DeepSeek V3 vs North Mini Code
Pricing, benchmarks, and use case comparison
Quick take
- •DeepSeek V3 is meaningfully stronger at math (78 vs 60 on our capability index).
- •North Mini Code is meaningfully stronger at speed (88 vs 74).
- •DeepSeek V3 is open-weights (free to self-host); North Mini Code is paid API only.
- •North Mini Code has a 256K tokens context window vs 128K tokens - better for whole-repo or long-document work.
Specs comparison
| DeepSeek V3 | North Mini Code | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | DeepSeek | Cohere |
| Type | Open source | Closed source |
| Context window | 128K tokens | ✓256K tokens |
| Input / 1M tokens | ✓Free (self-host) | 0 |
| Output / 1M tokens | Free (self-host) | 0 |
| Release date | 2024-12 | 2026-06 |
Benchmarks
| Benchmark | DeepSeek V3 | North Mini Code |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-training scale | ~15T tokens | - |
| Artificial Analysis Coding Index | - | 33.4 |
| Throughput vs Devstral Small 2 | - | Up to 2.8x higher output throughput |
Scores sourced from official provider release posts and independent benchmark aggregators.
Which should you choose?
Choose DeepSeek V3 if...
- →You want a proven, stable open model with broad ecosystem support
- →You need to self-host or fine-tune without licensing friction
- →Cost is critical and you don't need V4's 1M context or top scores
- →You want reproducible open-weight behavior pinned to a known version
Choose North Mini Code if...
- →You want a self-hostable, sovereign coding agent on modest hardware
- →You run agentic SWE workflows (repo edits, sub-agent orchestration, code review)
- →You need terminal/tool-driven multi-turn agents
- →You want high coding throughput at low compute cost