DeepSeek R1 vs OpenAI o4-mini

Compare DeepSeek R1 by DeepSeek against OpenAI o4-mini by OpenAI, in 1 community votes, deepseek r1 wins 100% of head-to-head duels, tested across 35 shared challenges. Updated April 2026.

Which is better, DeepSeek R1 or OpenAI o4-mini?

DeepSeek R1 is the better choice overall, winning 100% of 1 blind community votes on Rival. DeepSeek R1 costs $0.55/M input tokens vs $1.1/M for OpenAI o4-mini. Compare their real outputs side by side below.

Key Differences Between DeepSeek R1 and OpenAI o4-mini

DeepSeek R1 is made by deepseek while OpenAI o4-mini is from openai. On pricing, DeepSeek R1 costs $0.55/M input tokens vs $1.1/M for OpenAI o4-mini. In community voting, In 1 community votes, DeepSeek R1 wins 100% of head-to-head duels.

In 1 community votes, DeepSeek R1 wins 100% of head-to-head duels. Based on blind community voting from the Rival open dataset of 1+ human preference judgments for this pair.

Our Verdict
DeepSeek R1
DeepSeek R1Winner
OpenAI o4-mini
OpenAI o4-miniRunner-up

Pick DeepSeek R1. In 1 blind votes, DeepSeek R1 wins 100% of the time. That's not luck.

Clear winner
Writing DNA

Style Comparison

Similarity
99%

DeepSeek R1 uses 800.0x more bold

DeepSeek R1
OpenAI o4-mini
62%Vocabulary73%
15wSentence Length15w
0.52Hedging0.18
8.0Bold0.0
5.7Lists2.1
0.04Emoji0.00
0.62Headings0.00
0.28Transitions0.02
Based on 22 + 10 text responses
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DeepSeek R1OpenAI o4-mini

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