DeepSeek V3 vs Gemini 1.5 Flash: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

Pricing verified Apr 8, 2026

⚡ Quick Answer

Compare DeepSeek V3 and Gemini 1.5 Flash across pricing, benchmarks, and capabilities.

Updated: April 8, 2026 · ✓ Pricing verified

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeatureDeepSeek V3Gemini 1.5 Flash
ProviderDeepSeekGoogle
Input Price / 1M tokens$0.200$0.075
Output Price / 1M tokens$0.770$0.300
Context Window
128K
1M
Max Output Tokens
8,192
8,192
Arena ELO
1,280
1,190
Coding ELO1,300N/A
TTFT (ms)
220
150
Tokens/sec
85
100
MultimodalNoYes
JSON ModeYesYes
Function CallingYesYes
VisionNoNo
When to Use DeepSeek V3

DeepSeek V3 excels at coding, general-purpose, cost-sensitive, open-source tasks.

Strengths:

  • Excellent coding performance for its price
  • Open-source and self-hostable
  • Very competitive benchmarks
  • Extremely affordable

Best for:

codinggeneral-purposecost-sensitiveopen-source
When to Use Gemini 1.5 Flash

Gemini 1.5 Flash excels at multimodal, fast-inference, cost-effective tasks.

Strengths:

  • Super cheap
  • 1M context window
  • Fast multimodal processing

Best for:

multimodalfast-inferencecost-effective

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