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DeepSeek · OpenAI — Interactive pricing comparison
o3 dominates every reasoning and math benchmark and brings vision plus function-calling, but DeepSeek R1 costs roughly a tenth as much, making it the obvious pick for high-volume reasoning where the absolute ceiling matters less.
DeepSeek
OpenAI
DeepSeek R1 is 92% cheaper at this usage
o3 has a larger context window
$0.28 input. That is what DeepSeek R1 charges, against o3's $2. Output is $0.42 versus $8. For reasoning-heavy work at scale, that ratio is hard to ignore.
o3 is the stronger model on paper, and not by a little. Reasoning sits at 80 against R1's 72; math at 85 against 78. It also has the full capability set: vision, function-calling, the works. R1 has neither vision nor function-calling, and its context tops out at 131K against o3's 200K. If you need a model to look at an image, call tools, or solve the genuinely hardest math, o3 is the answer.
But R1's scores are not weak. A 72 in reasoning and 78 in math beat plenty of frontier models. For most analytical tasks — code logic, structured problem solving, math that stops short of competition level — R1 produces answers you can ship. The gap to o3 shows up at the extremes, not in the middle of the distribution.
The economics favor R1 hard. Run a reasoning pipeline at volume and o3's pricing turns into a line item that gets questioned. R1 lets you throw far more tokens at a problem for the same spend, which often closes the quality gap through sheer iteration.
The split is clean: o3 if your reasoning has to call tools, R1 if it runs on text alone. Paying for o3's tool integration on a text-only pipeline is paying for a door you'll never open.
Last updated June 2026