# DeepSeek vs Refocus

DeepSeek records 372,761,591 monthly visits with +4.3% month-over-month growth and Freemium pricing. Refocus records 922 monthly visits with -69.5% growth and Paid pricing.

| Metric | [DeepSeek](https://openaitools.app/tool/deepseek) | [Refocus](https://openaitools.app/tool/refocus) |
| :--- | :--- | :--- |
| Website URL | https://www.deepseek.com | https://refocus.me |
| Categories | Large Language Models (LLMs), Open Source AI Models, AI API, AI Chatbot | Other |
| Pricing Model | Freemium | Paid |
| Monthly Visits | 372,761,591 | 922 |
| MoM Growth Rate | +4.3% | -69.5% |
| Primary Market | China | United States |
| Direct Visits | 291,585,405 | 296 |
| Review Score | 4.8 | 3.2 |
| Saved Count | 44 | 2 |
| 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)

## Refocus

Refocus, also known as Refocus Digital Academy, is an online learning provider whose mission is to make people in Southeast Asia proficient in new digital skills from scratch and help them land their first job in IT. Its curriculum covers core technology and digital skills, delivered through an online learning platform and supplemented with mentorship, career preparation, and student support. The company operates as Refocus E-Learning Philippines Corp., based in Makati.

The academy has been candid about its operating history: it publicly paused many of its services after facing significant financial challenges, then announced a revival plan. Student support and its pool of experienced mentors returned, and course materials remained accessible to enrolled students through the Thinkific platform. Courses are structured to take roughly eight months to complete, with access retained for about a year from purchase so learners can work at their own pace. Live sessions were always a small share of the content, and key career material was re-released as pre-recorded video. Certificates are issued to students who complete the course in full.

Because parts of the service are being rebuilt, prospective learners should confirm current availability of mentorship, homework review, and certification directly with the academy before enrolling. The core value proposition remains the same: practical, mentor-supported digital skills training oriented toward employability, at a price point accessible to students in the region.

**Pricing & Plans:** Refocus is a paid training program; course fees are tied to the specific program and enrollment term, and pricing is confirmed at sign-up rather than published as a public rate card.

- **Learn from scratch:** Courses assume no prior technical background and build IT and digital skills step by step.
- **Mentor guidance:** Access to a pool of experienced mentors for guidance and advice across the learner journey.
- **Career-focused modules:** Dedicated career content, including a pre-recorded career course covering job-search preparation.
- **Flexible self-paced delivery:** Content is delivered online via Thinkific, with roughly a year of access so students can complete at their own pace.
- **Certificate of completion:** Students who finish the full course can request an individual certificate of accomplishment via support.

**Strengths:** Designed specifically for learners in Southeast Asia who want to start an IT career; Mentor guidance and career modules alongside technical coursework; Self-paced online delivery with extended access to course material; Certificates issued to students who complete the full program

**Limitations:** Some services were paused during financial difficulties and are still being restored; Mentor availability, homework review, and live support may be limited or timing dependent; Course pricing is not published publicly

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

## Frequently Asked Questions

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

DeepSeek has 372,761,591 monthly visits, while Refocus has 922. 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%; Refocus has -69.5%.

### 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). Refocus: Paid. Refocus is a paid training program; course fees are tied to the specific program and enrollment term, and pricing is confirmed at sign-up rather than published as a public rate card.

## 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 | [OpenAI Academy](https://openaitools.app/tool/openai-academy) | 937,379 | -6.3% | Free | Free courses, live events and community for building real AI skills | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/openai-academy.md) |

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

More Markdown: [Categories](https://openaitools.app/categories.md) · [Traffic rankings](https://openaitools.app/rankings.md) · [llms.txt](https://openaitools.app/llms.txt)