DeepSeek V4 vs Qwen 3
Pricing, benchmarks, and use case comparison
Verdict
Our pick: DeepSeek V4Pick DeepSeek V4 for frontier open reasoning, agentic coding, and a 1M context; pick Qwen 3 for a lighter, Apache-2.0 family with switchable thinking and broad multilingual coverage that runs on modest hardware.
Specs comparison
| DeepSeek V4 | Qwen 3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | DeepSeek | Alibaba (Qwen Team) |
| Type | Open source | Open source |
| Context window | ✓1M tokens | 128K tokens (32K for 0.6B/1.7B/4B dense variants) |
| Input / 1M tokens | Free (self-host) | Free (self-host) |
| Output / 1M tokens | Free (self-host) | Free (self-host) |
| Release date | 2026-04 | 2025-04 |
Benchmarks
| Benchmark | DeepSeek V4 | Qwen 3 |
|---|---|---|
| SWE-bench Verified | 80.6% | - |
| Math / STEM / Coding (open-model comparison) | Best among open models (per DeepSeek) | - |
| Qwen3-235B-A22B | - | 235B total / 22B active |
| Qwen3-30B-A3B | - | 30B total / 3B active |
Scores sourced from official provider release posts and independent benchmark aggregators.
Capability and benchmarks
DeepSeek V4 (Pro) is the higher-capability model: 80.6% SWE-bench Verified (Pro-Max) and best-among-open-models on math and STEM per DeepSeek, with capability scores of coding 93, reasoning 92, and math 93. Qwen 3 is a strong but lighter family (coding 78, reasoning 80, math 80) whose signature feature is switchable thinking and non-thinking modes per request. For the hardest reasoning and coding, DeepSeek V4 leads clearly; Qwen 3 is about flexibility and efficiency.
Context, licensing, and hardware
DeepSeek V4 offers a 1M-token context under the MIT license, but the Pro variant is a 1.6T-param MoE (49B active) that needs substantial GPUs to self-host. Qwen 3 uses the permissive Apache 2.0 license, tops out at a 128K context, and spans sizes from 0.6B to a 235B MoE, including a 30B-A3B variant that activates only 3B parameters, making it far easier to run on limited hardware. Qwen 3 also supports 119 languages.
Which to pick
- Pick DeepSeek V4 for frontier open reasoning, agentic coding, and very long context, when you have the compute to serve it (or use its low-cost API).
- Pick Qwen 3 for efficient self-hosting on modest hardware, per-request control over reasoning depth, and multilingual deployments.
Which should you choose?
Choose DeepSeek V4 if...
- →You need a frontier-class open model you can self-host for data control
- →Your workload involves very long documents, codebases, or agent trajectories (up to 1M tokens)
- →You want top-tier agentic coding at a fraction of closed-model cost
- →You need to fine-tune or customize a strong base model
Choose Qwen 3 if...
- →You need an open, self-hostable model with a permissive license
- →You want to toggle deep reasoning on or off per request
- →Multilingual applications
- →Efficient inference via MoE with few active parameters