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

Verdict

GPT-4.1 Nano is significantly cheaper at $0.10/$0.40 per million tokens vs $0.27/$1.10. DeepSeek V3 is stronger for coding with a coding ELO of 1300 vs 1150. GPT-4.1 Nano is faster at 150 tokens/sec vs 85 tokens/sec. DeepSeek V3 ranks higher overall with an Arena ELO of 1280 vs 1180. GPT-4.1 Nano offers a larger 1048K context window vs 128K.

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeatureDeepSeek V3GPT-4.1 Nano
ProviderDeepSeekOpenAI
Input Price / 1M tokens$0.270$0.100
Output Price / 1M tokens$1.10$0.400
Context Window128K1.047576M
Max Output Tokens8,19232,768
Arena ELO1,2801,180
Coding ELO1,3001,150
TTFT (ms)220130
Tokens/sec85150
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.

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 Nano

Choose GPT-4.1 Nano when you need: ultra-low pricing, 1m context window, very fast inference, ideal for simple tasks at scale. It excels at chatbots, classification, cost-sensitive, high-volume tasks. It is also the more cost-effective option between the two. Its 1048K context window is larger, making it better for long-document processing.

Strengths:

  • Ultra-low pricing
  • 1M context window
  • Very fast inference
  • Ideal for simple tasks at scale

Best for:

chatbotsclassificationcost-sensitivehigh-volume

Frequently Asked Questions

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