DeepSeek Reasoner (R1) vs QVQ 72B Preview

Performance benchmarks + pricing comparison — updated April 2026

DeepSeek Reasoner (R1)

DeepSeek

DeepSeek's reasoning model. Comparable to OpenAI's o1 but at much lower cost.

Input$0.550/M
Output$2.19/M
Context128K tokens
Best ForComplex reasoning, math, advanced coding
Benchmark72/100

QVQ 72B Preview

Qwen

Qwen's visual reasoning model. Advanced image + text reasoning capabilities.

Input$0.500/M
Output$1.50/M
Context32K tokens
Best ForImage analysis, visual question answering, multimodal reasoning

Cost Comparison by Scenario

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

ScenarioDeepSeek Reasoner (R1)QVQ 72B PreviewSavings
Small Script (1K lines) $0.08 $0.06 QVQ 72B Preview saves $0.02 (26%)
Medium Feature (10K lines) $0.63 $0.48 QVQ 72B Preview saves $0.16 (25%)
Large Project (50K lines) $3.15 $2.38 QVQ 72B Preview saves $0.78 (25%)
Code Review (5K lines) $0.15 $0.13 QVQ 72B Preview saves $0.03 (17%)

Verdict

QVQ 72B Preview wins on both price and performance — $0.500/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