# DeepSeek R1 vs OpenAI o3 (2026): Benchmarks, Price & Verdict | Alher Tech

> DeepSeek R1 vs OpenAI o3: head-to-head 2026 comparison across Arena Elo, MMLU, GPQA, HumanEval, context window and pricing. Verdict + use cases.

- Canonical page: https://alhertech.com/en/ai-comparison/deepseek-r1-vs-o3/
- Site: Alher Tech (custom software, AI agents and SEO engineering, https://alhertech.com/)
- Contact: https://alhertech.com/en/contact/

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|  | DeepSeek R1 | OpenAI o3 |
| --- | --- | --- |
| arenaElo | 1389 | 1418 |
| humanEval | 90.2 | 92.4 |
| sweBench | 49.2 | 69.1 |
| mmlu | 90.8 | 90.2 |
| gpqa | 71.5 | 83.3 |
| aime | 79.8 | 91.6 |
| Price in/out ($/M) | $0.55 / $2.19 | $10 / $40 |

## Our verdict

o3 still leads on GPQA (83 vs 71.5) but DeepSeek R1 is 15× cheaper and can be self-hosted. For absolute top reasoning, o3. For reasoning with a budget or on-prem constraint, R1.

[DeepSeek R1](https://alhertech.com/en/ai-comparison/deepseek-r1/) · [OpenAI o3](https://alhertech.com/en/ai-comparison/o3/) · [All AI model comparisons](https://alhertech.com/en/ai-comparison/)