a paragraph inside a report. It can also chat about your files, transcribe interviews, and generate new images from folders of references.

Beyond search, Poly behaves like a full file platform. It offers multiple view modes from feed and grid to tree and gallery, automatic tagging, complete version history, public sharing, shared drives with separate permissions, and a native-feeling interface with keyboard shortcuts and drag-and-drop. A desktop app syncs Poly files with your local file system, and both web and desktop support offline work that syncs back when you reconnect.

Privacy is handled with encryption at every stage and a Hide from AI control so you can keep sensitive material out of the assistant's reach. Poly is currently presented as a beta with a waitlist, and pricing is not published publicly, so interested teams should join the waitlist or contact the company directly.

**Pricing & Plans:** Contact for pricing. Poly is currently offered through a beta with a join-waitlist flow, and we did not find a published self-serve pricing page during review. Reach out to the Poly team or join the waitlist for access and cost details.

- **Natural-Language AI Search:** Find files by image, concept, phrase, color, face or content similarity, and search inside documents and media for the exact page, paragraph or clip.
- **Chat and Summarize Files:** Ask questions about your files and get answers, summaries and transcriptions, with long-context reading across thousands of files in one conversation.
- **Intelligent File Management:** Store, browse and organize files with Feed, Grid, Icon, Tree, Column and Gallery views, automatic tagging and full version history.
- **Desktop Sync and Offline:** Access and sync Poly files through your local file system, with both web and desktop apps working offline until changes sync.
- **Privacy and Sharing Controls:** Encryption on device, in transit and in the cloud, plus a Hide from AI toggle and granular sharing and permissions for shared drives.

**Strengths:** Finds files by concept, color, face and content similarity, not just filename; Can search inside files for a precise scene, page or clip; Chats about and summarizes your documents, media and recordings; Desktop sync, offline support and rich view modes make it feel like a real file manager

**Limitations:** Currently in beta with a join-waitlist flow, so general availability may be gated; Some advertised capabilities such as collaborative conversations are marked 'coming soon'; No published self-serve pricing, so costs require contacting the team; AI indexing of large libraries means users should deliberately use the Hide from AI controls for sensitive files

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

## Frequently Asked Questions

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

DeepSeek has 372,761,591 monthly visits, while Poly has 724. 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%; Poly has -71.5%.

### 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). Poly: Contact for Pricing. Contact for pricing. Poly is currently offered through a beta with a join-waitlist flow, and we did not find a published self-serve pricing page during review. Reach out to the Poly team or join the waitlist for access and cost details.

## 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 | [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) |
| 7 | [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) |
| 8 | [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) |
| 9 | [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) |
| 10 | [Dia Browser](https://openaitools.app/tool/dia-browser) | 1,254,172 | +108.4% | Free | The AI browser that reads between your tabs | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/dia-browser.md) |

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

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