DeepSeek
Cost-leading models with strong code and reasoning performance via OpenAI-compatible API.
- License
- proprietary
- Install
- env key
- Website
- https://www.deepseek.com
- GitHub
- https://github.com/deepseek-ai
export DEEPSEEK_API_KEY=...
Google Gemini
Gemini 2.5 Flash and Pro with multimodal native support and a free tier.
- License
- proprietary
- Install
- env key
- Website
- https://ai.google.dev
- GitHub
- https://github.com/google-gemini
export GOOGLE_API_KEY=...
When to reach for which
DeepSeek — Cost-leading models with strong code and reasoning performance via OpenAI-compatible API.
Google Gemini — Gemini 2.5 Flash and Pro with multimodal native support and a free tier.
Both sit in the AI Providers category — they're substitutes, not complements. Pick by your install constraint (MCP-native, license, hosting model) and which tag overlap matters most to your stack.