Is DeepSeek V3 0324 a good deal?
Whether anything in this catalogue beats DeepSeek V3 0324 on both quality and price, and what you give up if it does. A computation on the current catalogue, not an opinion.
12 undominated of 145 · Oct 6, 2026
As of Oct 6, 2026, DeepSeek V3 0324 is dominated for Balanced on LMArena. GLM 5.3 Flash scores 94.6 higher and costs 46% less, with a covering envelope. 12 of 145 rated, priced standard models are undominated.
Inspect model evidence Compare differences & requirements
GLM 5.3 Flash is both better and cheaper than DeepSeek V3 0324: 94.6 points higher on LMArena and 46% less per million tokens, $0.200 cheaper at this mix.
LMArena Elo · higher is better
Scale starts at 1040 Elo
1375.0
Effective $/M · Balanced · lower is better
$0.438/M
LMArena Elo · higher is better
Scale starts at 1040 Elo
1469.6
Effective $/M · Balanced · lower is better
$0.238/M
DeepSeek V3 0324 takes text, returns up to 115,200 tokens from a 163,840-token context, and is listed by 2 sellers.
Compared against 145 rated, priced models on this lens: 11 models dominate it and give up nothing, 5 more dominate it but give something up. DeepSeek V3 0324 scores 1375 at $0.438 per million tokens for this mix.
Envelope-safe replacements
Each row scores at least as high, costs no more, and covers this model’s context, output, modalities, tools, and reasoning. A cheaper narrower model is not listed here.
| Model | LMArena | Effective $/M | You save |
|---|---|---|---|
| GLM 5.3 Flash | 1469.6 +94.6 | $0.238/M | 46% |
| DeepSeek V4.1 Flash | 1462.5 +87.5 | $0.182/M | 58% |
| MiMo-V2.6-Flash | 1456.4 +81.4 | $0.175/M | 60% |
| Hy3 | 1440.7 +65.7 | $0.231/M | 47% |
| Gemma 4 26B A4B | 1433.9 +58.9 | $0.127/M | 71% |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash 0423 | 1432.1 +57.1 | $0.113/M | 74% |
| MiMo-V2.5 | 1427.5 +52.5 | $0.175/M | 60% |
| DeepSeek V3.2 Exp | 1422.4 +47.4 | $0.305/M | 30% |
| Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct | 1417.3 +42.3 | $0.268/M | 39% |
| GPT-6 Luna | 1391.5 +16.5 | $0.200/M | 54% |
| Qwen3 30B A3B Instruct 2507 | 1384.1 +9.1 | $0.143/M | 67% |
Higher score, lower price, named losses
Not a drop-in. The loss is why these are not a recommendation.
| Model | LMArena | Effective $/M | You give up |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gemma 4 31B | 1443.4 | $0.205/M | max output |
| DeepSeek V3.2 | 1424.5 | $0.290/M | max output |
| Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Instruct | 1420.1 | $0.370/M | max output |
| Qwen3 235B A22B Instruct 2507 | 1419.3 | $0.205/M | max output |
| Step 3.5 Flash | 1403.0 | $0.150/M | max output |
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Saved decision references
Save the model, workload, catalogue date and capability-preservation rule in this browser. Spend, switching cost and bill contents are not saved. No account or notifications.
Constraint: replacements must preserve the model’s capabilities; any losses remain named trade-offs.
Historical decisions cannot be fully replayed from saved references: past prices, scores and capability evidence are not stored.