The Known Good Updated 25 Jul 2026
DeepSeek: R1 vs OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano ·DeepSeek vs OpenAI

DeepSeek: R1 vs OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano — head-to-head comparison

DeepSeek: R1 profile OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano 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)
OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano — OpenAI
Quality
#37 of 61
57based on 3 of 6 evaluations
Known Good Index
Speed
#28 of 316
120.9
Output tokens per second
Price
#56 of 340
$0.14
Blended per 1M tokens
In $0.05 · Out $0.40
Cache hit price
#13 of 206
$0.005
per 1M tokens (−90%)
Context
#105 of 345
400k
tokens (~600 pages)
Summary

On the Known Good Index, DeepSeek: R1 scores 68 and OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano scores 57 — a 11-point lead for DeepSeek: R1. They share 3 published evaluations, with DeepSeek: R1 ahead on 0 and OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano ahead on 3.

Blended pricing is $1.15 per 1M tokens for DeepSeek: R1 and $0.14 for OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano — OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano is about 8.4× cheaper.

Throughput is 49 tokens per second for DeepSeek: R1 and 121 for OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano, with time to first token at 1.1s and 2.9s. DeepSeek: R1 accepts 164k tokens of context against 400k.

DeepSeek: R1 is open weights under Open weights (unrestricted); OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano is proprietary. 3 tracked hosts serve one or both, and 1 serve both.

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

At a glance
MetricDeepSeek: R1OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano
Known Good Index 68 based on 3 of 6 evaluations 57 based on 3 of 6 evaluations
Blended $/1M $1.15 $0.14
Output tok/s 49 121
Context window 164k 400k
Providers 2 2
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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: R1OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano
Known Good Index 68 57
Mathematics Index 74 89
Science Index 69 69
Reasoning Index 77 —
Agentic Index — 21
Openness Index 60 5
The Known Good

Quality Breakdown

Every evaluation both models report a published score for

Evaluations both models report

Bar = DeepSeek: R1 · marker = OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano · scores ingested from Epoch AI (CC-BY 4.0)

GPQA Diamond69 / 69
MATH / AIME53 / 81
MATH Level 593 / 95

Right-hand figures read DeepSeek: R1 / OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano. DeepSeek: R1 leads on 0 of 3, OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano 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: R1OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano
Text Arena 1,373 —
Text Arena (style controlled) 1,398 —
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: R1OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano
Input $/1M $0.70 $0.05
Output $/1M $2.50 $0.40
Blended $/1M $1.15 $0.14
Cache read $/1M — $0.005
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: R1OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano
Context window 164k 400k
Max output tokens 16k 128k
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: R1OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano
Output tokens/s 49 121
Time to first token 1.1s 2.9s
The Known Good

Providers

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

3 hosts · 1 serve both
Full provider benchmarks →
Provider DeepSeek: R1 blendedDeepSeek: R1 tok/s OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano blendedOpenAI: GPT-5 Nano tok/s
Azure · first party $2.60 77 $0.14 69
Novita $1.15 22 — —
OpenAI · first party — — $0.07 225

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 →