The Known Good Updated 25 Jul 2026
DeepSeek: R1 vs Microsoft: Phi 4 ·DeepSeek vs Microsoft

DeepSeek: R1 vs Microsoft: Phi 4 — head-to-head comparison

DeepSeek: R1 profile Microsoft: Phi 4 profile All comparisons
DeepSeek: R1 — DeepSeek
Quality
#24 of 61
68based on 3 of 6 evaluations
Known Good Index
Speed
#165 of 316
49.3
Output tokens per second
Price
#209 of 340
$1.15
Blended per 1M tokens
In $0.70 · Out $2.50
Cache hit price
unranked
—
per 1M tokens
Context
#219 of 345
164k
tokens (~300 pages)
Microsoft: Phi 4 — Microsoft
Quality
#50 of 61
33based on 3 of 6 evaluations
Known Good Index
Speed
#142 of 316
56.1
Output tokens per second
Price
#40 of 340
$0.09
Blended per 1M tokens
In $0.07 · Out $0.14
Cache hit price
unranked
—
per 1M tokens
Context
#334 of 345
16k
tokens (~25 pages)
Summary

On the Known Good Index, DeepSeek: R1 scores 68 and Microsoft: Phi 4 scores 33 — a 35-point lead for DeepSeek: R1. They share 10 published evaluations, with DeepSeek: R1 ahead on 10 and Microsoft: Phi 4 ahead on 0.

Blended pricing is $1.15 per 1M tokens for DeepSeek: R1 and $0.09 for Microsoft: Phi 4 — Microsoft: Phi 4 is about 13.1× cheaper.

Throughput is 49 tokens per second for DeepSeek: R1 and 56 for Microsoft: Phi 4, with time to first token at 1.1s and 0.2s. DeepSeek: R1 accepts 164k tokens of context against 16k.

DeepSeek: R1 is open weights under Open weights (unrestricted); Microsoft: Phi 4 is open weights under Open weights (unrestricted). 3 tracked hosts serve one or both.

Generated from tracked data on 25 Jul 2026 · how these comparisons are computed →

At a glance
MetricDeepSeek: R1Microsoft: Phi 4
Known Good Index 68 based on 3 of 6 evaluations 33 based on 3 of 6 evaluations
Blended $/1M $1.15 $0.09
Output tok/s 49 56
Context window 164k 16k
Providers 2 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: R1Microsoft: Phi 4
Known Good Index 68 33
Mathematics Index 74 39
Science Index 69 53
Reasoning Index 77 47
Openness Index 60 60
The Known Good

Quality Breakdown

Every evaluation both models report a published score for

Evaluations both models report

Bar = DeepSeek: R1 · marker = Microsoft: Phi 4 · scores ingested from Epoch AI (CC-BY 4.0), LiveBench (Apache-2.0)

GPQA Diamond69 / 56
MATH / AIME53 / 14
LiveBench72 / 42
LiveBench Coding67 / 31
LiveBench Data Analysis70 / 45
LiveBench Instruction Following81 / 58
LiveBench Language49 / 26
LiveBench Mathematics81 / 42
LiveBench Reasoning83 / 48
MATH Level 593 / 65

Right-hand figures read DeepSeek: R1 / Microsoft: Phi 4. DeepSeek: R1 leads on 10 of 10, Microsoft: Phi 4 on 0.

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: R1Microsoft: Phi 4
Text Arena 1,373 1,217
Text Arena (style controlled) 1,398 1,256
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: R1Microsoft: Phi 4
Input $/1M $0.70 $0.07
Output $/1M $2.50 $0.14
Blended $/1M $1.15 $0.09
Cache read $/1M — —
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: R1Microsoft: Phi 4
Context window 164k 16k
Max output tokens 16k 16k
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: R1Microsoft: Phi 4
Output tokens/s 49 56
Time to first token 1.1s 0.2s
The Known Good

Providers

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

3 hosts
Full provider benchmarks →
Provider DeepSeek: R1 blendedDeepSeek: R1 tok/s Microsoft: Phi 4 blendedMicrosoft: Phi 4 tok/s
Azure · first party $2.60 77 — —
Novita $1.15 22 — —
DeepInfra — — $0.09 70

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)Benchmarks — LiveBench (Apache-2.0)Elo — Arena Full attribution →