Which is cheaper, DeepSeek V3 or o4-mini?

DeepSeek V3 is cheaper for both input ($0.27/M tokens) and output ($1.10/M tokens), compared to o4-mini at $1.10/$4.40 per million tokens.

Which is faster, DeepSeek V3 or o4-mini?

DeepSeek V3 is faster at 85 tokens/sec with a TTFT of 220ms, compared to o4-mini at 60 tokens/sec and 1200ms TTFT.

Which has a bigger context window, DeepSeek V3 or o4-mini?

o4-mini has a 200K token context window, which is larger DeepSeek V3's 128K context window.

Which is better for coding, DeepSeek V3 or o4-mini?

o4-mini has a higher coding ELO of 1380 compared to DeepSeek V3's 1300, making it the stronger choice for code generation and programming tasks.

DeepSeek V3 vs o4-mini: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

Name: DeepSeek V3 vs o4-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. o4-mini is stronger for coding with a coding ELO of 1380 vs 1300. DeepSeek V3 is faster at 85 tokens/sec vs 60 tokens/sec. o4-mini ranks higher overall with an Arena ELO of 1350 vs 1280. o4-mini offers a larger 200K context window vs 128K.

Updated: April 20, 2026 · ✓ Pricing verified

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	DeepSeek V3	o4-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	32,768
Arena ELO	1,280	1,260
Coding ELO	1,300	1,270
TTFT (ms)	220	180
Tokens/sec	85	105
Multimodal	No	No
JSON Mode	Yes	Yes
Function Calling	Yes	Yes
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 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 V3 vs o4-mini: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

Side-by-Side Comparison

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