# DeepSeek vs Underleaf

DeepSeek records 372,761,591 monthly visits with +4.3% month-over-month growth and Freemium pricing. Underleaf records 222,941 monthly visits with -1.9% growth and Freemium pricing.

| Metric | [DeepSeek](https://openaitools.app/tool/deepseek) | [Underleaf](https://openaitools.app/tool/underleaf) |
| :--- | :--- | :--- |
| Website URL | https://www.deepseek.com | https://underleaf.ai |
| Categories | Large Language Models (LLMs), Open Source AI Models, AI API, AI Chatbot | AI Writing, AI OCR, AI Thesis Generator, AI PDF |
| Pricing Model | Freemium | Freemium |
| Monthly Visits | 372,761,591 | 222,941 |
| MoM Growth Rate | +4.3% | -1.9% |
| Primary Market | China | United States |
| Direct Visits | 291,585,405 | 26,916 |
| Review Score | 4.8 | 4.5 |
| 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)

## Underleaf

Underleaf focuses on the gap between what researchers already have — scanned notes, photos of a whiteboard, a journal PDF, a spreadsheet of results — and the LaTeX source they need. You upload the source material, pick the pages you care about when it is a multi-page document, and the tool returns one structured LaTeX document with sections, numbered equations, tables, and figures placed where they belong. It claims 98%+ accuracy on equations, including matrices, integrals, and aligned multi-line derivations, and shows a typeset preview before you download anything.

Beyond conversion, Underleaf bundles the writing work that usually happens afterwards: drafting abstracts and summaries, generating thesis statements, rewriting paragraphs for clarity while keeping your terminology, and looking up citations with BibTeX output. A browser extension brings the same rewriting, shortening, and explaining actions next to whatever draft you already have open, so you do not have to copy text into a separate tab.

The site reports 50,000+ academic users across 200+ universities and 240,000+ documents converted. A large set of single-purpose free tools (image to LaTeX, PDF to LaTeX, Excel to LaTeX, TikZ generator, table generator, citation generator, and more) can be used without an account, which makes it easy to test quality before paying.

**Pricing & Plans:** Freemium. New users get 10 free credits with no credit card required, and many single-purpose converters and generators run free in the browser. Paid plans: Essentials at $12/month ($6/month billed annually, $72/year) with 200 credits per month and up to 10 pages per PDF; Pro at $24/month ($12/month billed annually, $144/year) with 500 credits per month, all LaTeX tools, and up to 20 pages per PDF. Both include the browser extension. A Team plan for groups of 5+ adds centralized billing, an admin dashboard, and reimbursable invoices.

- **Anything-to-LaTeX conversion:** Converts handwritten notes, photos and screenshots, scanned papers, Word documents, tables, and spreadsheets into LaTeX code that compiles rather than a rough approximation you must retype.
- **Whole-document PDF handling:** Uploads multi-page PDFs and lets you choose which pages to convert, returning one structured document with sections, numbered equations, tables, and figures in the right places.
- **Math and diagram recognition:** Reads equations, matrices, integrals, and aligned derivations at a stated 98%+ accuracy, and can turn diagrams and plots into TikZ.
- **Academic writing tools:** Drafts abstracts, summaries, and thesis statements; rewrites for clarity without losing your meaning; and looks up citations with BibTeX in the same place.
- **Browser extension and free tool library:** A browser extension adds rewrite, shorten, and explain actions beside your draft, while 60+ free single-purpose converters and generators run without an account.

**Strengths:** Handles many input types — handwriting, images, PDFs, Word, and spreadsheets — through one workflow; Produces structured, compilable LaTeX rather than plain-text approximations; Multi-page PDFs come back as a single document with sections, equations, and figures placed correctly; Free tier and 60+ no-account browser tools make quality easy to test before paying

**Limitations:** Credit-based limits mean heavy conversion work can require a paid tier quickly; Math accuracy is high but stated at 98%+, so output still needs a review pass; Team and institutional billing details are only available on request; Best experience depends on using the browser extension alongside your LaTeX editor

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

## Frequently Asked Questions

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

DeepSeek has 372,761,591 monthly visits, while Underleaf has 222,941. 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%; Underleaf has -1.9%.

### 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). Underleaf: Freemium. Freemium. New users get 10 free credits with no credit card required, and many single-purpose converters and generators run free in the browser. Paid plans: Essentials at $12/month ($6/month billed annually, $72/year) with 200 credits per month and up to 10 pages per PDF; Pro at $24/month ($12/month billed annually, $144/year) with 500 credits per month, all LaTeX tools, and up to 20 pages per PDF. Both include the browser extension. A Team plan for groups of 5+ adds centralized billing, an admin dashboard, and reimbursable invoices.

## 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 | OpenAI's flagship multimodal assistant powered by GPT-6 and GPT-5.6 for reasoning, coding, and deep research. | [.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 | [PDFgear](https://openaitools.app/tool/pdfgear) | 2,845,280 | -3.4% | Free | A free, AI-powered PDF editor for every device | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/pdfgear.md) |

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

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