The Known Good Updated 29 Jul 2026
DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 vs OpenAI: GPT-4.1 ·DeepSeek vs OpenAI

DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 vs OpenAI: GPT-4.1 — head-to-head comparison

DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 profile OpenAI: GPT-4.1 profile All comparisons
DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 — DeepSeek
Quality
#40 of 62
62based on 4 of 7 evaluations
Known Good Index
Speed
#285 of 317
19.3
Output tokens per second
Price
#110 of 370
$0.35
Blended per 1M tokens
In $0.20 · Out $0.80
Cache hit price
#11 of 238
$0.003
per 1M tokens (−99%)
Context
#255 of 375
164k
tokens (~300 pages)
OpenAI: GPT-4.1 — OpenAI
Quality
#48 of 62
46based on 5 of 7 evaluations
Known Good Index
Speed
#186 of 317
43.5
Output tokens per second
Price
#293 of 370
$3.50
Blended per 1M tokens
In $2.00 · Out $8.00
Cache hit price
#208 of 238
$0.50
per 1M tokens (−75%)
Context
#62 of 375
1.05M
tokens (~1,600 pages)
Summary

On the Known Good Index, DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 scores 62 and OpenAI: GPT-4.1 scores 46 — a 17-point lead for DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3. They share 3 published evaluations, with DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 ahead on 2 and OpenAI: GPT-4.1 ahead on 1.

Blended pricing is $0.35 per 1M tokens for DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 and $3.50 for OpenAI: GPT-4.1 — DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 is about 10.0× cheaper.

Throughput is 19 tokens per second for DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 and 44 for OpenAI: GPT-4.1, with time to first token at 1.4s and 0.8s. DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 accepts 164k tokens of context against 1.05M.

DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 is open weights under Open weights (unrestricted); OpenAI: GPT-4.1 is proprietary. 5 tracked hosts serve one or both.

Generated from tracked data on 29 Jul 2026 · how these comparisons are computed →

At a glance
MetricDeepSeek: DeepSeek V3OpenAI: GPT-4.1
Known Good Index 62 based on 4 of 7 evaluations 46 based on 5 of 7 evaluations
Blended $/1M $0.35 $3.50
Output tok/s 19 44
Context window 164k 1.05M
Providers 3 2
Jump to section

Quality

Known Good Index and the capability indices, side by side

Index scores

Each index is min-max normalised across tracked models and scaled 0–100 from published evaluations. We do not run these evaluations.

MetricDeepSeek: DeepSeek V3OpenAI: GPT-4.1
Known Good Index 62 46
Mathematics Index 57 61
Reasoning Index 61 36
Agentic Index — 33
Openness Index 60 5
The Known Good

Quality Breakdown

Every evaluation both models report a published score for

Evaluations both models report

Bar = DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 · marker = OpenAI: GPT-4.1 · scores ingested from Epoch AI (CC-BY 4.0)

GPQA Diamond71 / 67
Mock AIME 2024–2549 / 38
MATH Level 565 / 83

Right-hand figures read DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 / OpenAI: GPT-4.1. DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 leads on 2 of 3, OpenAI: GPT-4.1 on 1.

The Known Good

Arena Elo

Human preference rating from blind pairwise votes

Arena ratings

Elo from blind pairwise votes, ingested from Arena. Higher is better.

MetricDeepSeek: DeepSeek V3OpenAI: GPT-4.1
Text Arena 1,333 —
Text Arena (style controlled) 1,359 —
The Known Good

Price & Cost

Published API pricing by token type

Published pricing

USD per 1M tokens. Blended is a 3:1 input:output mix. Live from OpenRouter, cross-checked against models.dev. Lower is better.

MetricDeepSeek: DeepSeek V3OpenAI: GPT-4.1
Input $/1M $0.20 $2.00
Output $/1M $0.80 $8.00
Blended $/1M $0.35 $3.50
Cache read $/1M $0.003 $0.500
The Known Good
We publish blended price rather than cost-per-task. Cost-per-task requires token counts from an evaluation suite we do not run. Blended price is computed from published rates and is fully reproducible — see the pricing methodology.

Context Window

Maximum input accepted and maximum output emitted

Context and output limits

Provider-declared limits, from metadata via models.dev and OpenRouter. Higher is better.

MetricDeepSeek: DeepSeek V3OpenAI: GPT-4.1
Context window 164k 1.05M
Max output tokens 16k 33k
The Known Good

Speed & Latency

Median throughput and time to first token across hosting providers

Output speedTime to first token
Throughput and latency

Medians across all tracked providers, derived from OpenRouter endpoint telemetry.

MetricDeepSeek: DeepSeek V3OpenAI: GPT-4.1
Output tokens/s 19 44
Time to first token 1.4s 0.8s
The Known Good

Providers

Which hosts serve each model, and at what price and speed

5 hosts
Full provider benchmarks →
Provider DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 blendedDeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 tok/s OpenAI: GPT-4.1 blendedOpenAI: GPT-4.1 tok/s
StreamLake $0.35 21 — —
Novita $0.62 20 — —
DeepInfra $0.46 12 — —
OpenAI · first party — — $3.50 57
Azure · first party — — $3.50 50

Per-host pricing and telemetry from OpenRouter. A dash means that host does not serve that model.

The Known Good
Sources for this page
Pricing & providers — OpenRouter Metadata — models.dev Benchmarks — Epoch AI (CC-BY 4.0)Elo — Arena Full attribution →