Which is more cost-effective, GPT-5.6 Sol or DeepSeek R1?

Based on 1M input + 1M output tokens, GPT-5.6 Sol costs $24.00/month versus DeepSeek R1 at $2.74/month. The cheaper option depends on your token volume and prompt-to-completion ratio. Use the interactive calculator on this page to enter your exact usage.

How accurate is this cost comparison?

List prices come from each provider's own pricing page and every model page shows when they were last verified. The capability scores are iOPTERA's editorial composites — informed by public benchmarks, not benchmark results themselves; the methodology page explains how they are set.

Which model scores higher on benchmarks?

GPT-5.6 Sol scores 97 in coding and 99 in reasoning benchmarks. DeepSeek R1 scores 88 in coding and 93 in reasoning. See the full 5-category breakdown in the Benchmark Comparison section above.

What are the context window sizes of GPT-5.6 Sol and DeepSeek R1?

GPT-5.6 Sol supports a 1.1M-token context window while DeepSeek R1 supports 128K tokens. A larger context window lets you process more text in a single API call.

Which model is faster for real-time applications?

GPT-5.6 Sol has a speed score of 70/100 and DeepSeek R1 scores 60/100 on our latency benchmark. For interactive chatbots and low-latency tasks, the higher speed score is preferable.

Can I calculate costs for my specific token volume?

Yes. Use the interactive cost calculator on this page. Enter your monthly token volume and adjust the prompt-to-completion ratio. You can also use presets for common scenarios like Customer Support Bots (~30M tokens/month) or Document Summarizers (~15M tokens/month).

Cost and performance comparison

GPT-5.6 Sol vs DeepSeek R1

Model AOpenAI

GPT-5.6 Sol

Capability score (editorial)99/100

Cost / 1M Tokens: $8.80; 70% in · 30% out mix
Value Index (score÷cost): 11.2; Higher = better value

Speed: 70/100
Context: 1.1M
Tier: Power Tier

List price from the OpenAI pricing page, verified October 12, 2026.

Promotional price, guaranteed until at least November 21, 2026. Regular price: $5.00 / $30.00.

Check the source

How we verify prices

Model BDeepSeek

DeepSeek R1

Capability score (editorial)93/100

Cost / 1M Tokens: $1.04; 70% in · 30% out mix
Value Index (score÷cost): 87.5; Higher = better value

Speed: 60/100
Context: 128K
Tier: Power Tier

Last list price before the model was retired.

Across the 25 languages we measured, it needs about 21% more tokens than OpenAI's for the same text. Costs by language

How we verify prices

In-depth analysis

GPT-5.6 Sol vs DeepSeek R1: Detailed Comparison

GPT-5.6 Sol is OpenAI's flagship-tier language model with a 1.1M-token context window, excelling at reasoning. DeepSeek R1 from DeepSeek is a flagship-tier model supporting 128K tokens in context, with standout performance in reasoning.

GPT-5.6 Sol costs 8.3x what DeepSeek R1 does for the same text. That is a steep premium, and it buys a 15-point lead on combined coding and reasoning. Whether that trade is worth it depends entirely on how much of your traffic actually needs the harder model — for most workloads the honest answer is a small fraction of it, which is an argument for routing rather than for picking one. GPT-5.6 Sol is priced at $4.00/M input tokens and $20.00/M output tokens. DeepSeek R1 costs $0.55/M input and $2.19/M output.

On iOPTERA's editorial scores, GPT-5.6 Sol leads with 97/100 for coding and 99/100 for reasoning, against DeepSeek R1's 88/100 and 93/100.

Capability breakdown

Across the five core benchmark categories, here is how GPT-5.6 Sol and DeepSeek R1 stack up head to head:

coding

GPT-5.6 Sol leads

reasoning

GPT-5.6 Sol leads

data extraction

GPT-5.6 Sol leads

creative tasks

GPT-5.6 Sol leads

vision/multimodal

GPT-5.6 Sol leads

Best model by task

coding: GPT-5.6 Sol wins with 97/100
reasoning: GPT-5.6 Sol wins with 99/100
data extraction: GPT-5.6 Sol wins with 95/100
creative tasks: GPT-5.6 Sol wins with 96/100
vision/multimodal: GPT-5.6 Sol wins with 96/100

Estimated monthly cost at scale

For 10M + 2M tokens of text a month (counted the way OpenAI's tokenizer counts), GPT-5.6 Sol runs about $80.00 while DeepSeek R1 runs about $10.08 — DeepSeek R1 saves roughly $69.92 (87%) every month.

What actually decides it

GPT-5.6 Sol and DeepSeek R1 come from different labs, which means different tokenizers, different API shapes, and a second vendor relationship. The same English text does not produce the same token count on both, so a price-per-million comparison understates the difference — measure your own prompts on each before treating the headline rates as the full story.

GPT-5.6 Sol and DeepSeek R1 are 18 months apart, which is more than one generation in this market. Benchmark comparisons across that gap flatter the older model: it was measured against the evaluations that existed at the time. Treat DeepSeek R1's scores as a floor for what it does well and be sceptical of a close-looking result.

The context gap is the largest single difference on this pair: GPT-5.6 Sol takes 1.1M tokens against 128K for DeepSeek R1, roughly 8.2x. That is the difference between feeding in a whole repository or a full contract set and having to chunk it. If your work involves documents you cannot split cleanly, this decides it on its own.

Throughput is close enough to ignore — 70/100 versus 60/100. Neither model will feel noticeably quicker in an interactive product, so latency is not a reason to choose between them.

One practical asymmetry: GPT-5.6 Sol offers a batch API at 50% off standard rates, and DeepSeek R1 does not. For anything that does not need an answer immediately — nightly enrichment, backfills, evaluation runs — that discount can be worth more than the difference in list price, and it is easy to overlook when comparing headline rates.

GPT-5.6 Sol is 8.3x the price of DeepSeek R1. Reserve it for the requests that actually need it and route the rest to DeepSeek R1 — that hybrid beats either model used alone on cost per useful answer.

What you actually pay

The list price is only the start. Prompt caching, batch processing and long prompts change the bill, and each provider sets them differently. Prices per 1M tokens.

Pricing terms beyond the list price, per 1M tokens
Pricing term	GPT-5.6 Sol	DeepSeek R1
List price (input / output)	$4.00 / $20.00	$0.55 / $2.19
Cached input	$0.4010% of the input price	—
Batch API	50% off input and output	—
Long prompts	Over 272K tokens: $8.00 / $30.00	—
Input with 80% cache hits	$1.12	—

The last row assumes 80% of input tokens are read from the cache, as in a chat app that re-sends a long system prompt or RAG over the same documents. Cache-write and storage charges are not included.

Checked on October 8, 2026 against the pricing pages of OpenAI, DeepSeek.

Capability scores

iOPTERA editorial scores across 5 categories — informed by public benchmarks, not measured by us

CategoryGPT-5.6 SolDeepSeek R1Winner

Coding

Reasoning

Extraction

Creative

Vision

GPT-5.6 Sol: 5 wins

DeepSeek R1: 0 wins

GPT-5.6 Sol leads overall

Speed Score

70/100vs60/100

GPT-5.6DeepSeek

Context Window

1050Kvs128K

GPT-5.6DeepSeek

What Is a Token?

Models don't read words — they process tokens.

A token is roughly 4 characters of English text (~¾ of a word). Your API bill is priced per million tokens — understanding this directly reduces your costs.

Short phrase

"Hello, world!"

4 tokens

GPT-5.6 Sol: $1.60
DeepSeek R1: $0.22

Business email

One typical email (~200 words)

~270 tokens

GPT-5.6 Sol: $108.00
DeepSeek R1: $15.15

Code file

50-line Python script

~400 tokens

GPT-5.6 Sol: $160.00
DeepSeek R1: $22.44

Prices shown are for 100,000 runs of each workload — one run costs a fraction of a cent on both GPT-5.6 Sol and DeepSeek R1, so the number only becomes meaningful at production volume. Input tokens only; add your output volume in the calculator below.

How to check your token usage

response.usage.total_tokens

Every API response includes a usage object. Sum total_tokens across all calls to get your monthly figure, then use the calculator below.

Your Cost Calculator

Enter your actual monthly token usage to see real savings

Quick Presets

Monthly Token Volume

30M tokens

Prompt / Completion Split

Prompt 70%Completion 30%

GPT-5.6 Sol

$264.00/mo

$3,168.00/yr

$4.00/M input$20.00/M output

Cheaper

DeepSeek R1

$31.89/mo

$382.62/yr

$0.55/M input$2.19/M output

Annual Savings

$2,785.38 saved per year

DeepSeek R1 cheaper · $232.11/mo

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