LLM·Dex
Newsletter

DeepSeek-V3 vs Yi-Lightning

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

Updated

DeepSeek-V3 specs · Yi-Lightning specs
Verdict by category
  • PriceYi-Lightning

    Yi-Lightning is roughly 7.9× cheaper on output tokens ($0.14 vs $1.10 per 1M).

  • Context windowDeepSeek-V3

    DeepSeek-V3 accepts 128K tokens vs 16K, 8.0× the room for long documents and codebases.

  • BenchmarksTie

    No directly comparable public benchmarks are available for both models, check the spec sheets for individual scores.

  • ModalitiesTie

    Both handle text.

  • OpennessDeepSeek-V3

    DeepSeek-V3 ships open weights (MIT); Yi-Lightning is API-only.

On balance DeepSeek-V3 edges ahead, winning 2 of 5 categories against Yi-Lightning's 1. Yi-Lightning is roughly 7.9× cheaper on output tokens ($0.14 vs $1.10 per 1M). DeepSeek-V3 accepts 128K tokens vs 16K, 8.0× the room for long documents and codebases.

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. DeepSeek-V3 ships open weights (MIT); Yi-Lightning is API-only.

DeepSeek-V3 is the newer of the two, released 2 months after Yi-Lightning, which usually means a more recent knowledge cutoff and updated safety post-training. DeepSeek-V3 is usually picked for open source llm and commercial use llm workloads, while Yi-Lightning sees more deployments in chinese llm and cheapest llm. If pricing matters more than every last benchmark point, run the numbers in the calculator below before committing.

Side-by-side specs

SpecDeepSeek-V3Yi-Lightning
ProviderDeepSeekOther
ReleasedDec 2024Oct 2024
Modalitiestexttext
Context window128K tokens16K tokens
Max output,,
Input · 1M$0.27 / 1M tokens$0.14 / 1M tokens
Output · 1M$1.10 / 1M tokens$0.14 / 1M tokens
Knowledge cutoff2024-07,
Open weightsYes (MIT)No
API availableYesYes

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$2.46 vs $0.630
  • Heavy usage, 1M in / 500k out per day$24.60 vs $6.30
  • RAG workload, 5M in / 200k out per day$47.10 vs $21.84

Light usage, 100k in / 50k out per day: $2.46 vs $0.630 per month, model B comes out ahead. Heavy usage, 1M in / 500k out per day: $24.60 vs $6.30 per month, model B comes out ahead. RAG workload, 5M in / 200k out per day: $47.10 vs $21.84 per month, model B comes out ahead.

Price calculator

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

  • DeepSeek-V3$0.082
  • Yi-Lightning$0.021

Benchmarks compared

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

DeepSeek-V3Yi-Lightning
  • MMLU88.5
  • HumanEval90.0
Pick DeepSeek-V3 if

DeepSeek-V3 fits when…

  • Frontier-level quality at open-weight prices
  • MIT license, clean commercial use
  • Cheap to serve via MoE architecture
  • Long-context tasks, handles 128K tokens vs 16K for Yi-Lightning.
  • Self-hosting and on-prem requirements, open weights (MIT).
Pick Yi-Lightning if

Yi-Lightning fits when…

  • Cheap
  • Strong Chinese
  • Fast
  • Cost-sensitive workloads, 7.9× cheaper than DeepSeek-V3 on output tokens.
Don't want either?

Consider DeepSeek-R1

First open-weight reasoning model to match o1, the release that proved RL-from-scratch reasoning training was reproducible.

See DeepSeek-R1 specsDeepSeek-V3 vs DeepSeek-R1Yi-Lightning vs DeepSeek-R1

Frequently asked

  • Is DeepSeek-V3 or Yi-Lightning cheaper?
    Yi-Lightning is cheaper at $0.14 / 1M tokens per million output tokens, vs $1.10 / 1M tokens for DeepSeek-V3.
  • Which has the larger context window?
    DeepSeek-V3 accepts 128K tokens vs 16K for Yi-Lightning.
  • Is DeepSeek-V3 or Yi-Lightning better for coding?
    Both DeepSeek-V3 and Yi-Lightning 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?
    DeepSeek-V3 ships open weights (MIT). Yi-Lightning is API-only.
  • When were DeepSeek-V3 and Yi-Lightning released?
    DeepSeek-V3 was released by DeepSeek on 2024-12-26. Yi-Lightning was released by Other on 2024-10-16.
Friday digest

The week's AI launches, in your inbox.

One short email every Friday, new models, leaks, and quietly-shipped APIs you missed.