The Known Good Updated 25 Jul 2026
DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 vs OpenAI: o3 ·DeepSeek vs OpenAI

DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 vs OpenAI: o3 — head-to-head comparison

DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 profile OpenAI: o3 profile All comparisons
DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 — DeepSeek
Quality
#44 of 61
44based on 3 of 6 evaluations
Known Good Index
Speed
#279 of 316
21.0
Output tokens per second
Price
#105 of 340
$0.35
Blended per 1M tokens
In $0.20 · Out $0.80
Cache hit price
#10 of 206
$0.003
per 1M tokens (−99%)
Context
#225 of 345
164k
tokens (~300 pages)
OpenAI: o3 — OpenAI
Quality
#28 of 61
67based on 4 of 6 evaluations
Known Good Index
Speed
#69 of 316
89.1
Output tokens per second
Price
#269 of 340
$3.50
Blended per 1M tokens
In $2.00 · Out $8.00
Cache hit price
#175 of 206
$0.50
per 1M tokens (−75%)
Context
#203 of 345
200k
tokens (~300 pages)
Summary

On the Known Good Index, DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 scores 44 and OpenAI: o3 scores 67 — a 23-point lead for OpenAI: o3. They share 3 published evaluations, with DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 ahead on 0 and OpenAI: o3 ahead on 3.

Blended pricing is $0.35 per 1M tokens for DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 and $3.50 for OpenAI: o3 — DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 is about 10.0× cheaper.

Throughput is 21 tokens per second for DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 and 89 for OpenAI: o3, with time to first token at 1.1s and 2.7s. DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 accepts 164k tokens of context against 200k.

DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 is open weights under Open weights (restricted use); OpenAI: o3 is proprietary. 4 tracked hosts serve one or both.

Generated from tracked data on 26 Jul 2026 · how these comparisons are computed →

At a glance
MetricDeepSeek: DeepSeek V3OpenAI: o3
Known Good Index 44 based on 3 of 6 evaluations 67 based on 4 of 6 evaluations
Blended $/1M $0.35 $3.50
Output tok/s 21 89
Context window 164k 200k
Providers 3 1
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Quality

Known Good Index and the capability indices, side by side

IndicesComponents
Index scores

Each index is min-max normalised across tracked models and scaled 0–100 from published evaluations. We do not run these evaluations.

MetricDeepSeek: DeepSeek V3OpenAI: o3
Known Good Index 44 67
Mathematics Index 40 92
Science Index 53 84
Reasoning Index 52 62
Agentic Index — 60
Openness Index 60 5
The Known Good

Quality Breakdown

Every evaluation both models report a published score for

Evaluations both models report

Bar = DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 · marker = OpenAI: o3 · scores ingested from Epoch AI (CC-BY 4.0)

GPQA Diamond57 / 82
MATH / AIME16 / 84
MATH Level 565 / 98

Right-hand figures read DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 / OpenAI: o3. DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 leads on 0 of 3, OpenAI: o3 on 3.

The Known Good

Arena Elo

Human preference rating from blind pairwise votes

Arena ratings

Elo from blind pairwise votes, ingested from Arena. Higher is better.

MetricDeepSeek: DeepSeek V3OpenAI: o3
Text Arena 1,333 —
Text Arena (style controlled) 1,358 —
The Known Good

Price & Cost

Published API pricing by token type

Per token typeCache discount
Published pricing

USD per 1M tokens. Blended is a 3:1 input:output mix. Live from OpenRouter, cross-checked against models.dev. Lower is better.

MetricDeepSeek: DeepSeek V3OpenAI: o3
Input $/1M $0.20 $2.00
Output $/1M $0.80 $8.00
Blended $/1M $0.35 $3.50
Cache read $/1M $0.003 $0.500
The Known Good
We publish blended price rather than cost-per-task. Cost-per-task requires token counts from an evaluation suite we do not run. Blended price is computed from published rates and is fully reproducible — see the pricing methodology.

Context Window

Maximum input accepted and maximum output emitted

Context and output limits

Provider-declared limits, from metadata via models.dev and OpenRouter. Higher is better.

MetricDeepSeek: DeepSeek V3OpenAI: o3
Context window 164k 200k
Max output tokens 16k 100k
The Known Good

Speed & Latency

Median throughput and time to first token across hosting providers

Output speedTime to first token
Throughput and latency

Medians across all tracked providers, derived from OpenRouter endpoint telemetry.

MetricDeepSeek: DeepSeek V3OpenAI: o3
Output tokens/s 21 89
Time to first token 1.1s 2.7s
The Known Good

Providers

Which hosts serve each model, and at what price and speed

4 hosts
Full provider benchmarks →
Provider DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 blendedDeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 tok/s OpenAI: o3 blendedOpenAI: o3 tok/s
StreamLake $0.35 25 — —
DeepInfra $0.46 23 — —
Novita $0.62 18 — —
OpenAI · first party — — $3.50 102

Per-host pricing and telemetry from OpenRouter. A dash means that host does not serve that model.

The Known Good
Sources for this page
Pricing & providers — OpenRouter Metadata — models.dev Benchmarks — Epoch AI (CC-BY 4.0)Elo — Arena Full attribution →