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DeepSeek vs MiniMax

A side-by-side comparison of DeepSeek and MiniMax, drawn from Ignaite's continuously-verified listings.

Compared from listings verified as of

DeepSeek

Assistant

Open, low-cost chat with strong reasoning. Free to use.

View DeepSeek

MiniMax

Inference

Multimodal foundation models and developer API for text, code, video, speech, and music.

View MiniMax

At a glance

Feature comparison of DeepSeek and MiniMax
AttributeDeepSeekMiniMax
Category (differs)AssistantInference
PricingFREEMIUMFREEMIUM
LicenseProprietaryProprietary
DeploymentCloudCloud
Platforms (differs)Web, iOS, AndroidWeb, API
Model support (differs)Single model (proprietary)Self-contained (on-device)
Vendor (differs)DeepSeekMiniMax

The honest brief

DeepSeek

Open-weight R1 reset the price-for-reasoning curve, and the consumer app stays free with strong reasoning.

  • Reasoning mode (R1)
  • Self-hostable open weights
  • Web search built in
  • Mobile and web apps
  • China-hosted data concerns
  • Content restrictions on sensitive topics
  • Smaller app polish than rivals

MiniMax

Frontier-class coding and agent models (M-series, 1M-token context) at a fraction of US-lab API prices, with open weights to self-host.

  • Coding- and agent-tuned M-series models
  • Open-weight models on Hugging Face
  • Multimodal: text, video, speech, music
  • Free agent tier to get started
  • China-based; data-residency considerations
  • Free agent tier is credit-limited
  • Docs less mature than US incumbents
DeepSeek detailsMiniMax details