The Known Good Updated 29 Jul 2026
DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 vs OpenAI: o3 Mini ·DeepSeek vs OpenAI

DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 vs OpenAI: o3 Mini — head-to-head comparison

DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 profile OpenAI: o3 Mini 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: o3 Mini — OpenAI
Quality
#13 of 62
86based on 4 of 7 evaluations
Known Good Index
Speed
#31 of 317
105.7
Output tokens per second
Price
#256 of 370
$1.93
Blended per 1M tokens
In $1.10 · Out $4.40
Cache hit price
#220 of 238
$0.55
per 1M tokens (−50%)
Context
#234 of 375
200k
tokens (~300 pages)
Summary

On the Known Good Index, DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 scores 62 and OpenAI: o3 Mini scores 86 — a 24-point lead for OpenAI: o3 Mini. They share 10 published evaluations, with DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 ahead on 0 and OpenAI: o3 Mini ahead on 10.

Blended pricing is $0.35 per 1M tokens for DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 and $1.93 for OpenAI: o3 Mini — DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 is about 5.5× cheaper.

Throughput is 19 tokens per second for DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 and 106 for OpenAI: o3 Mini, with time to first token at 1.4s and 3.8s. DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 accepts 164k tokens of context against 200k.

DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 is open weights under Open weights (unrestricted); OpenAI: o3 Mini is proprietary. 4 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: o3 Mini
Known Good Index 62 based on 4 of 7 evaluations 86 based on 4 of 7 evaluations
Blended $/1M $0.35 $1.93
Output tok/s 19 106
Context window 164k 200k
Providers 3 1
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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: o3 Mini
Known Good Index 62 86
Mathematics Index 57 88
Reasoning Index 61 85
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: o3 Mini · scores ingested from Epoch AI (CC-BY 4.0), LiveBench (Apache-2.0)

GPQA Diamond71 / 77
Mock AIME 2024–2549 / 77
MATH Level 565 / 96
LiveBench60 / 76
LiveBench Coding62 / 83
LiveBench Data Analysis61 / 71
LiveBench Instruction Following75 / 84
LiveBench Language47 / 51
LiveBench Mathematics61 / 77
LiveBench Reasoning57 / 90

Right-hand figures read DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 / OpenAI: o3 Mini. DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 leads on 0 of 10, OpenAI: o3 Mini on 10.

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: o3 Mini
Text Arena 1,333 1,319
Text Arena (style controlled) 1,359 1,348
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: o3 Mini
Input $/1M $0.20 $1.10
Output $/1M $0.80 $4.40
Blended $/1M $0.35 $1.93
Cache read $/1M $0.003 $0.550
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: o3 Mini
Context window 164k 200k
Max output tokens 16k 100k
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: o3 Mini
Output tokens/s 19 106
Time to first token 1.4s 3.8s
The Known Good

Providers

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

4 hosts
Full provider benchmarks →
Provider DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 blendedDeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 tok/s OpenAI: o3 Mini blendedOpenAI: o3 Mini tok/s
StreamLake $0.35 21 — —
Novita $0.62 20 — —
DeepInfra $0.46 12 — —
OpenAI · first party — — $1.93 155

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)Benchmarks — LiveBench (Apache-2.0)Elo — Arena Full attribution →