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DeepSeek R1 vs Qwen 2.5 Max: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

Verdict

Qwen 2.5 Max is significantly cheaper at $0.16/$0.64 per million tokens vs $0.55/$2.19. DeepSeek R1 is stronger for coding with a coding ELO of 1330 vs 1250. Qwen 2.5 Max is faster at 80 tokens/sec vs 45 tokens/sec. DeepSeek R1 ranks higher overall with an Arena ELO of 1310 vs 1260.

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeatureDeepSeek R1Qwen 2.5 Max
ProviderDeepSeekAlibaba
Input Price / 1M tokens$0.550$0.160
Output Price / 1M tokens$2.19$0.640
Context Window128K128K
Max Output Tokens8,1928,192
Arena ELO1,3101,260
Coding ELO1,3301,250
TTFT (ms)1,800240
Tokens/sec4580
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 Qwen 2.5 Max

Choose Qwen 2.5 Max when you need: extremely competitive pricing, strong coding and general capabilities, open-source model available, good multilingual support including chinese. It excels at coding, general-purpose, cost-sensitive, open-source tasks. It is also the more cost-effective option between the two.

Strengths:

  • Extremely competitive pricing
  • Strong coding and general capabilities
  • Open-source model available
  • Good multilingual support including Chinese

Best for:

codinggeneral-purposecost-sensitiveopen-source

Frequently Asked Questions

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