Seed 1.6 vs DeepSeek V3.1

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

Seed 1.6 is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 65 to 35. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Seed 1.6's sharpest advantage is in multimodal & grounded, where it averages 79.6 against 39.5. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MMMU-Pro, 80 to 35.

Seed 1.6 is the reasoning model in the pair, while DeepSeek V3.1 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. Seed 1.6 gives you the larger context window at 256K, compared with 128K for DeepSeek V3.1.

Quick Verdict

Pick Seed 1.6 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. DeepSeek V3.1 only becomes the better choice if you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model.

Agentic

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

62.3

DeepSeek V3.1

32.9

63
Terminal-Bench 2.0
29
67
BrowseComp
39
58
OSWorld-Verified
33

Coding

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

42.4

DeepSeek V3.1

14.8

64
HumanEval
25
46
SWE-bench Verified
13
38
LiveCodeBench
15
46
SWE-bench Pro
15

Multimodal & Grounded

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

79.6

DeepSeek V3.1

39.5

80
MMMU-Pro
35
79
OfficeQA Pro
45

Reasoning

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

74.5

DeepSeek V3.1

40.7

69
SimpleQA
31
69
MuSR
29
86
BBH
61
77
LongBench v2
46
78
MRCRv2
48

Knowledge

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

56.4

DeepSeek V3.1

30.5

73
MMLU
33
72
GPQA
32
70
SuperGPQA
30
68
OpenBookQA
28
75
MMLU-Pro
53
11
HLE
2
68
FrontierScience
37

Instruction Following

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

87

DeepSeek V3.1

67

87
IFEval
67

Multilingual

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

83.4

DeepSeek V3.1

60.8

88
MGSM
64
81
MMLU-ProX
59

Mathematics

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

75.9

DeepSeek V3.1

44.2

72
AIME 2023
33
74
AIME 2024
35
73
AIME 2025
34
68
HMMT Feb 2023
29
70
HMMT Feb 2024
31
69
HMMT Feb 2025
30
71
BRUMO 2025
32
82
MATH-500
59

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Seed 1.6 or DeepSeek V3.1?

Seed 1.6 is ahead overall, 65 to 35. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MMMU-Pro, where the scores are 80 and 35.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Seed 1.6 or DeepSeek V3.1?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 56.4 versus 30.5. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Seed 1.6 or DeepSeek V3.1?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 42.4 versus 14.8. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Seed 1.6 or DeepSeek V3.1?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 75.9 versus 44.2. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Seed 1.6 or DeepSeek V3.1?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 74.5 versus 40.7. Inside this category, MuSR is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Seed 1.6 or DeepSeek V3.1?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 62.3 versus 32.9. Inside this category, Terminal-Bench 2.0 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, Seed 1.6 or DeepSeek V3.1?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 79.6 versus 39.5. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, Seed 1.6 or DeepSeek V3.1?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 87 versus 67. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Seed 1.6 or DeepSeek V3.1?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 83.4 versus 60.8. Inside this category, MGSM is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 12, 2026

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