Head-to-Head API Cost Benchmark

DeepSeek-R1 (Reasoner) vs OpenAI o3-mini: API Price & Latency Comparison

On a standard B2B production workload (5,000 req/day), DeepSeek-R1 (Reasoner) is 54.5% cheaper ($260.77/mo vs $573.38/mo), while OpenAI o3-mini leads in token generation speed (95 tok/s).

Side-by-Side Specification & Billing Matrix

Metric DeepSeek-R1 (Reasoner) (DeepSeek API) OpenAI o3-mini (OpenAI) Advantage
Standard Input / 1M Tokens $0.550 $1.100 DeepSeek-R1 (Reasoner)
Cached Input / 1M Tokens $0.140 $0.550 DeepSeek-R1 (Reasoner)
Output Generation / 1M Tokens $2.19 $4.40 DeepSeek-R1 (Reasoner)
Intelligence / Benchmark Quality 1315 LMSYS Elo 1305 LMSYS Elo DeepSeek-R1 (Reasoner)
Monthly Spend (5k req/day, 50% cache) $260.77 / mo $573.38 / mo DeepSeek-R1 (Reasoner) (-54.5%)
Context Window 64,000 tokens 200,000 tokens OpenAI o3-mini
Output Speed (Throughput) 50 tokens/sec 95 tokens/sec OpenAI o3-mini
Batch API Discount -50% (DeepSeek API) -50% (OpenAI) DeepSeek API
Primary Workload Fit Budget-friendly chain-of-thought logic, financial verification, logic synthesis Algorithmic code generation, math, STEM reasoning, automated QA agents Workload Dependent
Deploy / Console Access Try DeepSeek-R1 (Reasoner) → Try OpenAI o3-mini → Open Full Simulator