Side-by-side comparison of pricing, 12 benchmarks, and generation speed.
| Metric | GPT-4.1 mini | DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning) |
|---|---|---|
| Input ($/M tokens) | $0.4 | $0.59 |
| Output ($/M tokens) | $1.6 | $1.69 |
Verdict. GPT-4.1 mini and DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning) split the benchmark comparison evenly at 1–1. The tiebreaker here is price, speed, and what you actually run them on.
Pricing. Both models sit in the budget bracket for output-token pricing. At 0.9× the per-million-token cost, GPT-4.1 mini is meaningfully cheaper if your traffic is output-heavy (long completions, document generation, agent loops). GPT-4.1 mini makes more sense when output volume is low and absolute reasoning quality justifies the premium.
Strengths. GPT-4.1 mini is strongest on Coding Index (20.2), Intelligence Index (14.8). DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning) leads on Intelligence Index (21.0).
Speed. Speed data is incomplete for this pair; benchmark and price should decide.
Provider. OpenAI and DeepSeek sell to overlapping but distinct developer audiences: OpenAI tends to ship frontier reasoning models with premium positioning, while DeepSeek often prices more aggressively. Your existing vendor relationships, billing, and SLA preferences may matter as much as the raw numbers above.
Workload cost. Workload scenarios (per million requests at 30M input + 15M output tokens): GPT-4.1 mini costs $36.00 ($432/year); DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning) costs $43.05 ($517/year). At a smaller 5M-input/2M-output scale (single-developer tool or prototype): GPT-4.1 mini ≈ $5.20/run, DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning) ≈ $6.33/run. At agent/realtime scale (200M input / 100M output per million requests): GPT-4.1 mini ≈ $240/run, DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning) ≈ $287/run. GPT-4.1 mini becomes more attractive at higher volume — the absolute per-token pricing difference compounds when you ship at scale.
Recommendation. Both models have legitimate use cases — the right answer depends on whether you are optimizing for benchmark ceiling, latency, or unit cost. Start with the cheaper / faster model, evaluate against your specific task, and only switch if the upgrade shows a meaningful lift.
Head-to-head deltas
Data from Artificial Analysis API — 12 benchmarks
GPT-4.1 mini is cheaper overall. Its blended price (3:1 input/output ratio) is $0.70/M tokens vs $0.86/M for DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning).
It's a tie — both models win 1 benchmarks each across 12 evaluated categories. See the detailed benchmark chart above for per-category results.
GPT-4.1 mini generates tokens faster at 86 tok/s vs — tok/s. GPT-4.1 mini also has lower time-to-first-token (0.84s vs —s).
Choose based on your priorities: GPT-4.1 mini for lower cost, both perform similarly on benchmarks, and GPT-4.1 mini for faster generation. For latency-sensitive apps, check the TTFT comparison above.