Comparison
DeepSeek R1 vs GPT-4o: Benchmark Comparison 2026
April 15, 2026 · 6 min read
DeepSeek R1 is a reasoning-focused model that competes directly with GPT-4o — but costs 91% less. Here's how they compare.
Benchmark Comparison
| Benchmark | DeepSeek R1 | GPT-4o | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
| MATH-500 | 97.3% | 94.1% | DeepSeek R1 |
| AIME 2024 | 79.8% | 63.3% | DeepSeek R1 |
| HumanEval | 92.7% | 91.0% | Tie |
| MMLU | 90.8% | 92.0% | GPT-4o |
| GPQA Diamond | 71.5% | 53.6% | DeepSeek R1 |
When R1 Wins
- Math and logic problems — R1 uses chain-of-thought reasoning
- Scientific reasoning — GPQA benchmark shows 18% lead
- Budget-sensitive applications — 91% cost savings
When GPT-4o/5.4 Wins
- General knowledge (MMLU) — slightly better world knowledge
- Multimodal tasks — GPT has better image understanding
- Latest information — GPT-5.4 has more recent training data
Try Both Through One API
from openai import OpenAI
client = OpenAI(base_url="https://api.aipower.me/v1", api_key="YOUR_KEY")
# DeepSeek R1 — reasoning
r1 = client.chat.completions.create(
model="deepseek/deepseek-reasoner",
messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Prove that sqrt(2) is irrational"}],
)
# GPT-5.4 — general
gpt = client.chat.completions.create(
model="openai/gpt-5.4",
messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Prove that sqrt(2) is irrational"}],
)Compare them yourself with 50 free API calls at aipower.me.