Product
DeepSeek app
The DeepSeek app is the company's official free chatbot, offered on the web and as mobile apps since 15 January 2025. It topped the U.S. App Store in late January 2025.
- Release date
- Developer
- DeepSeek
What it is
The DeepSeek app is the official chatbot of DeepSeek, the Chinese AI company. It is available on the web at chat.deepseek.com and as mobile apps [1]. The app is free, with no ads and no in-app purchases [1].
Origins
The mobile app launched on 15 January 2025 on the App Store, Google Play and major Android markets. At launch it was powered by DeepSeek-V3 [1]. The web chat had hosted earlier models. DeepSeek-R1-Lite-Preview went live there on 20 November 2024 with a visible real-time thought process, and Internet Search was added on 10 December 2024 [3][4].
Interest rose sharply after DeepSeek-R1 launched on 20 January 2025 and was made free in the iOS and Android apps [2]. On 27 January 2025 the app overtook ChatGPT as the most downloaded free app on Apple's U.S. App Store [2][7].
Main features
The app offers synced chat history, web search, a Deep-Think reasoning mode and file upload with text extraction [1].
With DeepSeek-V4, released on 24 April 2026, the app gained Expert Mode and Instant Mode, and a default context of one million tokens [5]. V4-Pro became available in Expert Mode on 13 August 2026 [6].
Controversy and government restrictions
Wikipedia reports a cyberattack on DeepSeek around 21 January 2025, shortly after the R1 launch [2]. In February 2025 Australia's Department of Home Affairs issued a government-wide directive to prevent the use of DeepSeek products and to remove existing instances [2].
The U.S. FY2026 National Defense Authorization Act directs the removal of DeepSeek AI from Department of Defense and Intelligence Community devices, and from contractors' devices, with limited exceptions [2].
Position in development
The app is the consumer front end for DeepSeek's models, and its features have followed the model releases: V3 at launch, R1 in January 2025, and V4 with Expert Mode and Instant Mode [1][2][5].
CapabilitiesLarge language models
ApplicationsConsumer apps
Ecosystem & regionChina
HistoryProduct history
20261
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UpdateDeepSeek-V4-Pro reaches general availability
On 13 August 2026 DeepSeek launched the general-availability version of DeepSeek-V4-Pro, with agent upgrades, adjustable reasoning effort, OpenAI Responses API support and peak and off-peak API pricing.
20252
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MilestoneDeepSeek app tops the U.S. App Store
On 27 January 2025 DeepSeek's mobile app passed ChatGPT as the most downloaded free app on Apple's U.S. App Store. The same day Nvidia shares fell 17 percent, the biggest one-day loss in U.S. history for any company.
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ReleaseDeepSeek releases DeepSeek-R1 as an open reasoning model
On 20 January 2025 DeepSeek released DeepSeek-R1 as an open reasoning model, claiming performance on par with OpenAI o1 on math, code and reasoning tasks. Its release coincided with a sharp drop in Nvidia's share price.
20241
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ReleaseDeepSeek merges its chat and coder models into DeepSeek-V2.5
On 5 September 2024 DeepSeek merged its chat and coder models into DeepSeek-V2.5, which kept both conversational ability and code processing and went live on its web chat and API.
Developed by1
Notes and sources
- DeepSeek APPhttps://api-docs.deepseek.com/news/news250115
- DeepSeekhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeepSeek
- DeepSeek-R1-Lite Releasehttps://api-docs.deepseek.com/news/news1120
- DeepSeek-V2.5-1210 Releasehttps://api-docs.deepseek.com/news/news1210
- DeepSeek V4 Preview Releasehttps://api-docs.deepseek.com/news/news260424
- DeepSeek-V4-Pro GA Releasehttps://api-docs.deepseek.com/news/news260813
- Nvidia sheds almost $600 billion in market cap, biggest one-day loss in U.S. historyhttps://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/27/nvidia-sheds-almost-600-billion-in-market-cap-biggest-drop-ever.html
Cite this page: DeepSeek app. TellWorld, https://www.tellworld.net/products/deepseek-app. Updated 2026-11-08