DeepSeek vs Together AI
Comparing two ai & llm apis platforms on pricing, features, free tier, and trade-offs.
Quick summary
DeepSeek — Chinese open-weight frontier models. DeepSeek R1 is an open-weight reasoning model competitive with OpenAI's o1, at a fraction of the price. DeepSeek V3 is a strong general-purpose LLM.
Together AI — Run open-source AI models in production. Together AI hosts 200+ open-source models (Llama, Mixtral, Qwen, DeepSeek, Flux) with competitive pricing, fine-tuning, and dedicated endpoints.
Feature comparison
| Feature | DeepSeek | Together AI |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Paid | Freemium |
| Starting price | Pay per token (cheap) | Pay per token |
| Free tier | No | Yes |
| Open source | Yes | No |
| Vision | No | Yes |
| Streaming | Yes | Yes |
| Embeddings | No | Yes |
| Max Output | 8K | 8K |
| Fine-tuning | No | Yes |
| Context Window | 128K | 128K |
| Flagship Model | DeepSeek V3 | Llama 3.3 405B |
| Reasoning Model | DeepSeek R1 | DeepSeek R1 |
| Function Calling | Yes | Yes |
| EU Data Residency | No | No |
DeepSeek
Chinese open-weight frontier models
Pros
- Frontier reasoning at ~5% of OpenAI prices
- Open weights — can self-host
- Very competitive benchmarks
Cons
- China-based (geopolitical/compliance concerns for some)
- No vision yet
- Smaller SDK ecosystem
Together AI
Run open-source AI models in production
Pros
- 200+ open-source models one API
- Fine-tuning infrastructure built in
- Dedicated endpoints for SLA workloads
- Image generation (Flux) too
Cons
- No proprietary frontier model
- Pricing varies wildly per model
- Documentation sometimes out-of-sync
Which should you choose?
Choose DeepSeek if you value open source and want the option to self-host, and you need production-grade features and are ready to pay. Choose Together AI if a free tier is important for your stage.