Which model is better: DeepSeek R1 or GPT-4o Mini?
GPT-4o Mini is 72.7% cheaper for input tokens ($0.15 vs. $0.55 per 1M tokens) and $0.60 vs. $2.19 for output tokens (3.7x cost advantage). In terms of operational performance, GPT-4o Mini delivers lower response latency at 220ms TTFT (1230ms faster than DeepSeek R1) with 140 vs. 58 tok/s throughput. DeepSeek R1 leads coding evaluations at 49.2% SWE-bench Verified vs. 41.0% for GPT-4o Mini and 71.5% vs. 40.2% on GPQA Diamond.
Verified daily via automated API latency tests and official documentation.
Zero-Shot RAG Verified
Verified Performance & Unit Economics Delta (12 Dimensions)
Daily synchronized metrics across token pricing, prompt cache economics, latency, throughput, and 5 capability benchmarks.
Metric / Dimension
DeepSeek R1
GPT-4o Mini
Net Delta / Advantage
Input Cost / 1M Tokens
$0.55
$0.15
GPT-4o Mini is 3.7x cheaper
Output Cost / 1M Tokens
$2.19
$0.60
GPT-4o Mini (72.6% lower)
Prompt Cache Read / 1M
$0.140
$0.075
GPT-4o Mini is 1.9x cheaper
Prompt Cache Write / 1M
$0.55
$0.15
GPT-4o Mini is 3.7x cheaper
Context Window (Max Output)
131k (33k out)
131k (16k out)
Equal Context Window
Avg TTFT Response Latency
1450ms
220ms
GPT-4o Mini (1230ms faster)
Generation Speed (Throughput)
58 tok/s
140 tok/s
GPT-4o Mini (+82 tok/s faster)
SWE-bench Verified (Coding)
49.2%
41%
DeepSeek R1 (+8.2% lead)
GPQA Diamond (PhD STEM)
71.5%
40.2%
DeepSeek R1 (+31.3% lead)
MMLU-Pro (Multi-Discipline)
84%
68%
DeepSeek R1 (+16.0% lead)
MATH-500 (Quantitative Logic)
97.3%
70.2%
DeepSeek R1 (+27.1% lead)
Inference Value Score (IVR)
64.8 / 100
67.2 / 100
GPT-4o Mini (+2.4 pts)
Interactive Monthly Token Economics & ROI Forecaster
Model production workloads across prompt, completion, and cached context tokens, or switch models on the fly.
GPT-4o Mini is cheaper at $0.15/1M input tokens ($0.60/1M output) compared to $0.55/1M input ($2.19/1M output) for DeepSeek R1.
Which model has lower TTFT latency and higher tok/s throughput: DeepSeek R1 or GPT-4o Mini?
GPT-4o Mini delivers faster first-token latency at 220ms TTFT (140 tok/s throughput) compared to 1450ms TTFT (58 tok/s) for DeepSeek R1.
How do DeepSeek R1 and GPT-4o Mini compare on SWE-bench coding and GPQA Diamond reasoning?
On SWE-bench Verified software engineering, DeepSeek R1 scores 49.2% versus 41% for GPT-4o Mini. On GPQA Diamond graduate-level STEM reasoning, DeepSeek R1 scores 71.5% versus 40.2% for GPT-4o Mini (and 97.3% vs 70.2% on MATH-500).
When should you choose DeepSeek R1?
Choose DeepSeek R1 (DeepSeek) for open-weight chain-of-thought reasoning, synthetic data distillation, and complex mathematical verification — offering a 131k context window, 1450ms TTFT, and $0.55/1M input pricing ($0.140/1M cached reads).
When should you choose GPT-4o Mini?
Choose GPT-4o Mini (OpenAI) for high-volume classification, lightweight RAG chatbots, and structured JSON extraction — offering a 131k context window, 220ms TTFT, and $0.15/1M input pricing ($0.075/1M cached reads).
