o3 vs Seed 1.6

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

o3 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.

o3's sharpest advantage is in mathematics, where it averages 87.5 against 75.9. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is AIME 2023, 88 to 72. 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.

o3 is also the more expensive model on tokens at $10.00 input / $40.00 output per 1M tokens, versus $0.25 input / $2.00 output per 1M tokens for Seed 1.6. That is roughly 20.0x on output cost alone. Seed 1.6 gives you the larger context window at 256K, compared with 200K for o3.

Quick Verdict

Pick o3 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Seed 1.6 only becomes the better choice if multimodal & grounded is the priority or you want the cheaper token bill.

Agentic

o3

o3

69.9

Seed 1.6

62.3

71
Terminal-Bench 2.0
63
75
BrowseComp
67
65
OSWorld-Verified
58

Coding

o3

o3

49.1

Seed 1.6

42.4

78
HumanEval
64
50
SWE-bench Verified
46
40
LiveCodeBench
38
58
SWE-bench Pro
46

Multimodal & Grounded

Seed 1.6

o3

72.3

Seed 1.6

79.6

70
MMMU-Pro
80
75
OfficeQA Pro
79

Reasoning

o3

o3

82.6

Seed 1.6

74.5

84
SimpleQA
69
82
MuSR
69
86
BBH
86
82
LongBench v2
77
81
MRCRv2
78

Knowledge

o3

o3

66

Seed 1.6

56.4

86
MMLU
73
87
GPQA
72
85
SuperGPQA
70
83
OpenBookQA
68
75
MMLU-Pro
75
24
HLE
11
77
FrontierScience
68

Instruction Following

Seed 1.6

o3

85

Seed 1.6

87

85
IFEval
87

Multilingual

Seed 1.6

o3

81.1

Seed 1.6

83.4

83
MGSM
88
80
MMLU-ProX
81

Mathematics

o3

o3

87.5

Seed 1.6

75.9

88
AIME 2023
72
90
AIME 2024
74
89
AIME 2025
73
84
HMMT Feb 2023
68
86
HMMT Feb 2024
70
85
HMMT Feb 2025
69
87
BRUMO 2025
71
88
MATH-500
82

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, o3 or Seed 1.6?

o3 is ahead overall, 70 to 65. The biggest single separator in this matchup is AIME 2023, where the scores are 88 and 72.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, o3 or Seed 1.6?

o3 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 66 versus 56.4. Inside this category, GPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, o3 or Seed 1.6?

o3 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 49.1 versus 42.4. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, o3 or Seed 1.6?

o3 has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 87.5 versus 75.9. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, o3 or Seed 1.6?

o3 has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 82.6 versus 74.5. Inside this category, SimpleQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, o3 or Seed 1.6?

o3 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 69.9 versus 62.3. Inside this category, Terminal-Bench 2.0 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, o3 or Seed 1.6?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 79.6 versus 72.3. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, o3 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, o3 or Seed 1.6?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 83.4 versus 81.1. Inside this category, MGSM is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 12, 2026

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