Compare/DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25) vs Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning)

DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25)vsQwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning)

Side-by-side comparison of pricing, 12 benchmarks, and generation speed.

DeepSeek

DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25)

Input
$1.35/M
Output
$4/M
Speed
TTFT
Alibaba

Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning)

Input
$0.6/M
Output
$3.6/M
Speed
54 tok/s
TTFT
1.39s

Winner by Category

Cheaper
Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning)
Faster (tok/s)
Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning)
Lower Latency
DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25)
Benchmarks (5-7)
Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning)

Pricing Comparison

MetricDeepSeek R1 (Jan '25)Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning)
Input ($/M tokens)$1.35$0.6
Output ($/M tokens)$4$3.6
Cost for 1M input + 100K output tokens:
DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25)$1.75
Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning)$0.96

Speed Comparison

Output Speed (tokens/s) — higher is better
DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25)
Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning)
54 tok/s
Time to First Token (seconds) — lower is better
DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25)
Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning)
1.39s

Benchmark Comparison

Data from Artificial Analysis API — 12 benchmarks

Intelligence Index
18.845.0
Coding Index
15.941.3
Math Index
68.0
GPQA Diamond
70.8%89.3%
MMLU-Pro
84.4%
LiveCodeBench
61.7%
AIME 2025
68.0%
MATH-500
96.6%
Humanity's Last Exam
9.3%27.3%
SciCode
35.7%42.0%
IFBench
39.0%78.8%
TerminalBench
6.1%40.9%
DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25)5 wins
7 winsQwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning)

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is cheaper, DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25) or Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning)?

Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning) is cheaper overall. Its blended price (3:1 input/output ratio) is $1.35/M tokens vs $2.36/M for DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25).

Which model performs better on benchmarks?

Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning) wins 7 out of 12 benchmarks compared to 5 for DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25). See the detailed benchmark chart above for per-category results.

Which is faster for real-time applications?

Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning) generates tokens faster at 54 tok/s vs 0 tok/s. DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25) also has lower time-to-first-token (0.00s vs 1.39s).

When should I use DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25) vs Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning)?

Choose based on your priorities: Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning) for lower cost, Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning) for stronger benchmark performance, and Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning) for faster generation. For latency-sensitive apps, check the TTFT comparison above.