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DeepSeek R1 vs GPT-4.1 Mini: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

Verdict

DeepSeek R1 is stronger for coding with a coding ELO of 1330 vs 1230. GPT-4.1 Mini is faster at 115 tokens/sec vs 45 tokens/sec. DeepSeek R1 ranks higher overall with an Arena ELO of 1310 vs 1240. GPT-4.1 Mini offers a larger 1048K context window vs 128K.

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeatureDeepSeek R1GPT-4.1 Mini
ProviderDeepSeekOpenAI
Input Price / 1M tokens$0.550$0.400
Output Price / 1M tokens$2.19$1.60
Context Window128K1.047576M
Max Output Tokens8,19232,768
Arena ELO1,3101,240
Coding ELO1,3301,230
TTFT (ms)1,800190
Tokens/sec45115
MultimodalNoYes
JSON ModeYesYes
Function CallingNoYes
VisionNoYes
When to Use DeepSeek R1

Choose DeepSeek R1 when you need: excellent reasoning at a fraction of o3's cost, open-source and self-hostable, top-tier math performance, very competitive with proprietary reasoning models. It 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 GPT-4.1 Mini

Choose GPT-4.1 Mini when you need: 1m token context window at low cost, great balance of speed and quality, strong coding for a mini model, affordable for high-volume use. It excels at chatbots, long-context, cost-sensitive tasks. It is also the more cost-effective option between the two. Its 1048K context window is larger, making it better for long-document processing.

Strengths:

  • 1M token context window at low cost
  • Great balance of speed and quality
  • Strong coding for a mini model
  • Affordable for high-volume use

Best for:

chatbotslong-contextcost-sensitive

Frequently Asked Questions

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