# DeepSeek vs Select AI

DeepSeek records 372,761,591 monthly visits with +4.3% month-over-month growth and Freemium pricing. Select AI records 0 monthly visits with — growth and Free pricing.

| Metric | [DeepSeek](https://openaitools.app/tool/deepseek) | [Select AI](https://openaitools.app/tool/select-ai) |
| :--- | :--- | :--- |
| Website URL | https://www.deepseek.com | https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/select-ai/akencabglgnbjflmlmflddmocjbeghld |
| Categories | Large Language Models (LLMs), Open Source AI Models, AI API, AI Chatbot | AI Browsers, AI Assistant, AI API, AI Chatbot |
| Pricing Model | Freemium | Free |
| Monthly Visits | 372,761,591 | 0 |
| MoM Growth Rate | +4.3% | — |
| Primary Market | China | Global |
| Direct Visits | 291,585,405 | 0 |
| Review Score | 4.8 | 3.8 |
| Saved Count | 44 | 0 |
| Supported Platforms | Website | Browser Extension |

## 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)

## Select AI

Select AI solves a very specific annoyance: the round trip of copying web text into a chatbot and pasting the answer back. With the extension installed, the text you highlight is already the prompt. You right-click, pick Select AI, and a panel opens where you can ask for a summary, a translation, an explanation, or a direct answer based on the selection. Because the extension is built around a bring-your-own-key model, you decide which AI provider handles the request and you keep control of the account and billing behind it.

The conversation model is what makes it more than a one-shot lookup. If you select three different paragraphs on the same page, the thread continues rather than resetting, so you can ask "what does this contradict?" and the assistant still has the earlier passages in view. That makes it useful for reading long articles, comparing claims across a page, or working through documentation where context accumulates.

Select AI is a small, single-purpose tool from an independent developer, last updated in May 2023 and used by a modest number of people. It is best understood as a friction-remover rather than a platform: there is no image input, no voice, no agent workflows, and no bundled model credits. If you already pay for an AI API and want that power one right-click away from anything you read, it fills the gap neatly.

**Pricing & Plans:** Free to install. Select AI does not charge for the extension itself; you connect your own AI API key, so any usage cost is billed directly by your chosen provider. No paid plans or subscriptions are advertised.

- **Highlight-to-ask via context menu:** Highlight any passage, open the right-click context menu, and choose Select AI to start an instant conversation about that text without leaving the page.
- **Bring your own API key:** Connect your own API key so requests go straight to the provider you choose, with no middleman and no mandatory account with the developer.
- **Multi-language conversations:** Ask and receive answers in multiple languages such as English, Spanish, Mandarin, French, and Hindi, instead of being locked into English.
- **Continuous conversation history:** When you select more passages on the same page, the earlier exchanges stay in context, so follow-up questions build on what you already discussed.
- **Privacy-first by declaration:** The listing declares no data collection, no selling of data, and no use of your data outside the extension's core functionality.

**Strengths:** Removes copy-paste friction: highlighted text becomes the prompt immediately; No subscription fee and no developer account required to use it; You control the API key and therefore the provider, model, and data path; Conversation continuity across multiple selections on the same page

**Limitations:** No new release since May 2023, so it may lag behind current model APIs; You must supply and pay for your own API key, and there is no built-in free tier; Feature set is deliberately minimal: chat about selected text, with no image input, voice, or agents; Very small user base and only one rating, so community support and troubleshooting help are limited

[Profile (Markdown)](https://openaitools.app/tool/select-ai.md)

## Frequently Asked Questions

### How do DeepSeek and Select AI compare in monthly traffic?

DeepSeek has 372,761,591 monthly visits, while Select AI has 0. 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%; Select AI has —.

### 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). Select AI: Free. Free to install. Select AI does not charge for the extension itself; you connect your own AI API key, so any usage cost is billed directly by your chosen provider. No paid plans or subscriptions are advertised.

## 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 | [Poe](https://openaitools.app/tool/poe) | 5,894,702 | +9.1% | Freemium | One app to chat with GPT, Claude, Gemini and hundreds of other AI models | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/poe.md) |

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Source: https://openaitools.app/compare/deepseek-vs-select-ai

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