DeepSeek vs Kimi

DeepSeek is an AI assistant for chatting with AI models, available on the web and through official iOS and Android apps. The free plan is listed at free and includes the assistant and official mobile apps. DeepSeek also offers an API, with deepseek-flash identified as the model name to use; legacy deepseek-v4-flash names route to V4.1-Flash. The API follows a format compatible with OpenAI and Anthropic APIs, and their SDKs can be used by changing configuration. It supports external tool calls, with a strict mode that checks tool schemas against supported JSON Schema specifications. DeepSeek says V4.1-Flash is live on the API with native multimodal support. Its desktop Harness can work in the background, edit local files, and handle long, complex tasks; downloads are listed for macOS (Apple silicon, macOS 13 or later) and Windows. DeepSeek is headquartered in Hangzhou, China. Its privacy policy says personal data is processed and stored in China, and advises users not to submit sensitive personal data.

Kimi is software from a maker founded in 2023 and headquartered in Beijing, China. It runs on the web, Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android, with mobile apps for iOS and Android. Listed capabilities include web search, file uploads, image generation, app integrations, and a team workspace. Kimi uses a freemium model and lists a free plan and a 7-day trial. Andante provides one parallel Agent task, six scheduled tasks, six widget tasks, 20 projects, and 20 GB of project storage. Moderato and Allegretto each allow two parallel Agent tasks and 20 projects with 20 GB of storage; their scheduled and widget task limits are 10 and 15 respectively. Allegro lists four parallel Agent tasks, 20 scheduled tasks, 20 widget tasks, 100 projects, and 50 GB of storage. Each of these four plans lists 15+ featured plugins. Kimi Business requires at least five seats, supports up to 1M tokens, and is available on web and desktop.