# DeepSeek-R1 vs o4-mini

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for DeepSeek-R1 and o4-mini across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/deepseek-r1-vs-o4-mini
- Last updated: October 17, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 4
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5.8

## Quick Verdict

Pick o4-mini if you want the stronger benchmark profile. DeepSeek-R1 only makes more sense when its price, context window, or workload-specific category wins matter more than the overall score.

## Summary

- o4-mini leads overall 64 to 41.08.
- The clearest category separation is in instruction following, where the averages are 45.9 for DeepSeek-R1 and 83.9 for o4-mini.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is SimpleQA in Knowledge, with scores of 30.1% and 20.2%.
- DeepSeek-R1 is the cheaper option on output tokens, which matters if you expect large responses or heavy interactive use.
- o4-mini also has the larger context window at 200K.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | DeepSeek-R1 | o4-mini |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | DeepSeek | OpenAI |
| Type | Open Weight | Proprietary |
| Reasoning | Reasoning | Reasoning |
| Context | 128K | 200K |
| Overall Score | 41.08 | null |
| Benchmarks Covered | 8 | 7 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $0.55 / $2.19 | $1.10 / $4.40 |

## Category Breakdown

### Coding

- Winner: Not comparable
- DeepSeek-R1 public-lane score: Coming soon
- o4-mini public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-R1 | o4-mini | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| SWE-bench Verified | 49.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HumanEval | Coming soon | 97.3% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Not comparable
- DeepSeek-R1 public-lane score: 64.1 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)
- o4-mini public-lane score: 67.8 (Unranked · 3 rankable rows)

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-R1 | o4-mini | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| DROP | Coming soon | 77.7% | Coming soon |

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Not comparable
- DeepSeek-R1 public-lane score: Coming soon
- o4-mini public-lane score: 66.4 (Unranked · 1 rankable row)

### Knowledge

- Winner: Not comparable
- DeepSeek-R1 public-lane score: 41.5 (Supported · #112/184)
- o4-mini public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-R1 | o4-mini | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| MMLU | 90.8% | 90% | DeepSeek-R1 |
| GPQA | 71.5% | 77.6% | o4-mini |
| MMLU-Pro | 84% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SimpleQA | 30.1% | 20.2% | DeepSeek-R1 |

### Multilingual

- Winner: Not comparable
- DeepSeek-R1 public-lane score: Coming soon
- o4-mini public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-R1 | o4-mini | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| MGSM | Coming soon | 93.7% | Coming soon |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Directional only
- DeepSeek-R1 public-lane score: 45.9 (#103/148)
- o4-mini public-lane score: 83.9 (#53/148)

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-R1 | o4-mini | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| IFEval | 83.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Mathematics

- Winner: Not comparable
- DeepSeek-R1 public-lane score: Coming soon
- o4-mini public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-R1 | o4-mini | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| AIME 2024 | 79.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MATH-500 | 97.3% | 97.5% | o4-mini |

## FAQ

### Which is better overall, DeepSeek-R1 or o4-mini?

o4-mini is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### Where is the biggest gap between DeepSeek-R1 and o4-mini?

The widest category gap is in instruction following, where the averages are 45.9 for DeepSeek-R1 and 83.9 for o4-mini.

### How many benchmarks does DeepSeek-R1 cover on BenchLM?

DeepSeek-R1 currently has 8 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

### How many benchmarks does o4-mini cover on BenchLM?

o4-mini currently has 7 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

## Related Comparisons

- [DeepSeek-R1 vs DeepSeek-R1-0528](/compare/deepseek-r1-vs-deepseek-r1-0528)
- [o4-mini vs DeepSeek-R1-0528](/compare/deepseek-r1-0528-vs-o4-mini)
- [DeepSeek-R1 vs o4-mini (high)](/compare/deepseek-r1-vs-o4-mini-high)
- [o4-mini vs o4-mini (high)](/compare/o4-mini-vs-o4-mini-high)

## Explore More

- [DeepSeek-R1 profile](/models/deepseek-r1)
- [o4-mini profile](/models/o4-mini)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)