DeepSeek V3 vs DeepSeek V4 Pro (Max)

Pick DeepSeek V4 Pro (Max) if you want the stronger benchmark profile. DeepSeek V3 only becomes the better choice if knowledge is the priority or you want the cheaper token bill.

DeepSeek V4 Pro (Max) is clearly ahead on the provisional aggregate, 87 to 36. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

DeepSeek V4 Pro (Max)'s sharpest advantage is in coding, where it averages 75.9 against 39.2. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is LiveCodeBench, 37.6% to 93.5%. DeepSeek V3 does hit back in knowledge, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.

DeepSeek V4 Pro (Max) is also the more expensive model on tokens at $1.74 input / $3.48 output per 1M tokens, versus $0.27 input / $1.10 output per 1M tokens for DeepSeek V3. That is roughly 3.2x on output cost alone. DeepSeek V4 Pro (Max) is the reasoning model in the pair, while DeepSeek V3 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. DeepSeek V4 Pro (Max) gives you the larger context window at 1M, compared with 128K for DeepSeek V3.