# DeepSeek-R1 vs Magistral Medium

> DeepSeek-R1 is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.3 to 35.2 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/deepseek-r1-vs-magistral-medium
- Last updated: 2026-10-11
- Shared benchmarks: 22

## Summary

- They share 22 benchmarks with published results for both. DeepSeek-R1 scores higher in 8 categories and Magistral Medium in 0 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where DeepSeek-R1 leads 61.4 to 46.3.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is Kagi LLM Benchmark: 69.4% for DeepSeek-R1 and 16.2% for Magistral Medium.
- DeepSeek-R1 is cheaper at $0.50 / $2.15 per million input/output tokens, against $2 / $5 for Magistral Medium.
- Magistral Medium accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 164K.
- Magistral Medium has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | DeepSeek-R1 | Magistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | DeepSeek | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 42.3 | 35.2 |
| Rank | 115 | 227 |
| Context | 164K | 262K |
| Input $/M | $0.50 | $2 |
| Output $/M | $2.15 | $5 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- DeepSeek-R1: 46.3 (#68)
- Magistral Medium: 39.1 (#161)

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-R1 | Magistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 35.7% | 39.2% |
| LMArena Coding | 1427 | 1319 |
| Aider Polyglot | 71.4% | — |
| WeirdML | 41.6% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | 66.7% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 804.12 | — |
| AlgoTune | 1.7 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- DeepSeek-R1: 30.7 (#75)
- Magistral Medium: —

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-R1 | Magistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| DeepResearch Bench | 35.1% | — |
| BALROG | 34.9% | — |
| METR Time Horizons | 53.8% | — |

## Reasoning

- DeepSeek-R1: 18.6 (#278)
- Magistral Medium: 8.6 (#348)

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-R1 | Magistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| ARC-AGI-2 | 1.3% | 0% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 69.4% | 16.2% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 21.2% | 6.1% |
| CritPt | 1.1% | 0.3% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1416 | 1267 |
| SimpleBench | 40.8% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 83.2% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 69.8% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 141.29 | — |
| ForecastBench | 60 | — |
| LiveBench | 71.6% | — |

## Math

- DeepSeek-R1: 43.8 (#79)
- Magistral Medium: 35.1 (#189)

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-R1 | Magistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1400 | 1250 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 66.4% | — |
| Omni-MATH | 42.4% | — |
| LiveBench Math | 80.7% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 96.6% | — |

## Knowledge

- DeepSeek-R1: 44.5 (#87)
- Magistral Medium: 33.5 (#202)

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-R1 | Magistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1394 | 1223 |
| GPQA Diamond | 76.3% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 79.3% | — |
| Confabulations | 12.7% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 11.3% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 66.6% | — |

## Multilingual

- DeepSeek-R1: 52.4 (#85)
- Magistral Medium: 39.6 (#224)

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-R1 | Magistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1412 | 1232 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1442 | 1227 |
| LMArena French | 1417 | 1267 |
| LMArena German | 1404 | 1248 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1391 | 1175 |
| LMArena Korean | 1360 | 1125 |
| LMArena Russian | 1423 | 1224 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1411 | 1271 |

## Instruction Following

- DeepSeek-R1: 72.0 (#143)
- Magistral Medium: 66.0 (#211)

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-R1 | Magistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1382 | 1254 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 80.5% | — |
| IFEval | 78.4% | — |

## Long Context

- DeepSeek-R1: 45.4 (#36)
- Magistral Medium: 39.3 (#183)

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-R1 | Magistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1391 | 1295 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | 75% | — |

## Writing & Preference

- DeepSeek-R1: 61.4 (#88)
- Magistral Medium: 46.3 (#219)

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-R1 | Magistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1428 | 1255 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1405 | 1245 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1405 | 1275 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 83% | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1500 | — |
| WildBench | 82.8% | — |
| LiveBench Language | 48.5% | — |

## FAQ

### Is DeepSeek-R1 better than Magistral Medium?

DeepSeek-R1 is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.3 to 35.2 on the Noometry Index.

### Which is cheaper, DeepSeek-R1 or Magistral Medium?

DeepSeek-R1 is cheaper. It lists at $0.50 per million input tokens and $2.15 per million output tokens; Magistral Medium lists at $2 and $5.

### Is DeepSeek-R1 or Magistral Medium better for coding?

DeepSeek-R1 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 46.3 versus 39.1 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Magistral Medium does, with 262K tokens against 164K.

### How many benchmarks do DeepSeek-R1 and Magistral Medium share?

22 benchmarks have published results for both models. DeepSeek-R1 has 52 scored results on Noometry and Magistral Medium has 22.