DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25) vs GPT-5.5 (Xhigh)
Which is better for the money: DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25) by DeepSeek or GPT-5.5 (Xhigh) by OpenAI? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
GPT-5.5 (Xhigh) scores 27.0 points higher (38.4 vs 11.4) but costs 11× as much to run the benchmark ($5294 vs $461; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick GPT-5.5 (Xhigh) when you need intelligence above 11.4, and DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25) when 11.4 is enough.
| Metric | DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25) | GPT-5.5 (Xhigh) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 11.4 | 38.4 | +236.8% GPT-5.5 (Xhigh) is 3.4× more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $460.74 | $5,294.36 | +1049.1% GPT-5.5 (Xhigh) is 11× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 20.14s | 55.87s | +177.4% GPT-5.5 (Xhigh) is 177.4% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $4.00 | $5.00 / $30.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text, Image |
GPT-5.5 (Xhigh) vs DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25): 236.8% more intelligence, 1049.1% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 177.4% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium) scores 47.80 for $361.
- GPT-5.5 (Xhigh) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25)GPT-5.5 (Xhigh)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/deepseek-r1-0120/gpt-5-5 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/deepseek-r1-0120/gpt-5-5?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill