# OpenAI o4-mini vs DeepSeek R1 (2026): Benchmarks, Price & Verdict | Alher Tech

> OpenAI o4-mini vs DeepSeek R1: 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/o4-mini-vs-deepseek-r1/
- Site: Alher Tech (custom software, AI agents and SEO engineering, https://alhertech.com/)
- Contact: https://alhertech.com/en/contact/

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|  | OpenAI o4-mini | DeepSeek R1 |
| --- | --- | --- |
| arenaElo | 1362 | 1389 |
| humanEval | 88.6 | 90.2 |
| sweBench | 60 | 49.2 |
| mmlu | 85.4 | 90.8 |
| gpqa | 74.2 | 71.5 |
| aime | 92 | 79.8 |
| Price in/out ($/M) | $1.1 / $4.4 | $0.55 / $2.19 |

## Our verdict

DeepSeek R1 still wins on GPQA and is open-weights; o4-mini is better integrated, slightly faster and easier to productionize. R1 for research and self-host; o4-mini for polished cloud deployments.

[OpenAI o4-mini](https://alhertech.com/en/ai-comparison/o4-mini/) · [DeepSeek R1](https://alhertech.com/en/ai-comparison/deepseek-r1/) · [All AI model comparisons](https://alhertech.com/en/ai-comparison/)