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DeepSeek V3 vs Grok 3 Mini: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

Verdict

Grok 3 Mini is significantly cheaper at $0.30/$0.50 per million tokens vs $0.27/$1.10. DeepSeek V3 is stronger for coding with a coding ELO of 1300 vs 1200. DeepSeek V3 ranks higher overall with an Arena ELO of 1280 vs 1220.

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeatureDeepSeek V3Grok 3 Mini
ProviderDeepSeekxAI
Input Price / 1M tokens$0.270$0.300
Output Price / 1M tokens$1.10$0.500
Context Window128K128K
Max Output Tokens8,19216,384
Arena ELO1,2801,220
Coding ELO1,3001,200
TTFT (ms)220180
Tokens/sec85110
MultimodalNoNo
JSON ModeYesYes
Function CallingYesYes
VisionNoNo
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 Grok 3 Mini

Choose Grok 3 Mini when you need: very affordable pricing, fast response times, good for simple tasks, reasoning capabilities at low cost. It excels at chatbots, cost-sensitive, lightweight-tasks tasks. It is also the more cost-effective option between the two.

Strengths:

  • Very affordable pricing
  • Fast response times
  • Good for simple tasks
  • Reasoning capabilities at low cost

Best for:

chatbotscost-sensitivelightweight-tasks

Frequently Asked Questions

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