DeepSeek vs Mistral AI
A side-by-side look at scores, pricing and features — with RECATOOLS' ASEAN-aware verdict for each.
DeepSeek
Hangzhou lab shipping MIT-licensed V4 models and a very cheap API
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Mistral AI
Paris model lab with open weights, cheap APIs and the Vibe agent
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| RECATOOLS Score | 8.2 / 10 | 8.4 / 10 |
| Capability | ||
| Value for money | ||
| Ease of use | ||
| ASEAN readiness | ||
| API quality | ||
| Pricing | Open Source | Freemium |
| Free tier | Free chat on the web and in the app; MIT-licensed open weights to self-host | Vibe Free: limited messages, web searches and coding sessions, basic image generation, 100+ connectors; Apache 2.0 weights free to self-host |
| Paid from | $0.15 per 1M input tokens (deepseek-flash, cache miss, off-peak); $0.30 at peak | $14.99/month (Vibe Pro, excluding tax); API from $0.10 per million tokens |
| Has API | ✓ | ✓ |
| Open source | ✓ | ✓ |
| Free to use | ✓ | ✓ |
| Users | ~130M monthly active users (late 2025) | 500k+ API users |
| Founded | 2023 | 2023 |
| Maker | High-Flyer | Arthur Mensch, Guillaume Lample, Timothee Lacroix |
| Verdict | DeepSeek remains the price benchmark for capable models: V4.1-Flash costs $0.15 to $0.30 per million input tokens and V4-Pro under $4 per million output at peak, both with 1M-token context, and the weights are MIT-licens... |
Mistral is a good choice when you want models you can host yourself or buy cheaply by the token: Small 4, Large 3 and the Ministral 3 models are Apache 2.0, and API rates sit well below most US frontier labs. The Vibe ag... |
| Full review → | Full review → |
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Comparisons cover up to 4 tools. Scores are RECATOOLS editorial assessments; verify current pricing on each vendor's site.