1-bit Bonsai 1.7B vs DeepSeek-R1

Side-by-side benchmark comparison across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, and math workflows.

Agentic
Coding
Multimodal & Grounded
Reasoning
Knowledge
Instruction Following
Multilingual
Mathematics

1-bit Bonsai 1.7B· DeepSeek-R1

Quick Verdict

Pick DeepSeek-R1 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. 1-bit Bonsai 1.7B only becomes the better choice if reasoning is the priority or you want the cheaper token bill.

DeepSeek-R1 is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 45 to 39. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

DeepSeek-R1's sharpest advantage is in knowledge, where it averages 47 against 20.7. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MATH-500, 34.4% to 97.3%. 1-bit Bonsai 1.7B does hit back in reasoning, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.

DeepSeek-R1 is also the more expensive model on tokens at $0.55 input / $2.19 output per 1M tokens, versus $0.00 input / $0.00 output per 1M tokens for 1-bit Bonsai 1.7B. That is roughly Infinityx on output cost alone. DeepSeek-R1 is the reasoning model in the pair, while 1-bit Bonsai 1.7B is not. That usually helps on harder chain-of-thought-heavy tests, but it can also mean more latency and more token spend in real use. DeepSeek-R1 gives you the larger context window at 128K, compared with 32K for 1-bit Bonsai 1.7B.

Operational tradeoffs

PriceFree*$0.55 / $2.19
SpeedN/AN/A
TTFTN/AN/A
Context32K128K

Decision framing

BenchLM keeps the benchmark table and the operator tradeoffs on the same page so a better score does not hide a materially slower, pricier, or smaller-context model.

Runtime metrics show N/A when BenchLM does not have a sourced snapshot for that exact model. The scoring rules and freshness policy are documented on the methodology page.

Benchmark1-bit Bonsai 1.7BDeepSeek-R1
Agentic
Terminal-Bench 2.042%
BrowseComp49%
OSWorld-Verified44%
Coding
HumanEval92%
SWE-bench Verified49.2%
LiveCodeBench19%
SWE-bench Pro25%
Multimodal & Grounded
MMMU-Pro43%
OfficeQA Pro53%
Reasoning1-bit Bonsai 1.7B wins
MuSR45.1%40%
BBH66%
LongBench v258%
MRCRv257%
ARC-AGI-21.3%
KnowledgeDeepSeek-R1 wins
GPQA20.7%71.5%
MMLU90.8%
SuperGPQA41%
MMLU-Pro84%
HLE14%
FrontierScience44%
SimpleQA30.1%
Instruction FollowingDeepSeek-R1 wins
IFEval63%83.3%
Multilingual
MGSM61%
MMLU-ProX60%
MathematicsDeepSeek-R1 wins
MATH-50034.4%97.3%
AIME 202344%
AIME 202479.8%
AIME 202545%
HMMT Feb 202340%
HMMT Feb 202442%
HMMT Feb 202541%
BRUMO 202543%
Frequently Asked Questions (5)

Which is better, 1-bit Bonsai 1.7B or DeepSeek-R1?

DeepSeek-R1 is ahead overall, 45 to 39. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MATH-500, where the scores are 34.4% and 97.3%.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, 1-bit Bonsai 1.7B or DeepSeek-R1?

DeepSeek-R1 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 47 versus 20.7. Inside this category, GPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, 1-bit Bonsai 1.7B or DeepSeek-R1?

DeepSeek-R1 has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 57.4 versus 34.4. Inside this category, MATH-500 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, 1-bit Bonsai 1.7B or DeepSeek-R1?

1-bit Bonsai 1.7B has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 45.1 versus 40. Inside this category, MuSR is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, 1-bit Bonsai 1.7B or DeepSeek-R1?

DeepSeek-R1 has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 83.3 versus 63. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 31, 2026

Weekly LLM Benchmark Digest

Get notified when new models drop, benchmark scores change, or the leaderboard shifts. One email per week.

Free. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. We only store derived location metadata for consent routing.