Which is cheaper, DeepSeek V3 or o3-mini?

DeepSeek V3 is cheaper for both input ($0.27/M tokens) and output ($1.10/M tokens), compared to o3-mini at $1.10/$4.40 per million tokens.

Which is faster, DeepSeek V3 or o3-mini?

DeepSeek V3 is faster at 85 tokens/sec with a TTFT of 220ms, compared to o3-mini at 55 tokens/sec and 1500ms TTFT.

Which has a bigger context window, DeepSeek V3 or o3-mini?

o3-mini has a 200K token context window, which is larger DeepSeek V3's 128K context window.

Which is better for coding, DeepSeek V3 or o3-mini?

o3-mini has a higher coding ELO of 1340 compared to DeepSeek V3's 1300, making it the stronger choice for code generation and programming tasks.

DeepSeek V3 vs o3-mini: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

Name: DeepSeek V3 vs o3-mini — Pricing, Benchmarks & Speed Comparison 2026
Creator: LLMversus
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Pricing verified Apr 20, 2026By LLMversusUpdated June 14, 2026View methodology

⚡ Quick Answer

DeepSeek V3 is significantly cheaper at $0.27/$1.10 per million tokens vs $1.10/$4.40. o3-mini is stronger for coding with a coding ELO of 1340 vs 1300. DeepSeek V3 is faster at 85 tokens/sec vs 55 tokens/sec. o3-mini ranks higher overall with an Arena ELO of 1310 vs 1280. o3-mini offers a larger 200K context window vs 128K.

Updated: April 20, 2026 · ✓ Pricing verified

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	DeepSeek V3	o3-mini
Provider	DeepSeek	OpenAI
Input Price / 1M tokens	$0.259	$1.10
Output Price / 1M tokens	$0.420	$4.40
Context Window	128K	128K
Max Output Tokens	8,192	65,536
Arena ELO	1,280	1,280
Coding ELO	1,300	1,285
TTFT (ms)	220	350
Tokens/sec	85	25
Multimodal	No	No
JSON Mode	Yes	Yes
Function Calling	Yes	No
Vision	No	No

When to Use DeepSeek V3

Choose DeepSeek V3 when you need: excellent coding performance for its price, open-source and self-hostable, very competitive benchmarks, extremely affordable. It excels at coding, general-purpose, cost-sensitive, open-source tasks. It is also the more cost-effective option between the two.

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 o3-mini

Choose o3-mini when you need: strong mathematical reasoning, good coding performance, affordable 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:

Strong reasoning
Good math skills
Affordable reasoning

Best for:

reasoningmathgeneral-purpose

DeepSeek V3 vs o3-mini: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

Side-by-Side Comparison

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