GPT-5 mini vs DeepSeek V3: Closed Cheap vs Open Cheap

GPT-5 miniDeepSeek V3
arenaElo12881355
humanEval8186
sweBench5042
mmlu82.488.5
gpqa50.159.1
aime7859.4
Price in/out ($/M)$0.25 / $2$0.27 / $1.1

Our verdict

DeepSeek V3 is roughly the same price on the DeepSeek API and can be self-hosted; GPT-5 mini has vision, better tool-calling and the OpenAI ecosystem. For on-prem deployments, V3. For anything multimodal or tool-heavy, GPT-5 mini.

GPT-5 mini · DeepSeek V3 · All AI model comparisons