HEAD-TO-HEAD · BUDGET TIER · VERIFIED 24 JUL 2026
DeepSeek V3 vs GPT-4o mini: which budget model is actually cheaper?
Both sit in the budget tier and both get recommended as "the cheap option," which makes it easy to assume they cost about the same. They don't — and the gap that does exist isn't the most interesting part of this comparison.
| Spec | DeepSeek V3 | GPT-4o mini |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | DeepSeek | OpenAI |
| Input / 1M tokens | $0.27 | $0.15 |
| Output / 1M tokens | $1.10 | $0.60 |
| Context window | 128K | 128K |
| Weights | Open | Closed |
The price gap
GPT-4o mini is cheaper on both sides of the table — about 1.8x cheaper on input and 1.8x cheaper on output. Unlike most of the comparisons on this site, the two models tie on context window at 128K each, so there's no "but it holds more" argument softening the price difference the way there sometimes is elsewhere.
Worked example
At 50M input and 15M output tokens a month — this site's default calculator mix — DeepSeek V3 runs about $30.00/month and GPT-4o mini runs about $16.50/month on standard list pricing. That's a real difference at scale, not a rounding error.
The number the price table doesn't capture
If the only question is cost per token through each provider's own API, GPT-4o mini wins outright. But DeepSeek V3 ships as open-weight, which GPT-4o mini does not. That matters for a narrow but real set of use cases: self-hosting on your own infrastructure to avoid any per-token API cost at high volume, keeping data fully in-house for compliance reasons, or running inference through a third-party host that may price the same open weights differently than DeepSeek's own API. None of that shows up in a per-token price table, which is exactly why it's worth stating plainly here — this comparison is priced on DeepSeek's own hosted API, not a self-hosted or third-party deployment.
Where it actually matters
For a straightforward API call through the provider's own hosted endpoint — most solo-founder use cases — GPT-4o mini's lower per-token price wins with no asterisk. The open-weight angle only changes the answer if self-hosting or a specific data-residency requirement is already on your list of constraints, not a nice-to-have.
Prices verified against each provider's official documentation, 24 July 2026. Use the calculator with your own usage for an exact comparison, or see the full price table for every tracked model.