DeepSeek R1 vs Llama 3.1 405B

Side-by-side comparison of pricing, capabilities, benchmarks, and use case fit.

D

DeepSeek R1

DeepSeek

Overall 77

reasoning

M

Llama 3.1 405B

Meta

Overall 74

slow

Capability radar

Normalized coding, reasoning, writing, vision, context, and value

DeepSeek R1Llama 3.1 405B

Comparison of DeepSeek R1 vs Llama 3.1 405B
Metric	DeepSeek R1	Llama 3.1 405B
Input Price / 1M	$0.55	$0.35
Output Price / 1M	$2.19	$0.70
Combined Price / 1M	$2.74	$1.05
Context Window	64,000	128,000
Coding Score	94	85
Reasoning Score	95	86
Vision Score	35	40
Audio	No	No
Streaming	Yes	Yes
Function Calling	Yes	Yes
Latency Tier	reasoning	slow
Release Date	1/20/2025	7/23/2024

DeepSeek R1 — Strengths & Weaknesses

Strengths

Reasoning at low cost
Open weights available

Weaknesses

No vision
Slower inference
64K context

Llama 3.1 405B — Strengths & Weaknesses

Strengths

Open 405B weights
Strong reasoning

Weaknesses

High inference cost
No multimodal

Use Case Verdicts

Coding

DeepSeek R1 scores 94 vs 85 on coding benchmarks.

General Chat

Llama 3.1 405B leads on writing quality (83 vs 82).

Long Context

Llama 3.1 405B offers 128K tokens vs 64K.

Cost Efficiency

Llama 3.1 405B is cheaper at $1.05/M combined vs $2.74/M.

Enterprise Use

DeepSeek R1 combines strong reasoning, tooling, and context for enterprise workloads.

Agent Workflows

DeepSeek R1 is better suited for agentic workflows with tool use and coding capability.