DeepSeek V3.2 vs o3-mini

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

DeepSeek V3.2 is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 72 to 56. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

DeepSeek V3.2's sharpest advantage is in coding, where it averages 53.3 against 49.3. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is IFEval, 85 to 93.9. o3-mini does hit back in knowledge, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.

o3-mini is the reasoning model in the pair, while DeepSeek V3.2 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. o3-mini gives you the larger context window at 200K, compared with 128K for DeepSeek V3.2.

Quick Verdict

Pick DeepSeek V3.2 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. o3-mini only becomes the better choice if knowledge is the priority or you need the larger 200K context window.

Knowledge

o3-mini

DeepSeek V3.2

68.5

o3-mini

82.1

84
MMLU
86.9
83
GPQA
77.2
81
SuperGPQA
-
79
OpenBookQA
-
73
MMLU-Pro
-
11
HLE
-

Coding

DeepSeek V3.2

DeepSeek V3.2

53.3

o3-mini

49.3

76
HumanEval
-
45
SWE-bench Verified
49.3
39
LiveCodeBench
-

Mathematics

o3-mini

DeepSeek V3.2

82.8

o3-mini

87.3

84
AIME 2023
-
86
AIME 2024
87.3
85
AIME 2025
-
80
HMMT Feb 2023
-
82
HMMT Feb 2024
-
81
HMMT Feb 2025
-
83
BRUMO 2025
-
81
MATH-500
-

Reasoning

DeepSeek V3.2
81
SimpleQA
-
79
MuSR
-
81
BBH
-

Instruction Following

o3-mini

DeepSeek V3.2

85

o3-mini

93.9

85
IFEval
93.9

Multilingual

DeepSeek V3.2
84
MGSM
-

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, DeepSeek V3.2 or o3-mini?

DeepSeek V3.2 is ahead overall, 72 to 56. The biggest single separator in this matchup is IFEval, where the scores are 85 and 93.9.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, DeepSeek V3.2 or o3-mini?

o3-mini has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 82.1 versus 68.5. Inside this category, GPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, DeepSeek V3.2 or o3-mini?

DeepSeek V3.2 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 53.3 versus 49.3. Inside this category, SWE-bench Verified is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, DeepSeek V3.2 or o3-mini?

o3-mini has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 87.3 versus 82.8. Inside this category, AIME 2024 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, DeepSeek V3.2 or o3-mini?

o3-mini has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 93.9 versus 85. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 9, 2026

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