What it is
DeepSeek is the consumer chat app from Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Co., Ltd., the lab behind the DeepSeek V and R model families. You use it at chat.deepseek.com or in the iOS and Android apps. There are two modes: Instant for quick replies, and Expert, which DeepSeek says runs DeepSeek-V4-Pro. Its current V4 models all carry a 1M-token context, so you can paste long reports or keep a long thread going.
Who it suits
Students, writers and developers who want a capable general assistant without paying anything. Use it for coding questions, long reading tasks and step-by-step maths.
Pricing
The chat is free. DeepSeek doesn't sell a paid chat plan, and the UK App Store listing shows no in-app purchases. The developer API is billed separately per token and is meant for building your own products.
Where it falls short
Your data goes to China. The privacy policy says DeepSeek collects, processes and stores personal data in the People's Republic of China, and the terms are governed by mainland Chinese law. That rules it out for many UK businesses handling client or staff data. The help centre lists "no extractable text in the image" as a reason image uploads fail, so don't expect it to describe a photo. Sign-up only accepts email domains on a support list, so a company address can be refused. On iPhone in the UK the official app is listed as "DSeek - Your AI Assistant", which is easy to miss among look-alike apps.
