DeepSeek R1 vs Gemini 1.5 Flash: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

Pricing verified Apr 8, 2026

⚡ Quick Answer

Compare DeepSeek R1 and Gemini 1.5 Flash across pricing, benchmarks, and capabilities.

Updated: April 8, 2026 · ✓ Pricing verified

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeatureDeepSeek R1Gemini 1.5 Flash
ProviderDeepSeekGoogle
Input Price / 1M tokens$0.700$0.075
Output Price / 1M tokens$2.50$0.300
Context Window
128K
1M
Max Output Tokens
8,192
8,192
Arena ELO
1,310
1,190
Coding ELO1,330N/A
TTFT (ms)
1,800
150
Tokens/sec
45
100
MultimodalNoYes
JSON ModeYesYes
Function CallingNoYes
VisionNoNo
When to Use DeepSeek R1

DeepSeek R1 excels at reasoning, math, coding, science tasks.

Strengths:

  • Excellent reasoning at a fraction of o3's cost
  • Open-source and self-hostable
  • Top-tier math performance
  • Very competitive with proprietary reasoning models

Best for:

reasoningmathcodingscience
When to Use Gemini 1.5 Flash

Gemini 1.5 Flash excels at multimodal, fast-inference, cost-effective tasks.

Strengths:

  • Super cheap
  • 1M context window
  • Fast multimodal processing

Best for:

multimodalfast-inferencecost-effective

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