Claude is the better app overall, scoring 8.7 to 7.4. Claude wins on 4 of the 5 scores, DeepSeek on 1.
Writers, analysts and developers who work with long documents or code
Students and developers who want strong reasoning help without paying
Score by score
The details
| Feature | Claude | DeepSeek |
|---|---|---|
| Category | AI Assistants | AI Assistants |
| Category rank | #3 of 8 | #8 of 8 |
| Developer | Anthropic | DeepSeek |
| Pricing | Free + paid plans | Free |
| Usable for free | Yes | Yes |
| iPhone & iPad | ✓ | ✓ |
| Android | ✓ | ✓ |
| Mac | ✓ | — |
| Windows | ✓ | — |
| Web | ✓ | ✓ |
Strengths and weaknesses
Claude
- Clear, natural writing that needs little editing
- Handles long documents and large codebases well
- You choose whether your chats are used for training
- No built-in image generation
- Free plan usage limits run out quickly
Claude is strong at careful writing, long documents and coding. It keeps a natural, measured tone, handles big files well, and Projects and Artifacts make it useful for real work. It can search the web, connect to apps like Google Drive and create documents and spreadsheets. The catch: it has no image generation, and free usage limits are tight, so heavy users often hit caps. Pick it for writing and analysis.
Full Claude review
DeepSeek
- Strong reasoning and coding help at no cost
- Shows its reasoning process in DeepThink mode
- Open-weight models you can run yourself
- Data is stored on servers in China
- Basic app with no voice mode or image creation
DeepSeek offers capable reasoning and coding help completely free, and its models are released as open weights. DeepThink mode shows its reasoning step by step, and web search is built in. The app is basic, though, with no voice mode or image generation, and servers can be busy at peak times. Its privacy policy says data is stored in China, and several governments have restricted its use on official devices.
Full DeepSeek review
