DeepSeek R1 vs GPT-5
Compare DeepSeek R1 by DeepSeek against GPT-5 by OpenAI, in 7 community votes, deepseek r1 wins 57% of head-to-head duels, context windows of 128K vs 400K, tested across 51 shared challenges. Updated May 2026.
Which is better, DeepSeek R1 or GPT-5?
DeepSeek R1 is the better choice overall, winning 57% of 7 blind community votes on Rival. DeepSeek R1 costs $0.55/M input tokens vs $1.25/M for GPT-5. Context windows: 128K vs 400K tokens. Compare their real outputs side by side below.
Key Differences Between DeepSeek R1 and GPT-5
DeepSeek R1 is made by deepseek while GPT-5 is from openai. DeepSeek R1 has a 128K token context window compared to GPT-5's 400K. On pricing, DeepSeek R1 costs $0.55/M input tokens vs $1.25/M for GPT-5. In community voting, In 7 community votes, DeepSeek R1 wins 57% of head-to-head duels.
In 7 community votes, DeepSeek R1 wins 57% of head-to-head duels. DeepSeek R1 leads in Web Design, while GPT-5 leads in Image Generation. Based on blind community voting from the Rival open dataset of 7+ human preference judgments for this pair.
Per 1M tokens
DeepSeek R1 is cheaper on both — 2.3× input, 4.6× output
DeepSeek R1 has the edge overall. In 7 blind votes, DeepSeek R1 wins 57% of the time.
Pick DeepSeek R1 for Web Design. Pick GPT-5 for Image Generation. DeepSeek R1 is 4.6x cheaper per token — worth considering if cost matters.
Style Comparison
DeepSeek R1 uses 4.3x more emoji
