Compare/DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B vs o3

DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5Bvso3

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

DeepSeek

DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B

Input
$0/M
Output
$0/M
Speed
TTFT
OpenAI

o3

Input
$2/M
Output
$8/M
Speed
125 tok/s
TTFT
6.65s

Winner by Category

Cheaper
DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B
Faster (tok/s)
o3
Lower Latency
DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B
Benchmarks (0-11)
o3

Pricing Comparison

MetricDeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5Bo3
Input ($/M tokens)$0$2
Output ($/M tokens)$0$8
Cost for 1M input + 100K output tokens:
DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B$0.00
o3$2.80

Speed Comparison

Output Speed (tokens/s) — higher is better
DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B
o3
125 tok/s
Time to First Token (seconds) — lower is better
DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B
o3
6.65s

Benchmark Comparison

Data from Artificial Analysis API — 12 benchmarks

Intelligence Index
3.730.4
Coding Index
Math Index
22.088.3
GPQA Diamond
9.8%82.7%
MMLU-Pro
26.9%85.3%
LiveCodeBench
7.0%80.8%
AIME 2025
22.0%88.3%
MATH-500
68.7%99.2%
Humanity's Last Exam
3.3%20.0%
SciCode
6.6%41.0%
IFBench
13.2%71.4%
TerminalBench
37.1%
DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B0 wins
11 winso3

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is cheaper, DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B or o3?

DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B is cheaper overall. Its blended price (3:1 input/output ratio) is $0.00/M tokens vs $3.50/M for o3.

Which model performs better on benchmarks?

o3 wins 11 out of 12 benchmarks compared to 0 for DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B. See the detailed benchmark chart above for per-category results.

Which is faster for real-time applications?

o3 generates tokens faster at 125 tok/s vs 0 tok/s. DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B also has lower time-to-first-token (0.00s vs 6.65s).

When should I use DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B vs o3?

Choose based on your priorities: DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B for lower cost, o3 for stronger benchmark performance, and o3 for faster generation. For latency-sensitive apps, check the TTFT comparison above.