DeepSeek-V3 vs GPT-4.1

DeepSeek vs OpenAI · Prices checked November 11, 2026

On blended cost DeepSeek-V3 undercuts GPT-4.1 by about 7.7×: $0.4910 per million tokens versus $3.80. A single 100K-input, 10K-output job costs $0.0409 on DeepSeek-V3 against $0.2800 on GPT-4.1.

Pricing and capacity

RatesUSD per million tokens. Prices checked November 11, 2026.

Published token pricing and context window for DeepSeek-V3 and GPT-4.1
MetricDeepSeek-V3GPT-4.1Difference
Input / 1M tokens$0.3200$2.006.3×
Output / 1M tokens$0.8900$8.009.0×
Blended · 70/30calculated$0.4910$3.807.7×
Blended · 50/50calculated$0.6050$5.008.3×
Blended · 80/20calculated$0.4340$3.207.4×
Blended · 20/80calculated$0.7760$6.808.8×
Job cost · 100K + 10Kcalculated$0.0409$0.28006.8×
Job cost · 1M + 100Kcalculated$0.4090$2.806.8×
Context window64,0001,000,00015.6×

Input and output rates are as published by each provider. Blended and job-cost rows are calculated comparison metrics, not published prices — how they are derived.

Of the 5 shared benchmarks, GPT-4.1 takes 5. The widest gap is on LMArena Elo, where GPT-4.1 leads by 57 points. On context, GPT-4.1 is the larger at 1,000,000 tokens versus 64,000.

Benchmarks

Benchmark scores both DeepSeek-V3 and GPT-4.1 report
BenchmarkDeepSeek-V3GPT-4.1Leader
MMLU88.5%90.2%GPT-4.1
GPQA Diamond59.1%66.3%GPT-4.1
HumanEval89%94.5%GPT-4.1
SWE-bench Verified42%54.6%GPT-4.1
LMArena Elo1358 Elo1415 EloGPT-4.1

Only suites both models report are listed, so a missing score is never shown as a loss. Figures are provider-published or from public leaderboards and are not independently re-run.

What each model is for

DeepSeek-V3

DeepSeek · Frontier

Open-weights frontier model that matched GPT-4-class quality at a fraction of the inference cost. Sparked the late-2024 cost reset.

  • Frontier quality, open weights
  • Aggressive pricing
  • Strong code & math
  • MoE architecture

GPT-4.1

OpenAI · Frontier

Long-context coding-focused GPT-4 successor with a 1M-token window. Aimed at developers who need predictable instruction following over very long inputs.

  • 1M context window
  • Strong coding
  • Better instruction following than GPT-4o
  • Cheap relative to GPT-4

Frequently asked questions

Which is cheaper, DeepSeek-V3 or GPT-4.1?

On blended cost DeepSeek-V3 undercuts GPT-4.1 by about 7.7×: $0.4910 per million tokens versus $3.80. A single 100K-input, 10K-output job costs $0.0409 on DeepSeek-V3 against $0.2800 on GPT-4.1. Blended cost weights input at 70% and output at 30%; price your own token split for an exact answer, since the cheaper model on a blended basis is not always cheaper for your workload.

Which performs better, DeepSeek-V3 or GPT-4.1?

Of the 5 shared benchmarks, GPT-4.1 takes 5. The widest gap is on LMArena Elo, where GPT-4.1 leads by 57 points. These are the figures each provider or public leaderboard publishes, not results we re-run, and a benchmark average can hide the specific behaviour your workload depends on.

Which has the larger context window, DeepSeek-V3 or GPT-4.1?

On context, GPT-4.1 is the larger at 1,000,000 tokens versus 64,000. The context window caps everything in a single request: prompt, retrieved documents, conversation history and the model’s own output all share it.

Can I compare DeepSeek-V3 and GPT-4.1 on my own numbers?

Yes. Open both in the side-by-side comparison tool to see every field at once, or use the token calculator to price your actual prompt and monthly request volume against each model. Both are free and need no sign-up.

Price it for your own workload

Related matchups

Terms used on this page

Prices and scores are recomputed on every deploy from the catalogue. Prices checked November 11, 2026.