ARCHIVED MODEL EDITIONS / REFERENCE

DeepSeek R1 vs DeepSeek V3

Does your task benefit enough from dedicated reasoning?

ARCHIVED REFERENCE

This page compares the older editions named in its title. For current GPT-6, Claude 5.5 and Gemini 3.8 comparisons, open the current comparison library. The historical model identities are preserved for migration and reproducibility.

DeepSeek

DeepSeek V3↗

A mixture-of-experts general-purpose text model.

Access type
Open weights
License / terms
See model card

The original V3 repository and later dated revisions are different artifacts. Pin a version when comparing results.

Official source ↗

Compare the publisher configurations

Exact checkpoint fields from pinned publisher files. The configured position limit does not establish the context enabled by a serving endpoint.

Source configuration for the reference model editions.
Configuration fieldDeepSeek R1DeepSeek V3
Published architectureDeepseekV3ForCausalLMDeepseekV3ForCausalLM
Transformer layers6161
Configured position limit163,840163,840
Pinned configuration revision56d4cbbb4d29e815299b0bcb
Configuration checked2026-10-102026-10-10
Original configurationRead pinned file ↗Read pinned file ↗

The decision to test

Separate easy and hard requests in the evaluation. A reasoning model may be useful for the difficult subset while a general-purpose model handles routine generation. Validate any routing rule with real errors.

Three criteria for this comparison

  1. Accuracy on reasoning-heavy cases
  2. Length and cost of complete output
  3. Latency on easy tasks as well as hard ones

Run a fair comparison

Use the same representative inputs and a written answer rubric. Pin the model version and record the endpoint, thinking configuration, quantization when known, context length, output allowance and concurrency. Preserve native request differences in an adapter rather than silently dropping fields.

Measure full request time, error rate and reported usage. For tools, validate arguments and score the result after execution. For images, preserve resolution and preprocessing. A valid response format alone does not establish a correct answer.

Compare cost per accepted result

Calculate input cost plus all billed output, including reasoning where the provider counts it. Add retries and discarded answers. Divide the total by the number of results that pass your quality criteria. Keep API usage cost separate from deployment and engineering cost.

Estimate token costs with the API calculator →
YOUR WORKLOAD

Compare cost per accepted task.

Enter results from your own evaluation. A task should count once it meets your written quality criteria. Include failed attempts and retries in total spend. These inputs stay in this browser and are not a Flonno benchmark.

DeepSeek R1
DeepSeek V3
DeepSeek R1

Enter all four values. Attempted tasks must be at least one; accepted tasks cannot exceed attempted tasks.

DeepSeek V3

Enter all four values. Attempted tasks must be at least one; accepted tasks cannot exceed attempted tasks.

Turn evidence into a deployment decision

A source benchmark can inform your shortlist, while your evaluation shows whether a model finishes the work at an acceptable cost. Keep the chosen endpoint, processing terms and output limits in the decision record. Inclusion in the Radar does not mean the model is served by Flonno.

For the API currently offered here, explore Qwen3.8 Flash 27B and the production evaluation guide.

Related reference comparisons

Browse current guides →