Model comparison
DeepSeek-V3.2-Speciale vs o3
o3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 47.5 to 39.7 on the Noometry Index. DeepSeek-V3.2-Speciale costs 4.1× less per token, which makes it the better buy when o3's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 3 shared benchmarks.
DeepSeekSummary
- They share 3 benchmarks with published results for both. DeepSeek-V3.2-Speciale scores higher in 1 category and o3 in 2 categories; 2 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where o3 leads 63.5 to 46.0.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is WeirdML: 46.7% for DeepSeek-V3.2-Speciale and 52.4% for o3.
- DeepSeek-V3.2-Speciale is cheaper at $0.58 / $1.68 per million input/output tokens, against $2 / $8 for o3.
- o3 accepts more context: 200K tokens versus 128K.
- DeepSeek-V3.2-Speciale has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| DeepSeek-V3.2-Speciale | o3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | DeepSeek | OpenAI |
| Noometry Index | 39.7 | 47.5 |
| Released | 2025-12-01 | 2025-04-16 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | 128K | 200K |
| Max output | 128K | 100K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.58 | $2 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $1.68 | $8 |
| Results tracked | 3 | 63 |
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Category by category
Coding o3 leads
DeepSeek-V3.2-Speciale: 40.4 (#140), o3: 46.8 (#64)
| Benchmark | DeepSeek-V3.2-Speciale | o3 |
|---|---|---|
| WeirdML | 46.7% | 52.4% |
| SWE-bench Verified | — | 62.3% |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | — | 58.4% |
| Aider Polyglot | — | 81.3% |
| GSO | — | 8.8% |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1408 |
| CadEval | — | 74% |
| ALE-Bench | — | 933.55 |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
DeepSeek-V3.2-Speciale: —, o3: 34.5 (#44)
| Benchmark | DeepSeek-V3.2-Speciale | o3 |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 63% |
| GDPval | — | 30.8% |
| DeepResearch Bench | — | 45.2% |
| OSWorld | — | 23% |
| LMArena Search | — | 1144 |
| METR Time Horizons | — | 65.4% |
Reasoning Too close to call
DeepSeek-V3.2-Speciale: 32.9 (#73), o3: 32.0 (#78)
| Benchmark | DeepSeek-V3.2-Speciale | o3 |
|---|---|---|
| SimpleBench | 52.6% | 53.1% |
| ARC-AGI-2 | — | 6.5% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 67.6% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | — | 60.8% |
| CritPt | — | 1.4% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 38% |
| EnigmaEval | — | 13.1% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1402 |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 29% |
| DTBench | — | 84.8% |
| LMCA | — | 39.7% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 146.86 |
| ForecastBench | — | 62.5 |
Math Not comparable
DeepSeek-V3.2-Speciale: —, o3: 50.2 (#58)
| Benchmark | DeepSeek-V3.2-Speciale | o3 |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 33.3% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 84.4% |
| Omni-MATH | — | 71.4% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1426 |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 97.8% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 18.7% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 2.1% |
Knowledge Not comparable
DeepSeek-V3.2-Speciale: —, o3: 54.6 (#52)
| Benchmark | DeepSeek-V3.2-Speciale | o3 |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | — | 81.8% |
| Humanity's Last Exam | — | 20.3% |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 49.4% |
| MMLU-Pro | — | 85.9% |
| Confabulations | — | 14.4% |
| GPQA (HELM) | — | 75.3% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1402 |
Multimodal Not comparable
DeepSeek-V3.2-Speciale: —, o3: 41.4 (#36)
| Benchmark | DeepSeek-V3.2-Speciale | o3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1214 |
| GeoBench | — | 74% |
| VPCT | — | 52% |
Multilingual Not comparable
DeepSeek-V3.2-Speciale: —, o3: 51.7 (#105)
| Benchmark | DeepSeek-V3.2-Speciale | o3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1401 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1437 |
| LMArena French | — | 1430 |
| LMArena German | — | 1420 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1403 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1370 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1406 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1395 |
Instruction Following Not comparable
DeepSeek-V3.2-Speciale: —, o3: 72.8 (#127)
| Benchmark | DeepSeek-V3.2-Speciale | o3 |
|---|---|---|
| IFEval | — | 86.9% |
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1368 |
Long Context Not comparable
DeepSeek-V3.2-Speciale: —, o3: 53.3 (#6)
| Benchmark | DeepSeek-V3.2-Speciale | o3 |
|---|---|---|
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 88.9% |
| CL-bench | — | 17.8% |
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1372 |
Writing & Preference o3 leads
DeepSeek-V3.2-Speciale: 46.0 (#222), o3: 63.5 (#64)
| Benchmark | DeepSeek-V3.2-Speciale | o3 |
|---|---|---|
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1276 | 1676 |
| LMArena Text | — | 1410 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1359 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 83.9% |
| WildBench | — | 86.1% |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1405 |
Frequently asked questions
Is DeepSeek-V3.2-Speciale better than o3?
o3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 47.5 to 39.7 on the Noometry Index. DeepSeek-V3.2-Speciale costs 4.1× less per token, which makes it the better buy when o3's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, DeepSeek-V3.2-Speciale or o3?
DeepSeek-V3.2-Speciale is cheaper. It lists at $0.58 per million input tokens and $1.68 per million output tokens; o3 lists at $2 and $8.
Is DeepSeek-V3.2-Speciale or o3 better for coding?
o3 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 46.8 versus 40.4 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
o3 does, with 200K tokens against 128K.
How many benchmarks do DeepSeek-V3.2-Speciale and o3 share?
3 benchmarks have published results for both models. DeepSeek-V3.2-Speciale has 3 scored results on Noometry and o3 has 63.