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Open-weight LLMs

Overview - DeepSeek R1 / V3

DeepSeek's open-weight reasoning (R1) and general (V3) models — frontier-class quality, MIT licence.

R1 made long chain-of-thought reasoning available as open weights; V3 is the fast general model behind the DeepSeek app. Distilled R1 variants (Qwen- and Llama-based, 1.5B–70B) run locally; the full 671B MoE needs a cluster.

Difficulty: IntermediatePlatform: LocalPricing: FreeReleased: 2025-01
Open WeightReasoningMit
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What this tool is used for

DeepSeek R1 / V3 is best used as a practical helper for reasoning tasks, code generation, research baselines. It is useful when you want to move from rough ideas to high-quality drafts quickly, then refine with human review before publishing or sharing.

Best for

  • Researchers
  • Developers
  • Cost-sensitive teams

Use this when

  • You need strong maths/code reasoning offline
  • You want an MIT-licensed base
  • You compare against closed frontier models

Not ideal for

  • Low-end hardware (use the distills)

Example tasks

  • Reasoning tasks
  • Code generation
  • Research baselines

Limitations / things to watch

  • Full model is huge
  • Check data policies if using the hosted app

How this compares to similar tools

DeepSeek R1 / V3 sits in the same category as Qwen 3 and Llama 4. Use DeepSeek R1 / V3 when its output style and workflow fit your team, but compare pricing limits, integrations, and review requirements before standardizing.

Related tools

Q3
Qwen 3
L4
Llama 4
G3
Gemma 3
MS
Mistral Small / Devstral

Suggested workflows

Explore workflows to find best-fit use cases for this tool.