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DeepSeek R1 vs Phi-3 Medium: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

Pricing verified Apr 8, 2026

⚡ Quick Answer

Compare DeepSeek R1 and Phi-3 Medium across pricing, benchmarks, and capabilities.

Updated: April 8, 2026 · ✓ Pricing verified

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeatureDeepSeek R1Phi-3 Medium
ProviderDeepSeekMicrosoft
Input Price / 1M tokens$0.700$0.170
Output Price / 1M tokens$2.50$0.170
Context Window
128K
128K
Max Output Tokens
8,192
4,096
Arena ELO
1,310
1,170
Coding ELO
1,330
1,175
TTFT (ms)
1,800
150
Tokens/sec
45
100
MultimodalNoNo
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 Phi-3 Medium

Phi-3 Medium excels at cost-effective, general-purpose tasks.

Strengths:

  • Affordable
  • Fast
  • Good instruction following

Best for:

cost-effectivegeneral-purpose

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