Is DeepSeek V3 0324 a good deal?

As of Sep 23, 2026, DeepSeek V3 0324 is dominated for Balanced on LMArena. GLM 5.3 Flash scores 96.9 higher and costs 46% less, with a covering envelope. 13 of 136 rated, priced standard models are undominated.

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GLM 5.3 Flash is both better and cheaper than DeepSeek V3 0324: 96.9 points higher on LMArena and 46% less per million tokens, $0.20 cheaper at this mix.

DeepSeek V3 0324 takes text, returns up to 147,456 tokens from a 163,840-token context, and is listed by 3 sellers.

Compared against 136 rated, priced models on this lens: 4 models dominate it and give up nothing, 5 more dominate it but give something up. DeepSeek V3 0324 scores 1375 at $0.44 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	1471.9 +96.9	$0.237/M	46%
Gemma 4 26B A4B	1434.5 +59.5	$0.143/M	67%
DeepSeek V4 Flash 0423	1431.8 +56.8	$0.103/M	76%
Qwen3 235B A22B Instruct 2507	1419.8 +44.8	$0.153/M	65%

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	1441.7	$0.153/M	max output
Hy3	1440.6	$0.144/M	max output
MiMo-V2.5	1427.4	$0.175/M	max output
DeepSeek V3.2	1424.8	$0.302/M	max output
DeepSeek V3.2 Exp	1422.6	$0.305/M	max output

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