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DeepSeek V3 vs GPT-4.1 Mini: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

Verdict

DeepSeek V3 is significantly cheaper at $0.27/$1.10 per million tokens vs $0.40/$1.60. DeepSeek V3 is stronger for coding with a coding ELO of 1300 vs 1230. GPT-4.1 Mini is faster at 115 tokens/sec vs 85 tokens/sec. DeepSeek V3 ranks higher overall with an Arena ELO of 1280 vs 1240. GPT-4.1 Mini offers a larger 1048K context window vs 128K.

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeatureDeepSeek V3GPT-4.1 Mini
ProviderDeepSeekOpenAI
Input Price / 1M tokens$0.270$0.400
Output Price / 1M tokens$1.10$1.60
Context Window128K1.047576M
Max Output Tokens8,19232,768
Arena ELO1,2801,240
Coding ELO1,3001,230
TTFT (ms)220190
Tokens/sec85115
MultimodalNoYes
JSON ModeYesYes
Function CallingYesYes
VisionNoYes
When to Use DeepSeek V3

Choose DeepSeek V3 when you need: excellent coding performance for its price, open-source and self-hostable, very competitive benchmarks, extremely affordable. It excels at coding, general-purpose, cost-sensitive, open-source tasks. It is also the more cost-effective option between the two.

Strengths:

  • Excellent coding performance for its price
  • Open-source and self-hostable
  • Very competitive benchmarks
  • Extremely affordable

Best for:

codinggeneral-purposecost-sensitiveopen-source
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. 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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