ModelRefs / GPT-5 vs DeepSeek V3
GPT-5 vs DeepSeek V3
GPT-5 vs DeepSeek V3: side-by-side benchmarks, pricing, context windows, coding ability and deployment. Pick the right model for your stack.
Overview
DeepSeek V3: DeepSeek V3 is DeepSeek's December 2024 open-weights Mixture-of-Experts model, activating 37 billion of 671 billion total parameters per token across a 128,000-token context window. It ships under the MIT licence with published weights and a technical report, and DeepSeek reports its own evaluation table for the text chat model under an 8,000-token output limit.
GPT-5: GPT-5 is OpenAI's August 2025 reasoning model for coding, reasoning, and agentic tasks. The API model supports text input and output, image input, configurable reasoning effort, and an immutable gpt-5-2025-08-07 snapshot; OpenAI now classifies it as a previous-generation model.
Context window: DeepSeek V3 accepts up to 128,000 tokens, GPT-5 up to 400,000. Confirm the limit for your specific deployment channel before relying on it.
DeepSeek V3 vs GPT-5 at a glance
| Attribute | DeepSeek V3 | GPT-5 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | DeepSeek | OpenAI |
| Released | 2024-12-26 | 2025-08-07 |
| Context window | 128,000 tokens | 400,000 tokens |
| Input price | $0.27/M tokens | $1.25/M tokens |
| Output price | $1.1/M tokens | $10/M tokens |
| Licence | MIT | Proprietary |
| Self-hostable | Yes, open weights | No, hosted only |
| Modalities | text | text, vision |
Where they differ most
- Long Context: DeepSeek V3 49%, GPT-5 90%. GPT-5 leads on this dimension.
- Cost Efficiency: DeepSeek V3 85%, GPT-5 47%. DeepSeek V3 leads on this dimension.
- Reasoning: DeepSeek V3 72%, GPT-5 93%. GPT-5 leads on this dimension.
- Coding: DeepSeek V3 67%, GPT-5 81%. GPT-5 leads on this dimension.
Capability scores are ModelRefs' own derived signals, not vendor claims or benchmark results. Validate against your own workload before relying on them.
Continue your research
Use these connected ModelRefs sections to compare alternatives, inspect implementation paths, and review the evidence and governance boundaries relevant to GPT-5 vs DeepSeek V3.
Frequently asked questions
Which is better, GPT-5 or DeepSeek V3?
GPT-5 and DeepSeek V3 target different workloads — see the benchmark and pricing tables for a side-by-side answer.
Is GPT-5 cheaper than DeepSeek V3?
Compare $0.00125 vs $0.00027 on this page.