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DeepSeek V3 vs Phi-3.5 Mini: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

Pricing verified Apr 8, 2026

⚡ Quick Answer

Compare DeepSeek V3 and Phi-3.5 Mini across pricing, benchmarks, and capabilities.

Updated: April 8, 2026 · ✓ Pricing verified

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeatureDeepSeek V3Phi-3.5 Mini
ProviderDeepSeekMicrosoft
Input Price / 1M tokens$0.200$0.130
Output Price / 1M tokens$0.770$0.520
Context Window
128K
128K
Max Output Tokens
8,192
4,096
Arena ELO
1,280
1,160
Coding ELO
1,300
1,165
TTFT (ms)
220
150
Tokens/sec
85
100
MultimodalNoNo
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 Phi-3.5 Mini

Phi-3.5 Mini excels at cost-effective, fast-inference tasks.

Strengths:

  • Very cheap
  • Fast
  • Large context

Best for:

cost-effectivefast-inference

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