DeepSeek V3 vs GPT-5 nano

DeepSeek V3 vs GPT-5 nano: GPT-5 nano is cheaper by 96% on average. DeepSeek V3 from Azure AI Foundry (128,000-token context) vs. GPT-5 nano from Azure OpenAI (272,000-token context, reasoning, tool calls). Use Agent Command Center to A/B both in shadow mode and pick the winner per workload.

Side-by-side cost

Live workload comparison

Same workload run through both models. The cheaper one is highlighted.

3,000
0272,000
400
0128,000
5,000
01,000,000
Azure AI Foundry
$798/mo
Input $1.14/M · Output $4.56/M
GPT-5 nanoCheaper
Azure OpenAI
$47.18/mo
Input $0.0500/M · Output $0.400/M
At this workload, GPT-5 nano is 94% cheaper than DeepSeek V3 — a savings of $751/month ($9,011/year).
Production recipe — Agent Command Center
strategy: cost-optimized
primary:
  model: gpt-5-nano
  provider: azure-openai
fallback:
  model: deepseek-v3
  provider: azure-ai-foundry
shadow: { sample_rate: 0.05 }   # mirror 5% of traffic to compare quality live
DeepSeek V3 GPT-5 nano
Input price $1.14/M $0.0500/M
Output price $4.56/M $0.400/M
Context window 128,000 272,000
Max output 8,192 128,000
Function calling
Vision
Audio input
Reasoning
Prompt caching
Structured output
Pricing verified May 12, 2026 May 12, 2026
Cheaper option
~96% cheaper than DeepSeek V3
Larger context
272,000 tokens
More capabilities
5 of 6 capability flags advertised

Benchmark comparison

Side-by-side public benchmark scores. Greener bar = winner.

Chatbot Arena ELOgeneral
DeepSeek V3
1,310
GPT-5 nano
1,325
MATHmath
DeepSeek V3
90.2%
GPT-5 nano
MMLUgeneral
DeepSeek V3
88.5%
GPT-5 nano
HumanEvalcode
DeepSeek V3
82.6%
GPT-5 nano
86.3%
MMLU-Proreasoning⚠ different settings
DeepSeek V3
75.9%
GPT-5 nano
73.0%
GPQA Diamondreasoning
DeepSeek V3
59.1%
GPT-5 nano
SWE-bench Verifiedagent
DeepSeek V3
42.0%
GPT-5 nano
LiveCodeBenchcode
DeepSeek V3
40.5%
GPT-5 nano
AIME 2024math
DeepSeek V3
39.6%
GPT-5 nano