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 66. 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 agentic, where it averages 69.4 against 60.2. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is OSWorld-Verified, 67 to 54. Step 3.5 Flash does hit back in instruction following, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.
DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking) is the reasoning model in the pair, while Step 3.5 Flash 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. Step 3.5 Flash gives you the larger context window at 256K, compared with 128K for DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking).
Pick DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking) if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Step 3.5 Flash only becomes the better choice if instruction following is the priority or you need the larger 256K context window.
DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking)
69.4
Step 3.5 Flash
60.2
DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking)
51.2
Step 3.5 Flash
47.1
DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking)
71
Step 3.5 Flash
66.7
DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking)
80.6
Step 3.5 Flash
78.3
DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking)
64.4
Step 3.5 Flash
60.8
DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking)
85
Step 3.5 Flash
87
DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking)
80.8
Step 3.5 Flash
82.8
DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking)
85.1
Step 3.5 Flash
84.5
DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking) is ahead overall, 70 to 66. The biggest single separator in this matchup is OSWorld-Verified, where the scores are 67 and 54.
DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking) has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 64.4 versus 60.8. Inside this category, HLE is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking) has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 51.2 versus 47.1. Inside this category, SWE-bench Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking) has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 85.1 versus 84.5. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking) has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 80.6 versus 78.3. Inside this category, MRCRv2 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking) has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 69.4 versus 60.2. Inside this category, OSWorld-Verified is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking) has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 71 versus 66.7. Inside this category, OfficeQA Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Step 3.5 Flash 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.
Step 3.5 Flash has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 82.8 versus 80.8. Inside this category, MGSM is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
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