DeepSeek V4 Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

1. Release & Access

Q: When exactly will DeepSeek V4 be released? A: Expected mid-March 2026, most likely within a week after the Chinese New Year holiday ends (3.2 - 3.8).

Q: Where can I use it? A:

1. Official Web Version: chat.deepseek.com (available on launch day)
2. API: platform.deepseek.com
3. App: DeepSeek mobile app will be updated to support V4 simultaneously.

Q: Do I need to queue? A: Traffic will be very heavy during the initial V4 release. V3 paying users and API developer users typically have priority access. It's recommended to top up your API balance in advance.

2. Technology & Capabilities

Q: What's the biggest upgrade in V4 compared to V3? A:

1. Engram Architecture: A new proprietary MoE architecture with higher memory utilization.
2. Logical Reasoning: Significantly improved accuracy in math and complex logic problems.
3. Programming: Code writing ability approaching perfect scores.

Q: Does V4 support web search? A: Yes. V4 has a built-in DeepSeek search engine that can read real-time internet information to answer time-sensitive questions.

Q: Does it support file upload for analysis? A: Yes. You can upload PDF, Excel, Word, or even code files for V4 to summarize or debug.

3. Deployment & Cost

Q: Is V4 API still dirt cheap? A: Yes. DeepSeek's philosophy is "making AI accessible." V4 pricing is expected to stay at V3 levels ($0.14 / 1M tokens) or lower.

Q: Can my 3060 run V4? A: It can't run the full version. But you can run community-released distilled versions or 4-bit quantized smaller parameter versions (e.g., 7B/33B). The full 671B model requires server-grade GPUs.

Q: Will V4 open-source the weights? A: Yes. DeepSeek has committed to open-source Open Weights.

4. Competition Comparison

Q: How does DeepSeek V4 compare to GPT-5? A: DeepSeek V4 is expected to match or exceed GPT-5 in coding tasks and matches its reasoning capabilities on benchmarks like MMLU. While GPT-5 may still hold an edge in advanced multimodal features (like real-time video), V4 offers a significantly more cost-effective solution (potentially 10x-50x cheaper) with the added benefit of being open-weights for private deployment.

Q: Who writes code better, V4 or Claude 4.5 Opus? A: Evaluation data shows V4 slightly wins, especially in one-pass success rate for code generation used in complex software engineering tasks.

5. Data Security

Q: Will you use my data to train models? A: If you use the API and enable the "don't share data" option, your data will never be used for training. Web version users can disable data sharing in settings.

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Have other questions? Feel free to ask in our GitHub Discussions.