DeepSeek V3.2 vs o3-mini

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

DeepSeek V3.2 has the cleaner provisional overall profile here, landing at 58 versus 56. It is a real lead, but still close enough that category-level strengths matter more than the headline number.

DeepSeek V3.2's sharpest advantage is in coding, where it averages 60.9 against 49.3.

o3-mini is also the more expensive model on tokens at $1.10 input / $4.40 output per 1M tokens, versus $0.28 input / $0.42 output per 1M tokens for DeepSeek V3.2. That is roughly 10.5x on output cost alone. 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.