workhorse

Grok 3 vs Deepseek Chat

Side-by-side pricing, context window, features, and per-use-case verdict. Data sourced from LiteLLM, updated regularly.

Specifications

Feature Grok 3 Deepseek Chat
Provider xai deepseek
Model ID xai/grok-3 deepseek/deepseek-chat
Input / 1M tokens $3.00 $0.28 (91% cheaper)
Output / 1M tokens $15.00 $0.42 (97% cheaper)
Cached input / 1M $0.75 $0.03
Context window 131kk tokens 131kk tokens
Max output 131kk tokens 8kk tokens
Vision
Function calling
Prompt caching
Web search
JSON schema

Monthly cost comparison

No cache discount applied — pure token costs at three usage scales.

Scale Grok 3 Deepseek Chat Winner
Small
1M in / 0.2M out
$6.00 $0.36 Deepseek Chat saves 94%
Medium
10M in / 2M out
$60.00 $3.64 Deepseek Chat saves 94%
Large
100M in / 20M out
$600 $36.40 Deepseek Chat saves 94%

Category winners

Cheapest input
Deepseek Chat
$0.28/M · 91% less than the other
Cheapest output
Deepseek Chat
$0.42/M · 97% less than the other
Larger context
Grok 3
131kk tokens
More features
Grok 3
3 / 5 capabilities (tied)

Better for…

High-volume RAG & repeated context
$0.03/M cached input — prompt caching makes repeated context retrieval significantly cheaper
Deepseek Chat
Short interactions & high-throughput APIs
$0.42/M output — 97% cheaper on output at scale
Deepseek Chat
Cost-sensitive production at scale
$36.40/month at 100M-token scale — 94% cheaper than the alternative
Deepseek Chat

Deep-dive on each model

Pricing data sourced from LiteLLM and refreshed regularly. Always verify with each provider's official pricing page before making business decisions.