LV
LLMversus

DeepSeek V3 vs Phi-4: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

Verdict

Phi-4 is significantly cheaper at $0.07/$0.14 per million tokens vs $0.27/$1.10. DeepSeek V3 is stronger for coding with a coding ELO of 1300 vs 1130. Phi-4 is faster at 160 tokens/sec vs 85 tokens/sec. DeepSeek V3 ranks higher overall with an Arena ELO of 1280 vs 1150. DeepSeek V3 offers a larger 128K context window vs 16K.

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeatureDeepSeek V3Phi-4
ProviderDeepSeekMicrosoft
Input Price / 1M tokens$0.270$0.070
Output Price / 1M tokens$1.10$0.140
Context Window128K16.384K
Max Output Tokens8,1924,096
Arena ELO1,2801,150
Coding ELO1,3001,130
TTFT (ms)220100
Tokens/sec85160
MultimodalNoNo
JSON ModeYesYes
Function CallingYesNo
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. Its 128K context window is larger, making it better for long-document processing.

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 Phi-4

Choose Phi-4 when you need: ultra-low cost for a capable model, strong math for its size (14b params), very fast inference, can run on consumer hardware. It excels at cost-sensitive, edge-deployment, math, lightweight-tasks tasks. It is also the more cost-effective option between the two.

Strengths:

  • Ultra-low cost for a capable model
  • Strong math for its size (14B params)
  • Very fast inference
  • Can run on consumer hardware

Best for:

cost-sensitiveedge-deploymentmathlightweight-tasks

Frequently Asked Questions

Related Comparisons

DeepSeek V3 vs O4 MiniO4 Mini vs Phi-4DeepSeek V3 vs Gemini 2 5 ProGemini 2 5 Pro vs Phi-4Claude Opus 4 vs DeepSeek V3Claude Opus 4 vs Phi-4Deepseek R1 vs DeepSeek V3Deepseek R1 vs Phi-4DeepSeek V3 vs O3 MiniO3 Mini vs Phi-4DeepSeek V3 vs Grok 3Grok 3 vs Phi-4DeepSeek V3 vs Gpt 4 1Gpt 4 1 vs Phi-4DeepSeek V3 vs Llama 4 MaverickLlama 4 Maverick vs Phi-4Claude Sonnet 4 vs DeepSeek V3Claude Sonnet 4 vs Phi-4DeepSeek V3 vs Gemini 2 0 FlashDeepSeek V3 vs Gpt 4o