Head-to-head
Grok 4.3 vs DeepSeek-V4: which AI model wins in 2026?
Grok 4.3 ($2.50/1M out) and DeepSeek-V4 ($0.87/1M out) are two of the most-used AI models in 2026. Across 3 community votes, DeepSeek-V4 leads with 57% approval.
Quick verdict
On Reasoning, pick DeepSeek-V4: the arena rates it 4.5/5 against 4/5 for Grok 4.3. On budget, DeepSeek-V4 wins: it starts at $0.87/1M out versus $2.50/1M out for Grok 4.3.
Line-by-line comparison
Strengths and weaknesses
Grok 4.3
- Aggressive pricing: $1.25/$2.50 per 1M tokens, 58% cheaper input and 83% cheaper output than Grok 4, undercutting GPT-5.5 and Gemini 3.1 Pro
- Major agentic leap: +321 Elo on GDPval-AA versus Grok 4.20, with strong tool calling and instruction following
- Cached input at $0.20/1M (84% discount), a big saver for repeated agent loops
- Configurable reasoning effort (none/low/medium/high) in one model at one price, no routing between fast and deep variants
- Praised on HN for natural, concise tone and token-dense outputs that lower real-world costs
- Solid throughput around 130 output tokens/sec (Artificial Analysis)
- Coding reasoning judged 'not competitive with the big April releases' by HN developers; intelligence frontier barely moved since Grok 4
- Non-hallucination score dropped 8 points vs Grok 4.20 on AA-Omniscience; 4.20 remains xAI's safer pick for precision-critical domains
- High time to first token (~13s at high reasoning effort per Artificial Analysis), painful for interactive apps
- Context window shrank to 1M from Grok 4.20's 2M
- Recurring trust and safety complaints (harmful content reports, inconsistent behavior) and no MCP/connected-apps support in the consumer app
DeepSeek-V4
- 1M-token context window (8x the 128K of V3.2) with up to 384K output tokens, standard on the official API
- Aggressive pricing: $0.435/$0.87 per 1M tokens (V4-Pro), roughly 28.7x cheaper per output token than Claude Opus 4.8; cache-hit input drops to $0.003625/1M (over 99% discount)
- MIT-licensed open weights for both V4-Pro and V4-Flash on Hugging Face: commercial use, fine-tuning and redistribution allowed
- Open-source SOTA on agentic coding: 80.6 on SWE-bench Verified (Think Max config), tied with Gemini 3.1 Pro, plus Codeforces rating 3206 (~rank 23 vs humans)
- Ranks #3 of 93 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (score 44), well above the 25 average
- Sparse-attention stack cuts 1M-context inference to 27% of V3.2's FLOPs and 10% of its KV cache
- Intermittent malformed tool calls: function calls sometimes emitted as plain text in content instead of the tool_calls field (GitHub issue deepseek-ai #1244)
- Thinking mode breaks long multi-turn tool-call chains with 400 errors in agent frameworks (OpenClaw issue #72044, fix still incomplete)
- Developers report it fabricating nonexistent APIs in custom codebases and acting on hallucinated user input in agent loops
- Very verbose (180M eval output tokens vs 95M median) and mid-pack speed at 54.6 tok/s (#39/93), which erodes the low per-token price in practice
- Text only (no vision or audio) and still a preview: the official release planned for mid-July 2026 adds peak-hour pricing that doubles listed API rates during Beijing business hours
Cast your verdict
One recommendation per tool per gladiator. It reshapes the crowd score everyone sees.
The arena’s verdict on Grok 4.3
Pick Grok 4.3 if you run agentic or high-volume pipelines where cost per call dominates: it delivers near-frontier reasoning and a big tool-calling jump over Grok 4.20 at a fraction of GPT-5.5 or Gemini 3.1 Pro pricing. Skip it if coding precision is your priority, as developers still rank Claude and the big April releases ahead. Also stay on Grok 4.20 if you need its 2M context or its better non-hallucination score for legal, medical, or compliance work. Latency-sensitive apps should test the ~13s time to first token before committing.
The arena’s verdict on DeepSeek-V4
Choose DeepSeek-V4 if you want near-frontier reasoning and agentic coding at 3x to nearly 30x below Claude Opus or GPT-5.5 pricing, or if MIT-licensed weights for self-hosting and fine-tuning matter to you. It is a decisive upgrade over V3.2: 8x longer context, far cheaper long-context inference and stronger coding, and the legacy deepseek-chat/reasoner endpoints are deprecated on July 24, 2026 anyway. Avoid it for production agents that depend on rock-solid multi-turn tool calling, where users still report malformed tool calls and fabricated APIs, and for any vision or audio work since it is text only. Latency-sensitive apps should also test first, as its verbosity and mid-pack 54.6 tok/s output speed offset some of the cost advantage, and budget for the peak-hour price doubling arriving with the official mid-July release.
What the crowd says
On Grok 4.3
No verdicts yet. Be the first to speak.
On DeepSeek-V4
“Tool calling is flaky. Function calls sometimes land as plain text instead of the tool_calls field, and thinking mode 400s on long multi-turn chains. Not agent-ready yet.”
“MIT license on both Pro and Flash weights is the real story. Fine-tune, redistribute, ship commercially, no lawyer needed. Plus 384K output tokens for long-doc generation.”
“MIT weights, 1M context, and output tokens roughly 29x cheaper than Opus 4.8. Cache hits make input basically free. Moved my bulk pipelines over and the bill collapsed.”
Keep comparing
Frequently asked questions
Is Grok 4.3 better than DeepSeek-V4?
The crowd currently sides with DeepSeek-V4: 57% recommend it, versus 50% for Grok 4.3 (3 votes). On Reasoning, DeepSeek-V4 rates higher (4.5/5 vs 4/5). The right pick depends on your use case. The line-by-line comparison on this page breaks down pricing, key specs and arena ratings.
Which is cheaper, Grok 4.3 or DeepSeek-V4?
DeepSeek-V4 is cheaper: it starts at $0.87/1M out, while Grok 4.3 starts at $2.50/1M out.
How much do Grok 4.3 and DeepSeek-V4 cost per 1M tokens?
Grok 4.3: $1.25/1M in per 1M input tokens, $2.50/1M out per 1M output tokens. DeepSeek-V4: $0.435/1M in (cache hit $0.003625) per 1M input tokens, $0.87/1M out per 1M output tokens.