DeepSeek is free. Gemini starts at $4.99/mo.
Pick DeepSeek when the bill is the constraint: near-frontier reasoning and code at roughly $0.30 in and $0.50 out per million tokens, which is the reason it is the default cheap model in cost-sensitive automations. Pick Gemini when the input is the constraint: 2M+ tokens of context and real multimodal handling of video and PDFs. They are cheap-per-token versus big-per-prompt, not better versus worse.
| Attribute | DeepSeek | Gemini |
|---|---|---|
| Strength | Cost per token | Context length + multimodal |
| API price | ~$0.30/$0.50 per M tokens in/out | Tier-based |
| Consumer plan | Free chat | $19.99/mo Google AI Pro |
| Context | Text-scale prompts | 2M+ tokens |
| Multimodal input | Not in the chat product | Yes, video and PDFs |
Pick DeepSeek when the bill is the constraint: near-frontier reasoning and code at roughly $0.30 in and $0.50 out per million tokens, which is the reason it is the default cheap model in cost-sensitive automations. Pick Gemini when the input is the constraint: 2M+ tokens of context and real multimodal handling of video and PDFs. They are cheap-per-token versus big-per-prompt, not better versus worse.
DeepSeek. It has a free tier; Gemini starts at $4.99/mo.
Frontier-grade reasoning at 1/10th the cost. It sits in the llms category, and ships in 1 tested stack here.
Google's multimodal LLM with very long context. It sits in the llms category, and ships in 1 tested stack here.
They are alternatives at the same step, so most stacks pick one or the other. No aistack.sh stack uses both today, though nothing prevents a custom workflow.
Beyond each other, DeepSeek's closest alternatives are Claude, ChatGPT, Grok. Gemini's closest alternatives are Claude, ChatGPT, Mistral.