Head-to-head · Updated March 2026
DeepSeek R1 costs a fraction of GPT-5.4 — roughly $0.55/1M input vs $2.50 — and is strong at chain-of-thought reasoning tasks. GPT-5.4 wins on practical task breadth, reliability, agentic capabilities, and speed. DeepSeek R1 is the right pick when cost is the primary constraint and reasoning is the primary task. For most production workflows, GPT-5.4 is more capable and far more consistent.
DeepSeek R1
Open-source o1-class reasoning at a fraction of the cost.
GPT-5.4
Best for agentic automation and desktop control workflows.
Winner| DeepSeek R1 | GPT-5.4 | |
|---|---|---|
| Input cost / 1M tokens | $$0.55/1M | $$2.50/1M |
| Output cost / 1M tokens | $$2.19/1M | $$15.00/1M |
| Context window | 128k tokens | 272k tokens |
| Speed | Deliberate | Balanced |
| Price tier | Budget |
Which model wins for each use case — and why.
DeepSeek R1 was built specifically for chain-of-thought reasoning and trades blows with GPT-5.4 on logic-heavy benchmarks. For pure reasoning tasks, they're comparable — DeepSeek R1 at a fraction of the cost.
GPT-5.4 is more reliable for production coding tasks and has desktop computer-use capabilities. DeepSeek R1 handles code but lacks the practical depth and consistency of GPT-5.4.
DeepSeek R1 is dramatically cheaper — roughly $0.55/1M input vs GPT-5.4's $2.50/1M. For high-volume reasoning or classification tasks, the savings are significant.
DeepSeek R1 is a reasoning model that thinks before responding — it's slower by design. GPT-5.4 is faster for most everyday tasks.
GPT-5.4 is a more battle-tested production model with broader task coverage. DeepSeek R1 excels at structured reasoning but can be inconsistent on diverse, open-ended tasks.
Pick DeepSeek R1 if…
Pick GPT-5.4 if…
Bottom line
For most workflows, GPT-5.4 is the stronger choice.
Best choice when you need a model that can operate software autonomously at the older GPT-5.4 price tier. For current premium coding quality, Claude Opus 4.7 leads.
Is DeepSeek better than ChatGPT?
DeepSeek R1 is better on cost — it's roughly 5× cheaper than GPT-5.4. ChatGPT is better on practical task breadth, reliability, speed, and agentic capabilities. For most production use cases, ChatGPT is the stronger overall pick.
Is DeepSeek cheaper than ChatGPT?
Yes, dramatically. DeepSeek R1 costs around $0.55/1M input tokens vs GPT-5.4's $2.50/1M. The cost gap is significant enough to matter for high-volume API workloads.
Is DeepSeek as good as ChatGPT for coding?
For structured coding tasks, DeepSeek R1 is capable. But GPT-5.4 is more reliable across diverse coding scenarios, has computer-use capabilities, and has a much larger ecosystem of integrations.
Is DeepSeek safe to use?
DeepSeek is a Chinese-developed model with different privacy and data handling policies than OpenAI or Anthropic. For sensitive business data, review their data policies carefully before using the API.
When should I use DeepSeek instead of ChatGPT?
Use DeepSeek R1 when cost is the main constraint and your task is structured reasoning, logic, or evaluation at high volume. Use ChatGPT (GPT-5.4) when reliability, speed, and task diversity matter more than minimizing cost.
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