DeepSeek R1 vs OpenAI o1 API Cost & Benchmark Comparison 2026
Compare DeepSeek R1 ($0.55/M) vs OpenAI o1 ($15.00/M). 96% reasoning cost reduction, SWE-bench coding benchmarks, and Reddit developer feedback.
| Input Token Price | $0.55 / 1M tokens |
| Prompt Cache Hit | $0.14 / 1M tokens (75% off) |
| Output Token Price | $2.19 / 1M tokens |
| Context Window | 64K / 128K tokens |
| AIME 2024 Score | 79.8% (Pass@1) |
| MATH-500 Score | 97.3% |
| Reasoning Transparency | Full visible reasoning trace |
| Self-Hostable | Yes (MIT License / Weights Free) |
| Input Token Price | $15.00 / 1M tokens |
| Prompt Cache Hit | $7.50 / 1M tokens (50% off) |
| Output Token Price | $60.00 / 1M tokens |
| Context Window | 200K tokens |
| AIME 2024 Score | 83.3% (Pass@1) |
| MATH-500 Score | 96.4% |
| Reasoning Transparency | Hidden internal reasoning tokens |
| Self-Hostable | No (Closed Proprietary API) |
At $0.55/M input tokens and $2.19/M output tokens, DeepSeek R1 delivers over 96% cost savings compared to OpenAI o1 ($15.00 in / $60.00 out) with nearly identical mathematical and algorithmic reasoning benchmark results. Furthermore, OpenAI o1 charges full output token rates for invisible internal chain-of-thought tokens, leading to unexpected billing spikes for multi-step agentic workflows. For 90% of reasoning applications, DeepSeek R1 is the undeniable economic winner.
"r/OpenAI: 'We ran 10,000 complex SQL generation tasks through both models. OpenAI o1 cost us $340 due to reasoning token bloat. DeepSeek R1 cost $14.20 and had a 98% pass rate.'"