Move your team from DeepSeek to Claude.
Each person gets a short interview, then a personalized step-by-step guide showing exactly where their saved work, prompts, and projects land in Claude — and the few things that need a manual step, walked through. You send one invite; nobody becomes the help desk, and nothing in DeepSeek is changed or cancelled. Want to see where you’re paying for both first? Run the free audit.
Both APIs cache repeated prompt prefixes to reduce cost and latency on workloads that reuse long system prompts or context documents. The core migration pattern is the same: structure your request so the static parts (system prompt, tool definitions, long documents) come first, followed by the changing parts. On Claude: caching is opt-in — add a cache_control block of type 'ephemeral' to the content blocks you want cached; you can set up to 4 breakpoints and choose a 5-minute or 1-hour TTL. On DeepSeek: caching is automatic and requires no code change — any prefix of 64+ tokens that was recently sent is automatically reused at a deeply discounted rate. To migrate from Claude to DeepSeek: remove cache_control blocks from your payload (they are not a DeepSeek API field), keep your prompt structure with static content first, and DeepSeek's automatic caching activates transparently. To migrate from DeepSeek to Claude: add cache_control breakpoints to the tail of your large static blocks and choose a TTL; the response usage object returns cache_creation_input_tokens and cache_read_input_tokens for verification.
- Warning: On Claude, writing to the 1-hour cache costs roughly 2x the standard input price; a 5-minute cache write costs ~1.25x. Cache reads cost ~0.1x. On DeepSeek, cache hits cost as little as $0.003625/M tokens vs $0.435/M for cache misses on V4-Pro — the savings ratio is even larger, but the absolute prices differ. Recalculate cost projections before switching.
- Warning: Claude requires explicit cache_control markup and a minimum cacheable prefix of 1,024 tokens (or 512 on Fable 5/Mythos 5). Prefixes shorter than the minimum are silently not cached. DeepSeek's minimum is 64 tokens.
- Warning: Claude caches are isolated per workspace (since 2026-02-05 on the Anthropic platform); on Bedrock/Vertex AI the isolation is per organization. DeepSeek's cache is per API key. Multi-tenant architectures that relied on shared cache context should be audited before switching.
Both products offer an extended reasoning mode that makes the model spend additional compute working through complex problems step-by-step before delivering its final answer. On Claude, adaptive thinking is enabled via the API by setting thinking to {type: 'adaptive'} on the Messages API request; in the consumer UI it is always active on newer Opus models. On DeepSeek, the DeepThink toggle (visible in the chat input toolbar on chat.deepseek.com and mobile) activates the model's Thinking mode; on the API, set reasoning_effort to 'high' or 'max' on the V4 models. To migrate a reasoning-heavy workflow (complex math, multi-step logic, code debugging) from Claude to DeepSeek: enable the DeepThink toggle or set reasoning_effort in API calls. To switch from DeepSeek to Claude: use Opus 4.8 or Sonnet 4.6 on the API with thinking set to adaptive, or the consumer UI on Max/Pro. Both expose a visible chain-of-thought trace, though Claude's display defaults to 'omitted' and requires display:'summarized' to show reasoning.
- Warning: On the API, Claude charges for full internal thinking tokens even when the reasoning trace is hidden (display:'omitted'); DeepSeek also bills thinking tokens at the same cache-miss rate as output — check per-token pricing before running high-volume reasoning workloads.
- Warning: Claude's adaptive thinking on Opus 4.8/4.7 does not support the old manual budget_tokens path — setting {type:'enabled', budget_tokens:N} returns a 400 error. Migration from earlier Claude thinking configurations requires switching to {type:'adaptive'}.
- Warning: DeepSeek's legacy deepseek-reasoner endpoint (which powered R1 reasoning) is scheduled for retirement on 2026-07-24; migrate API integrations to deepseek-v4-flash or deepseek-v4-pro with reasoning_effort before that date.
- DeepSeek's DeepThink and web search toggles are now independent (can be used together as of April 2026 V4); previously they were mutually exclusive — workflows built around that constraint may need to be re-evaluated.
Both products let users attach documents in the chat composer (paperclip icon) and then ask questions about the content. Shared supported formats include PDF, DOCX, TXT, CSV, and XLSX. To migrate a document Q&A workflow from Claude to DeepSeek: open chat.deepseek.com, click the attachment icon, upload the same file, and re-run your queries. To go the other way, use the paperclip in Claude's composer. Note that Claude additionally feeds uploaded files into the code-execution sandbox (e.g. running a CSV through Python for analysis), which DeepSeek does not support — if your workflow relies on this, keep that step in Claude or switch to a scripted alternative. For persistent knowledge bases used across sessions, Claude's Projects feature (upload files once, available to all project chats) has no direct DeepSeek counterpart; you would need to re-attach files each session on DeepSeek.
- Warning: Claude enforces a clear per-file limit of 500 MB for chat attachments and supports up to 20 files per chat. DeepSeek does not officially publish per-file or per-session limits; third-party reports range widely (5–100 MB per file, up to ~50 files) — treat these as indicative and test before relying on large files.
- Warning: Claude performs full visual parsing of PDF charts and images (multi-modal) on current models. DeepSeek's file processing is text-extraction only; embedded images, charts, and diagrams inside a PDF are not analyzed visually.
- Warning: Claude's Projects knowledge base lets files persist across all conversations in a project (30 MB per file, RAG on overflow). DeepSeek has no persistent knowledge base — files must be re-uploaded in every new conversation.
Both products accept image uploads (JPEG, PNG, WebP) and can answer questions about image content, extract text via OCR, and describe what is shown. To migrate an image Q&A or OCR workflow from Claude to DeepSeek: attach the image via the paperclip icon on chat.deepseek.com or the mobile app and ask your question exactly as you would in Claude. To go from DeepSeek to Claude: drag-drop or attach the image in Claude's composer — Claude supports multiple images per message analyzed jointly. For OCR of printed or handwritten text, both products handle this, though Claude's visual understanding extends further (chart interpretation, screenshot analysis, spatial reasoning) due to multi-modal training beyond text extraction. Neither product generates raster images natively.
- Warning: Claude performs deep visual analysis — chart interpretation, spatial reasoning, and screenshot understanding across the full image including embedded diagrams — whereas DeepSeek's image capability is primarily OCR and basic visual Q&A; complex chart or diagram analysis may not transfer well.
- Warning: Claude supports high-resolution input up to 2576px on the long edge on Opus 4.7+ models. DeepSeek does not publish resolution limits officially; very large or high-DPI images may be downsampled or rejected.
- Warning: Per-image size limits: Claude allows up to 500 MB per attachment; DeepSeek's documented limit is unclear (third-party estimates: 5–50 MB per image depending on tier). Test with larger images before relying on this workflow.
Both products offer free iOS and Android mobile apps that sync chat history with the web account and provide access to the same core capabilities (file upload, thinking/reasoning modes, web search). To switch daily chat use from Claude mobile to DeepSeek mobile: download the DeepSeek app from the App Store or Google Play (or download.deepseek.com/app), sign in with email, Google, or Apple ID, and resume your work — DeepSeek syncs chat history cross-device automatically. To go from DeepSeek to Claude mobile: install Claude from the App Store or Google Play, sign in to your Anthropic account, and your Projects and conversation history are available. Note that the Claude mobile app provides additional platform integrations (iOS App Intents, Shortcuts, home-screen widget, OS-level Android integration) that have no equivalent in the DeepSeek app.
- Warning: Claude has a native macOS and Windows desktop app (claude.com/download) with local MCP server support and deep links. DeepSeek has no desktop app — desktop use is web-only at chat.deepseek.com.
- Warning: Claude mobile integrates with Slack, Microsoft 365, and Outlook (bringing chat and Research into those products). DeepSeek has no workplace integration equivalents.
- Warning: DeepSeek's mobile app launched January 2025 (requires iOS 15.0+). It has a shorter track record than Claude's mobile app and does not yet support OS-level integrations such as Shortcuts or Siri actions.
Both products provide an opt-in web search toggle that pulls live results into the model's reply and cites sources. On Claude, basic web search is available on all plans including Free — it activates automatically when Claude detects a query needing current information, or the user can trigger it manually. On DeepSeek, click the globe/Search icon in the input toolbar on chat.deepseek.com or in the mobile app to enable it; it is off by default and must be toggled each session. To switch from Claude to DeepSeek: enable the Search toggle before sending time-sensitive queries; expect cited source links in the response similar to Claude's inline citations. To switch from DeepSeek to Claude: web search fires automatically on queries Claude judges as needing live data, or select a web-search-aware model. No data export or config migration is needed — this is a per-query mode in both products.
- Warning: Claude's multi-step Research mode (agentic deep-search) requires a paid plan (Pro, Max, Team, Enterprise); DeepSeek has no equivalent multi-step research orchestration — its Search toggle is a single-pass retrieval.
- Warning: DeepSeek's Search toggle has been reported unreliable in 2026: it occasionally does not trigger a live search even when enabled, leading to stale answers without warning.
- Warning: Claude web search is unavailable on the API by default; it requires the web_search tool to be included in the API request. DeepSeek's API does not expose a web search parameter — search is consumer-UI only.