Is DeepSeek-R1 or Qwen3-72B cheaper?

Per-token pricing isn't published for at least one of these models, check each model's spec page for current rates.

Which has the larger context window?

Both DeepSeek-R1 and Qwen3-72B ship a 128K-token context window.

Is DeepSeek-R1 or Qwen3-72B better for coding?

Both DeepSeek-R1 and Qwen3-72B are competitive on coding benchmarks. See each model's individual spec page for HumanEval and SWE-bench scores where published. For an opinionated pick, consult our Best LLM for Coding ranking.

Are either of these models open source?

Both ship with open weights. DeepSeek-R1 is licensed under MIT; Qwen3-72B under Apache-2.0.

When were DeepSeek-R1 and Qwen3-72B released?

DeepSeek-R1 was released by DeepSeek on 2025-01-20. Qwen3-72B was released by Alibaba on 2025-04-29.

Is DeepSeek-R1 or Qwen3-72B cheaper?

Per-token pricing isn't published for at least one of these models, check each model's spec page for current rates.

Which has the larger context window?

Both DeepSeek-R1 and Qwen3-72B ship a 128K-token context window.

Is DeepSeek-R1 or Qwen3-72B better for coding?

Both DeepSeek-R1 and Qwen3-72B are competitive on coding benchmarks. See each model's individual spec page for HumanEval and SWE-bench scores where published. For an opinionated pick, consult our Best LLM for Coding ranking.

Are either of these models open source?

Both ship with open weights. DeepSeek-R1 is licensed under MIT; Qwen3-72B under Apache-2.0.

When were DeepSeek-R1 and Qwen3-72B released?

DeepSeek-R1 was released by DeepSeek on 2025-01-20. Qwen3-72B was released by Alibaba on 2025-04-29.

DeepSeek-R1 vs Qwen3-72B

A complete head-to-head: pricing, context window, benchmarks, modality coverage, and openness, with a programmatic verdict synthesized from the underlying data.

UpdatedApr 30, 2026

DeepSeek-R1 specs · Qwen3-72B specs

Verdict by category

PriceDeepSeek-R1
DeepSeek-R1 publishes pricing ($2.19 / 1M output tokens) while Qwen3-72B does not.
Context windowTie
Both ship a 128K-token context window.
BenchmarksTie
No directly comparable public benchmarks are available for both models, check the spec sheets for individual scores.
ModalitiesTie
Both handle text.
OpennessTie
Both ship open weights, self-host either one.

On balance DeepSeek-R1 edges ahead, winning 1 of 5 categories against Qwen3-72B's 0. DeepSeek-R1 publishes pricing ($2.19 / 1M output tokens) while Qwen3-72B does not. Both ship a 128K-token context window.

No directly comparable public benchmarks are available for both models, check the spec sheets for individual scores. Both target the same set of modalities (text), so the deciding factors are price, context, and raw quality. Both ship open weights, self-host either one.

Qwen3-72B is the newer of the two, released 3 months after DeepSeek-R1, which usually means a more recent knowledge cutoff and updated safety post-training. DeepSeek-R1 is usually picked for reasoning and math workloads, while Qwen3-72B sees more deployments in open source llm and commercial use llm. If pricing matters more than every last benchmark point, run the numbers in the calculator below before committing.

Side-by-side specs

Spec	DeepSeek-R1	Qwen3-72B
Provider	DeepSeek	Alibaba
Released	Jan 2025	Apr 2025
Modalities	text	text
Context window	128K tokens	128K tokens
Max output	,	,
Input · 1M	$0.55 / 1M tokens	Pricing not published
Output · 1M	$2.19 / 1M tokens	Pricing not published
Knowledge cutoff	2024-07	,
Open weights	Yes (MIT)	Yes (Apache-2.0)
API available	Yes	Yes

Pricing at scale

What you'd actually pay at typical workloads. Numbers come from each model's published per-million-token rates.

Light usage, 100k in / 50k out per day$4.94 vs ,
Heavy usage, 1M in / 500k out per day$49.35 vs ,
RAG workload, 5M in / 200k out per day$95.64 vs ,

Light usage, 100k in / 50k out per day: pricing not directly comparable (one or both models are missing public per-token rates). Heavy usage, 1M in / 500k out per day: pricing not directly comparable (one or both models are missing public per-token rates). RAG workload, 5M in / 200k out per day: pricing not directly comparable (one or both models are missing public per-token rates).

Price calculator

Estimated spend for the listed models at your usage. Numbers are derived from each model's published per-million-token rates.

Input tokens / dayOutput tokens / dayHorizon

DeepSeek-R1$0.165
Qwen3-72BPricing unavailable

Benchmarks compared

Only sourced numbers. Where a benchmark is missing for one model we show the available value rather than fabricating the other.

DeepSeek-R1Qwen3-72B

MMLU,84.0
GPQA71.5

Pick DeepSeek-R1 if

DeepSeek-R1 fits when…

Open-weight reasoning model on par with o1
MIT license
Cheap reasoning per token

Pick Qwen3-72B if

Qwen3-72B fits when…

Apache-2.0 license
Strongest open-weight on Chinese
Strong multilingual coverage

Don't want either?

Consider DeepSeek-V3

DeepSeek's flagship 671B-parameter MoE, frontier-level quality at a tiny fraction of frontier prices.

See DeepSeek-V3 specs DeepSeek-R1 vs DeepSeek-V3 Qwen3-72B vs DeepSeek-V3

Frequently asked

Is DeepSeek-R1 or Qwen3-72B cheaper?
Per-token pricing isn't published for at least one of these models, check each model's spec page for current rates.
Which has the larger context window?
Both DeepSeek-R1 and Qwen3-72B ship a 128K-token context window.
Is DeepSeek-R1 or Qwen3-72B better for coding?
Both DeepSeek-R1 and Qwen3-72B are competitive on coding benchmarks. See each model's individual spec page for HumanEval and SWE-bench scores where published. For an opinionated pick, consult our Best LLM for Coding ranking.
Are either of these models open source?
Both ship with open weights. DeepSeek-R1 is licensed under MIT; Qwen3-72B under Apache-2.0.
When were DeepSeek-R1 and Qwen3-72B released?
DeepSeek-R1 was released by DeepSeek on 2025-01-20. Qwen3-72B was released by Alibaba on 2025-04-29.

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