DeepSeek R1 vs GPT-4.1— Pricing & Token Cost Comparison
Side-by-side API pricing and tokenizer details for DeepSeek R1 (DeepSeek) and GPT-4.1 (OpenAI).
Side-by-side pricing
| Feature | DeepSeek R1 | GPT-4.1 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | DeepSeek | OpenAI |
| Input (per 1M tokens) | $0.550 | $2.00 |
| Output (per 1M tokens) | $2.19 | $8.00 |
| Context caching | No | No |
| Batch API discount | Not available | 50% off |
| Context window | 128K tokens | 1M tokens |
| Tokenizer | SentencePiece (Llama) | o200k_base (tiktoken) |
Real-world cost example
1,000 API requests per month, each with 500 input tokens and 200 output tokens (500K input + 200K output total).
DeepSeek R1
$0.7130
Input: $0.2750 + Output: $0.4380
GPT-4.1
$2.6000
Input: $1.0000 + Output: $1.6000
DeepSeek R1 is 73% cheaper for this workload — saving $1.8870 per month at this volume.
Frequently asked questions
- Is DeepSeek R1 cheaper than GPT-4.1?
- Yes, DeepSeek R1 is cheaper for the typical workload above. At $0.550/1M input and $2.19/1M output tokens, it costs $0.7130 versus $2.6000 for GPT-4.1 — a 73% difference. Costs scale linearly, so larger workloads amplify this gap.
- What is the context window of DeepSeek R1 vs GPT-4.1?
- DeepSeek R1 supports a 128K token context window. GPT-4.1 supports a 1M token context window. A larger context window lets you include more text — documents, conversation history, or code — in a single API call.
- Do DeepSeek R1 or GPT-4.1 support context caching or batch discounts?
- DeepSeek R1 does not support context caching. It does not offer a batch API discount. GPT-4.1 does not support context caching. It offers a 50% Batch API discount.
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