Is DeepSeek V3.2 a good deal?

As of Sep 23, 2026, DeepSeek V3.2 is dominated for Balanced on LMArena. GLM 5.3 Flash scores 47.1 higher and costs 21% 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 V3.2: 47.1 points higher on LMArena and 21% less per million tokens, $0.06 cheaper at this mix.

DeepSeek V3.2 takes text, returns up to 65,536 tokens from a 163,840-token context, and is listed by 15 sellers. Open weights, so it can also be self-hosted.

Compared against 136 rated, priced models on this lens: 5 models dominate it and give up nothing, 1 more dominates it but gives something up. DeepSeek V3.2 scores 1424.8 at $0.30 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 +47.1	$0.237/M	21%
Hy3	1440.6 +15.8	$0.144/M	52%
Gemma 4 26B A4B	1434.5 +9.7	$0.143/M	53%
DeepSeek V4 Flash 0423	1431.8 +7.0	$0.103/M	66%
MiMo-V2.5	1427.4 +2.6	$0.175/M	42%

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

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