Which is cheaper, DeepSeek R1 or o4-mini?

DeepSeek R1 is cheaper for both input ($0.55/M tokens) and output ($2.19/M tokens), compared to o4-mini at $1.10/$4.40 per million tokens.

Which is faster, DeepSeek R1 or o4-mini?

o4-mini is faster at 60 tokens/sec with a TTFT of 1200ms, compared to DeepSeek R1 at 45 tokens/sec and 1800ms TTFT.

Which has a bigger context window, DeepSeek R1 or o4-mini?

o4-mini has a 200K token context window, which is larger DeepSeek R1's 128K context window.

Which is better for coding, DeepSeek R1 or o4-mini?

o4-mini has a higher coding ELO of 1380 compared to DeepSeek R1's 1330, making it the stronger choice for code generation and programming tasks.

DeepSeek R1 vs o4-mini: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

Name: DeepSeek R1 vs o4-mini — Pricing, Benchmarks & Speed Comparison 2026
Creator: LLMversus
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Pricing verified Sep 14, 2026By LLMversusUpdated September 17, 2026View methodology

⚡ Quick Answer

DeepSeek R1 is significantly cheaper at $0.55/$2.19 per million tokens vs $1.10/$4.40. o4-mini is stronger for coding with a coding ELO of 1380 vs 1330. o4-mini is faster at 60 tokens/sec vs 45 tokens/sec. o4-mini ranks higher overall with an Arena ELO of 1350 vs 1310. o4-mini offers a larger 200K context window vs 128K.

Updated: September 14, 2026 · ✓ Pricing verified

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	DeepSeek R1	o4-mini
Provider	DeepSeek	OpenAI
Input Price / 1M tokens	$0.500	$1.10
Output Price / 1M tokens	$2.15	$4.40
Context Window	128K	128K
Max Output Tokens	8,192	32,768
Arena ELO	1,398	1,260
Coding ELO	1,398	1,270
TTFT (ms)	1,800	180
Tokens/sec	45	105
Multimodal	No	No
JSON Mode	Yes	Yes
Function Calling	No	Yes
Vision	No	No

When to Use DeepSeek R1

Choose DeepSeek R1 when you need: excellent reasoning at a fraction of o3's cost, open-source and self-hostable, top-tier math performance, very competitive with proprietary reasoning models. It excels at reasoning, math, coding, science tasks. It is also the more cost-effective option between the two.

Strengths:

Excellent reasoning at a fraction of o3's cost
Open-source and self-hostable
Top-tier math performance
Very competitive with proprietary reasoning models

Best for:

reasoningmathcodingscience

When to Use o4-mini

Choose o4-mini when you need: excellent reasoning and math capabilities, strong coding performance, affordable for a reasoning model, large output window. It excels at reasoning, math, coding, science tasks. Its 200K context window is larger, making it better for long-document processing.

Strengths:

Affordable
Fast
Good reasoning

Best for:

general-purposereasoningcoding

DeepSeek R1 vs o4-mini: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

Side-by-Side Comparison

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