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DeepSeek R1 vs Grok 3 Mini: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

Verdict

Grok 3 Mini is significantly cheaper at $0.30/$0.50 per million tokens vs $0.55/$2.19. DeepSeek R1 is stronger for coding with a coding ELO of 1330 vs 1200. Grok 3 Mini is faster at 110 tokens/sec vs 45 tokens/sec. DeepSeek R1 ranks higher overall with an Arena ELO of 1310 vs 1220.

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeatureDeepSeek R1Grok 3 Mini
ProviderDeepSeekxAI
Input Price / 1M tokens$0.550$0.300
Output Price / 1M tokens$2.19$0.500
Context Window128K128K
Max Output Tokens8,19216,384
Arena ELO1,3101,220
Coding ELO1,3301,200
TTFT (ms)1,800180
Tokens/sec45110
MultimodalNoNo
JSON ModeYesYes
Function CallingNoYes
VisionNoNo
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 Grok 3 Mini

Choose Grok 3 Mini when you need: very affordable pricing, fast response times, good for simple tasks, reasoning capabilities at low cost. It excels at chatbots, cost-sensitive, lightweight-tasks tasks. It is also the more cost-effective option between the two.

Strengths:

  • Very affordable pricing
  • Fast response times
  • Good for simple tasks
  • Reasoning capabilities at low cost

Best for:

chatbotscost-sensitivelightweight-tasks

Frequently Asked Questions

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