DeepSeek Chat V3 vs DeepSeek R1

Performance benchmarks + pricing comparison — updated April 2026

DeepSeek Chat V3

DeepSeek

Very affordable general-purpose model from DeepSeek. Strong coding and reasoning at low cost.

Input$0.270/M
Output$1.10/M
Context128K tokens
Best ForCost-sensitive projects, coding, general tasks
Benchmark62/100

DeepSeek R1

DeepSeek

DeepSeek's reasoning model. Open-weight model that rivals o1 for complex reasoning tasks.

Input$0.140/M
Output$0.550/M
Context128K tokens
Best ForMath, coding, science reasoning at low cost

Cost Comparison by Scenario

Estimated cost per project with 30% cache hit rate. Actual costs may vary based on usage patterns.

ScenarioDeepSeek Chat V3DeepSeek R1Savings
Small Script (1K lines) $0.04 $0.02 DeepSeek R1 saves $0.02 (50%)
Medium Feature (10K lines) $0.31 $0.16 DeepSeek R1 saves $0.16 (49%)
Large Project (50K lines) $1.57 $0.80 DeepSeek R1 saves $0.78 (49%)
Code Review (5K lines) $0.07 $0.04 DeepSeek R1 saves $0.04 (49%)

Verdict

DeepSeek R1 wins on both price and performance — $0.140/M input with a benchmark score of N/A/100.

For most developers, this is the clear choice between these two models.

Compare with Other Models