DeepSeek V3 vs o4-mini— Pricing & Token Cost Comparison
Side-by-side API pricing and tokenizer details for DeepSeek V3 (DeepSeek) and o4-mini (OpenAI).
Side-by-side pricing
| Feature | DeepSeek V3 | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | DeepSeek | OpenAI |
| Input (per 1M tokens) | $0.270 | $1.10 |
| Output (per 1M tokens) | $1.10 | $4.40 |
| Context caching | No | No |
| Batch API discount | Not available | 50% off |
| Context window | 128K tokens | 200K 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 V3
$0.3550
Input: $0.1350 + Output: $0.2200
o4-mini
$1.4300
Input: $0.5500 + Output: $0.8800
DeepSeek V3 is 75% cheaper for this workload — saving $1.0750 per month at this volume.
Frequently asked questions
- Is DeepSeek V3 cheaper than o4-mini?
- Yes, DeepSeek V3 is cheaper for the typical workload above. At $0.270/1M input and $1.10/1M output tokens, it costs $0.3550 versus $1.4300 for o4-mini — a 75% difference. Costs scale linearly, so larger workloads amplify this gap.
- What is the context window of DeepSeek V3 vs o4-mini?
- DeepSeek V3 supports a 128K token context window. o4-mini supports a 200K token context window. A larger context window lets you include more text — documents, conversation history, or code — in a single API call.
- Do DeepSeek V3 or o4-mini support context caching or batch discounts?
- DeepSeek V3 does not support context caching. It does not offer a batch API discount. o4-mini does not support context caching. It offers a 50% Batch API discount.
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