# DeepSeek vs ThinkerNotes DeepSeek records 372,761,591 monthly visits with +4.3% month-over-month growth and Freemium pricing. ThinkerNotes records 758 monthly visits with -72.3% growth and Freemium pricing. | Metric | [DeepSeek](https://openaitools.app/tool/deepseek) | [ThinkerNotes](https://openaitools.app/tool/thinkernotes) | | :--- | :--- | :--- | | Website URL | https://www.deepseek.com | https://thinkernotes.com | | Categories | Large Language Models (LLMs), Open Source AI Models, AI API, AI Chatbot | AI Notes Generator, AI Knowledge Base, AI Writing Assistants | | Pricing Model | Freemium | Freemium | | Monthly Visits | 372,761,591 | 758 | | MoM Growth Rate | +4.3% | -72.3% | | Primary Market | China | United States | | Direct Visits | 291,585,405 | 297 | | Review Score | 4.8 | 4.1 | | Saved Count | 44 | 10 | | 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) ## ThinkerNotes ThinkerNotes is built around a plain observation: people who run businesses learn constantly and remember almost none of it. You can name the book you read last quarter but not the idea you took from it, so you end up paying for the same lesson twice. The app's premise is that the problem is not memory but structure — what you learn has no obvious place to go, and no mechanism to bring it back.\n\nThe workflow is deliberately minimal. When you learn something, you write one line in your own words; there is no title to think of, no folder to pick and nothing to decide. Later you come back, cut the note down to the point you actually want to make, and link it to the older notes it relates to. From then on ThinkerNotes surfaces it automatically whenever it is relevant, rather than waiting for you to remember to search. Subjects group everything about one topic — pricing, hiring, launches — with the book, the podcast and what customers told you side by side, and a note that ends in a question stays open until you write the answer, creating a trail of follow-ups.\n\nA distinctive feature is the connector for AI assistants. Via MCP, ThinkerNotes plugs into Claude, ChatGPT and other compatible assistants so they answer from your accumulated conclusions instead of generic training data. The connection is intentionally read-only: the assistant can search your notes but can never add to or alter them. Pricing is freemium — the first 100 notes are free, and Pro at $12.99 per month removes the limit and adds semantic search, Kindle highlight import, custom branding for shared note images, and support for a tool built by a single independent developer. **Pricing & Plans:** Freemium. The first 100 notes are free, no credit card required. Pro is $12.99 per month and adds unlimited notes, semantic search, Kindle import and custom branding. You can upgrade from inside the app. - **Frictionless capture:** One sentence, however it comes out, is the whole commitment — no title to invent, no folder to pick and nothing to decide before you write. - **Linked insights and follow-ups:** ThinkerNotes shows older notes that relate to what you are writing and you link the ones that belong, building trails from first hunch to decision. - **Contextual resurfacing:** Instead of waiting for you to remember to look, it puts the note you wrote last year next to this week's problem so you build on your own thinking. - **Works inside Claude and ChatGPT (MCP):** Connect once from your assistant's settings and it answers from what you actually concluded rather than the internet's average opinion — read-only, so it can never edit your notes. - **Open questions and subjects:** End a note with a question and it stays open until you write the note that answers it, so open questions and subjects stay visible. - **Shareable note cards (Pro branding):** Open a note, pick a style, and get a shareable image for LinkedIn, X or Instagram; Pro adds your own colors, logo and saved templates. **Strengths:** Extremely low-effort capture: one sentence is the whole commitment; Resurfaces relevant past notes without you having to remember to look; Connects to Claude and ChatGPT via MCP as a read-only knowledge source; Draws on the Zettelkasten method without the decades of manual filing **Limitations:** Small, single-developer product with limited ecosystem integrations; Deliberately does no writing or content generation for you, which some users may want; Semantic search, Kindle import and branding are Pro-only; Requires the upstream assistant to support MCP for the connector [Profile (Markdown)](https://openaitools.app/tool/thinkernotes.md) ## Frequently Asked Questions ### How do DeepSeek and ThinkerNotes compare in monthly traffic? DeepSeek has 372,761,591 monthly visits, while ThinkerNotes has 758. 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%; ThinkerNotes has -72.3%. ### 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). ThinkerNotes: Freemium. Freemium. The first 100 notes are free, no credit card required. Pro is $12.99 per month and adds unlimited notes, semantic search, Kindle import and custom branding. You can upgrade from inside the app. ## 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 | [Studocu](https://openaitools.app/tool/studocu-global) | 39,297,122 | +1.1% | Freemium | Share and access study materials worldwide — with AI study tools built in | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/studocu-global.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) | --- Source: https://openaitools.app/compare/deepseek-vs-thinkernotes More Markdown: [Categories](https://openaitools.app/categories.md) · [Traffic rankings](https://openaitools.app/rankings.md) · [llms.txt](https://openaitools.app/llms.txt)