Model comparison

DeepSeek-R1 vs o3

o3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 47.5 to 42.3 on the Noometry Index. DeepSeek-R1 costs 3.8× less per token, which makes it the better buy when o3's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 41 shared benchmarks.

DeepSeek-R1 DeepSeek

42.3

Rank #115 Confirmed

o3 OpenAI

47.5

Rank #61 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 41 benchmarks with published results for both. DeepSeek-R1 scores higher in 1 category and o3 in 8 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in reasoning, where o3 leads 32.0 to 18.6.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is ARC-AGI-1: 21.2% for DeepSeek-R1 and 60.8% for o3.
  • DeepSeek-R1 is cheaper at $0.50 / $2.15 per million input/output tokens, against $2 / $8 for o3.
  • o3 accepts more context: 200K tokens versus 164K.

Side by side

DeepSeek-R1 and o3 specifications
DeepSeek-R1o3
ProviderDeepSeekOpenAI
Noometry Index42.347.5
Released2025-01-202025-04-16
WeightsProprietaryProprietary
Context window164K200K
Max output64K100K
Input $ / M tokens$0.50$2
Output $ / M tokens$2.15$8
Results tracked5263

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Category by category

Coding Too close to call

DeepSeek-R1: 46.3 (#68), o3: 46.8 (#64)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkDeepSeek-R1o3
Aider Polyglot71.4%81.3%
WeirdML41.6%52.4%
LMArena Coding14271408
ALE-Bench804.12933.55
SWE-bench Verified—62.3%
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)—58.4%
SciCode35.7%—
GSO—8.8%
LiveBench Coding66.7%—
CadEval—74%
AlgoTune1.7—

Agentic & Tool Use o3 leads

DeepSeek-R1: 30.7 (#75), o3: 34.5 (#44)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkDeepSeek-R1o3
DeepResearch Bench35.1%45.2%
METR Time Horizons53.8%65.4%
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard—63%
GDPval—30.8%
OSWorld—23%
BALROG34.9%—
LMArena Search—1144

Reasoning o3 leads

DeepSeek-R1: 18.6 (#278), o3: 32.0 (#78)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkDeepSeek-R1o3
ARC-AGI-21.3%6.5%
SimpleBench40.8%53.1%
Kagi LLM Benchmark69.4%67.6%
ARC-AGI-121.2%60.8%
CritPt1.1%1.4%
LMArena Hard Prompts14161402
Epoch Capabilities Index141.29146.86
ForecastBench6062.5
Chess Puzzles—38%
EnigmaEval—13.1%
LiveBench Reasoning83.2%—
Mystery Game Puzzles—29%
DTBench—84.8%
LiveBench Data Analysis69.8%—
LMCA—39.7%
LiveBench71.6%—

Math o3 leads

DeepSeek-R1: 43.8 (#79), o3: 50.2 (#58)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkDeepSeek-R1o3
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202566.4%84.4%
Omni-MATH42.4%71.4%
LMArena Math14001426
MATH Level 596.6%97.8%
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)—33.3%
LiveBench Math80.7%—
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)—18.7%
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)—2.1%

Knowledge o3 leads

DeepSeek-R1: 44.5 (#87), o3: 54.6 (#52)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkDeepSeek-R1o3
GPQA Diamond76.3%81.8%
MMLU-Pro79.3%85.9%
Confabulations12.7%14.4%
GPQA (HELM)66.6%75.3%
LMArena Expert13941402
Humanity's Last Exam—20.3%
SimpleQA Verified—49.4%
Vectara Hallucination Rate11.3%—

Multimodal Not comparable

DeepSeek-R1: —, o3: 41.4 (#36)

Multimodal benchmarks
BenchmarkDeepSeek-R1o3
LMArena Vision—1214
GeoBench—74%
VPCT—52%

Multilingual Too close to call

DeepSeek-R1: 52.4 (#85), o3: 51.7 (#105)

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkDeepSeek-R1o3
LMArena Non-English14121401
LMArena Chinese14421437
LMArena French14171430
LMArena German14041420
LMArena Japanese13911403
LMArena Korean13601370
LMArena Russian14231406
LMArena Spanish14111395

Instruction Following Too close to call

DeepSeek-R1: 72.0 (#143), o3: 72.8 (#127)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkDeepSeek-R1o3
IFEval78.4%86.9%
LMArena Instruction Following13821368
LiveBench Instruction Following80.5%—

Long Context o3 leads

DeepSeek-R1: 45.4 (#36), o3: 53.3 (#6)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkDeepSeek-R1o3
Fiction.LiveBench75%88.9%
LMArena Longer Query13911372
CL-bench—17.8%

Writing & Preference o3 leads

DeepSeek-R1: 61.4 (#88), o3: 63.5 (#64)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkDeepSeek-R1o3
LMArena Text14281410
LMArena Creative Writing14051359
Short-Story Creative Writing83%83.9%
EQ-Bench Creative Writing15001676
WildBench82.8%86.1%
LMArena Multi-Turn14051405
LiveBench Language48.5%—

Frequently asked questions

Is DeepSeek-R1 better than o3?

o3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 47.5 to 42.3 on the Noometry Index. DeepSeek-R1 costs 3.8× less per token, which makes it the better buy when o3's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, DeepSeek-R1 or o3?

DeepSeek-R1 is cheaper. It lists at $0.50 per million input tokens and $2.15 per million output tokens; o3 lists at $2 and $8.

Is DeepSeek-R1 or o3 better for coding?

They score almost the same on coding (46.3 vs 46.8); test both on your own repository before choosing.

Which has the bigger context window?

o3 does, with 200K tokens against 164K.

How many benchmarks do DeepSeek-R1 and o3 share?

41 benchmarks have published results for both models. DeepSeek-R1 has 52 scored results on Noometry and o3 has 63.

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