ModelRefs / o4 Mini vs DeepSeek V3
o4 Mini vs DeepSeek V3
o4 Mini 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.
o4 Mini: o4 Mini is OpenAI's efficient reasoning model, adding vision support to the mini reasoning tier for agentic tasks needing both image understanding and step-by-step logic at low cost per task. It is now deprecated: OpenAI gives the o4-mini-2025-04-16 snapshot and the o4-mini alias a shutdown date of 23 October 2026, with gpt-5.6-terra as the substitute.
Context window: DeepSeek V3 accepts up to 128,000 tokens, o4 Mini up to 200,000. Confirm the limit for your specific deployment channel before relying on it.
DeepSeek V3 vs o4 Mini at a glance
| Attribute | DeepSeek V3 | o4 Mini |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | DeepSeek | OpenAI |
| Released | 2024-12-26 | 2025-04-16 |
| Context window | 128,000 tokens | 200,000 tokens |
| Input price | $0.27/M tokens | $1.1/M tokens |
| Output price | $1.1/M tokens | $4.4/M tokens |
| Licence | MIT | Proprietary |
| Self-hostable | Yes, open weights | No, hosted only |
| Modalities | text | text, vision |
Where they differ most
- Cost Efficiency: DeepSeek V3 85%, o4 Mini 63%. DeepSeek V3 leads on this dimension.
- Reasoning: DeepSeek V3 72%, o4 Mini 79%. o4 Mini 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 o4 Mini vs DeepSeek V3.
Frequently asked questions
Which is better, o4 Mini or DeepSeek V3?
o4 Mini and DeepSeek V3 target different workloads — see the benchmark and pricing tables for a side-by-side answer.
Is o4 Mini cheaper than DeepSeek V3?
Compare $0.00110 vs $0.00027 on this page.