DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking) vs Seed 1.6

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

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking) is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 70 to 65. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking)'s sharpest advantage is in mathematics, where it averages 85.1 against 75.9. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is HumanEval, 79 to 64. Seed 1.6 does hit back in multimodal & grounded, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.

Seed 1.6 gives you the larger context window at 256K, compared with 128K for DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking).

Quick Verdict

Pick DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking) if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Seed 1.6 only becomes the better choice if multimodal & grounded is the priority or you need the larger 256K context window.

Agentic

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking)

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking)

69.4

Seed 1.6

62.3

71
Terminal-Bench 2.0
63
70
BrowseComp
67
67
OSWorld-Verified
58

Coding

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking)

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking)

51.2

Seed 1.6

42.4

79
HumanEval
64
48
SWE-bench Verified
46
45
LiveCodeBench
38
58
SWE-bench Pro
46

Multimodal & Grounded

Seed 1.6

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking)

71

Seed 1.6

79.6

66
MMMU-Pro
80
77
OfficeQA Pro
79

Reasoning

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking)

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking)

80.6

Seed 1.6

74.5

83
SimpleQA
69
81
MuSR
69
86
BBH
86
78
LongBench v2
77
78
MRCRv2
78

Knowledge

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking)

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking)

64.4

Seed 1.6

56.4

87
MMLU
73
85
GPQA
72
83
SuperGPQA
70
81
OpenBookQA
68
73
MMLU-Pro
75
22
HLE
11
77
FrontierScience
68

Instruction Following

Seed 1.6

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking)

85

Seed 1.6

87

85
IFEval
87

Multilingual

Seed 1.6

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking)

80.8

Seed 1.6

83.4

84
MGSM
88
79
MMLU-ProX
81

Mathematics

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking)

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking)

85.1

Seed 1.6

75.9

87
AIME 2023
72
89
AIME 2024
74
88
AIME 2025
73
83
HMMT Feb 2023
68
85
HMMT Feb 2024
70
84
HMMT Feb 2025
69
86
BRUMO 2025
71
84
MATH-500
82

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking) or Seed 1.6?

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking) is ahead overall, 70 to 65. The biggest single separator in this matchup is HumanEval, where the scores are 79 and 64.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking) or Seed 1.6?

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking) has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 64.4 versus 56.4. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking) or Seed 1.6?

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking) has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 51.2 versus 42.4. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking) or Seed 1.6?

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking) has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 85.1 versus 75.9. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking) or Seed 1.6?

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking) has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 80.6 versus 74.5. Inside this category, SimpleQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking) or Seed 1.6?

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking) has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 69.4 versus 62.3. Inside this category, OSWorld-Verified is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking) or Seed 1.6?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 79.6 versus 71. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking) or Seed 1.6?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 87 versus 85. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking) or Seed 1.6?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 83.4 versus 80.8. Inside this category, MGSM is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 12, 2026

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