Phi-4 vs DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning)

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

Phi-4 has the cleaner overall profile here, landing at 39 versus 37. It is a real lead, but still close enough that category-level strengths matter more than the headline number.

Phi-4's sharpest advantage is in coding, where it averages 82.6 against 18.7. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is HumanEval, 82.6 to 26.

DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning) is the reasoning model in the pair, while Phi-4 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 V3.1 (Reasoning) gives you the larger context window at 128K, compared with 16K for Phi-4.

Quick Verdict

Pick Phi-4 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning) only becomes the better choice if you need the larger 128K context window or you want the stronger reasoning-first profile.

Knowledge

Phi-4

Phi-4

70.5

DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning)

31.7

84.8
MMLU
34
56.1
GPQA
33
-
SuperGPQA
31
-
OpenBookQA
29
-
MMLU-Pro
53
-
HLE
10

Coding

Phi-4

Phi-4

82.6

DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning)

18.7

82.6
HumanEval
26
-
SWE-bench Verified
14
-
LiveCodeBench
16

Mathematics

DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning)
-
AIME 2023
34
-
AIME 2024
36
-
AIME 2025
35
-
HMMT Feb 2023
30
-
HMMT Feb 2024
32
-
HMMT Feb 2025
31
-
BRUMO 2025
33
-
MATH-500
62

Reasoning

DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning)
-
SimpleQA
32
-
MuSR
30
-
BBH
64

Instruction Following

DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning)
-
IFEval
70

Multilingual

Phi-4

Phi-4

80.6

DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning)

64

80.6
MGSM
64

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Phi-4 or DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning)?

Phi-4 is ahead overall, 39 to 37. The biggest single separator in this matchup is HumanEval, where the scores are 82.6 and 26.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Phi-4 or DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning)?

Phi-4 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 70.5 versus 31.7. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Phi-4 or DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning)?

Phi-4 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 82.6 versus 18.7. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Phi-4 or DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning)?

Phi-4 has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 80.6 versus 64. Inside this category, MGSM is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 9, 2026

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