DeepSeek
Our pickQwen (Alibaba)
Tier-list head-to-head. Qwen (Alibaba) takes the A-tier slot — here's the breakdown.
Spec sheet
| DeepSeek | Qwen (Alibaba) | |
|---|---|---|
| Tier | A-tier | A-tierwin |
| Overall score | 8.0 / 10 | 8.8 / 10win |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Starting price | $0 | $0 |
| Best for | Developers and teams who need strong reasoning and coding capabilities on a budget. | Developers who want frontier-tier open weights with Apache 2. |
| Last reviewed | 2026-04-28 | 2026-04-27 |
Head-to-head
Rated 1-10 on the same rubric across all 130 tools we cover.
Vibe check
How each tool actually sounds when you talk to it.
“The open-source reasoning specialist”
“The multilingual Alibaba all-rounder”
What you'll pay
Look past the headline number -- entry-tier limits drive most cost surprises.
Free tier available
Free tier available
DeepSeek V4-Pro (launched 2026-04-24; scores below are the V3.2 baseline pending third-party V4 verification, which typically lands 3-7 days post-launch) vs Qwen3.5-397B MoE
| Benchmark | DeepSeek | Qwen (Alibaba) |
|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | 85% | 83.5% |
| GPQA Diamond | 79.9% | 78.2% |
| HumanEval | 91.5% | 92.5% |
The decision
Use-case anchors and category strengths, side by side.
Developers and teams who need strong reasoning and coding capabilities on a budget. If you're building AI features and can't justify GPT-4 API costs, DeepSeek is the obvious first stop.
Visit DeepSeekDevelopers who want frontier-tier open weights with Apache 2.0 licensing. Qwen3-Coder-Next is arguably the best local coding model; Qwen3.5-397B is a top-3 open generalist.
Visit Qwen (Alibaba)Bottom line
Qwen (Alibaba) edges out DeepSeek by 0.8 points (8.8 vs 8.0) -- a A-tier vs A-tier split that's narrow but real. Not a blowout; both belong on a shortlist. The score gap shows up most clearly in the categories that matter for Qwen (Alibaba)'s strengths, so if those categories are your priority, the lead translates.
Pricing-wise, both tools have a free tier (DeepSeek starts $0, Qwen (Alibaba) starts $0), so you can test either without committing. Compare what each free tier actually unlocks -- usage caps, model access, and feature gates differ a lot more than the headline price suggests, especially as both vendors have tightened limits in 2026.
By use case: pick DeepSeek when developers and teams who need strong reasoning and coding capabilities on a budget. Pick Qwen (Alibaba) when developers who want frontier-tier open weights with apache 2. The two tools aren't fighting for the same person -- they're aiming at adjacent jobs that occasionally overlap. If you're squarely in Qwen (Alibaba)'s lane, the tier-list ranking and the use-case fit point the same direction; if you're in DeepSeek's lane, the score gap matters less than the fit.
Bottom line: Qwen (Alibaba) is the safer default for most readers, but DeepSeek is competitive enough that the tie-breaker is your specific workload, not the spec sheet.
Keep digging
Full DeepSeek review
Tier A · 8.0/10
Full Qwen (Alibaba) review
Tier A · 8.8/10
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Built from our daily AI-tool sweep, last touched April 28, 2026. Honest tier-list reviews — no affiliate-link pieces disguised as advice. See the rubric or how we review.