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DeepSeek R1 vs o3-mini: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

Verdict

DeepSeek R1 is significantly cheaper at $0.55/$2.19 per million tokens vs $1.10/$4.40. o3-mini offers a larger 200K context window vs 128K.

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeatureDeepSeek R1o3-mini
ProviderDeepSeekOpenAI
Input Price / 1M tokens$0.550$1.10
Output Price / 1M tokens$2.19$4.40
Context Window128K200K
Max Output Tokens8,192100,000
Arena ELO1,3101,310
Coding ELO1,3301,340
TTFT (ms)1,8001,500
Tokens/sec4555
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. It is also the more cost-effective option between the two.

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 o3-mini

Choose o3-mini when you need: strong mathematical reasoning, good coding performance, affordable reasoning model, large output window. It excels at reasoning, math, coding, science tasks. Its 200K context window is larger, making it better for long-document processing.

Strengths:

  • Strong mathematical reasoning
  • Good coding performance
  • Affordable reasoning model
  • Large output window

Best for:

reasoningmathcodingscience

Frequently Asked Questions

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