DeepSeek R1 vs Gemini 3.5 Flash
List-price comparison · DeepSeek R1 details · Gemini 3.5 Flash details
For a typical workload (100,000 requests / mo), DeepSeek R1 costs 73% less — $146.00/mo vs $540.00/mo.
| DeepSeek R1 | Gemini 3.5 Flash | |
|---|---|---|
| Input / 1M tokens | $0.500 | $1.50 |
| Output / 1M tokens | $2.15 | $9.00 |
| Typical request (1,200 in + 400 out) | $0.0015 | $0.0054 |
| Context window | 163,840 tokens | 1,048,576 tokens |
| Max output | 32,768 tokens | 65,536 tokens |
| Tier | Flagship | Flash |
| Provider | DeepSeek |
Projected monthly cost
Rows open both models in the calculator — adjust volume and token counts there.
DeepSeek R1
Chain-of-thought reasoning competitive with closed flagship models on math and logic benchmarks, at open-weight pricing.
Emits long reasoning traces that inflate output token counts and cost — cap reasoning length or use a distilled variant for latency-sensitive paths.
Gemini 3.5 Flash
Fast, cheap multi-modal model with the same 1M-token context as the Pro tier — good for high-volume document Q&A and image/audio triage.
Reasoning quality trails the Pro tier on complex, multi-step tasks; best used where speed and context size matter more than depth.
More comparisons
Vendor list rates · per-request examples assume 1,200 input + 400 output tokens.