DeepSeek V3 vs Grok 4.6
Updated October 21, 2026. 11 benchmarks have a result for both. Coding is ranked on the Vibe Coding Index; every other board is shown as published.
Decision reading
DeepSeek V3 scores 70.2 and Grok 4.6 76.4 on the Vibe Coding Index, but no coding benchmark measured both, so the gap is directional, not a ranking.
Pick DeepSeek V3 when output tokens cost 5.8x less; pick Grok 4.6 when the context window is larger, 500K against 164K tokens, or when what matters is GPQA Diamond (Epoch AI run) or OTIS Mock AIME, where it leads.
- Shared results
- 11
- DeepSeek V3 only
- 2
- Grok 4.6 only
- 112
- Like-for-like categories
- 4 of 9
Shared results can support a head-to-head reading. Results only one model has describe coverage, not superiority.
Which one for your work
Each card is decided by one number both models carry. Where only one has it, the card says so and makes no call.
Coding
Vibe Coding Index, four public coding benchmarks
No call
70.2 against 76.4, from different benchmarks with none in common.
Directional only
Intelligence
AA Intelligence Index
No call
Only Grok 4.6 has a AA Intelligence Index result, 44.3.
Directional only
Agentic work
AA Agentic Index
No call
Only Grok 4.6 has a AA Agentic Index result, 53.0.
Directional only
Reasoning
GPQA Diamond
No call
Only Grok 4.6 has a GPQA Diamond result, 94.7%.
Directional only
Knowledge
MMLU Pro
No call
Only Grok 4.6 has a MMLU Pro result, 89.4%.
Directional only
Web design
Design Arena: websites
Grok 4.6
Grok 4.6 leads, 1289 against 1120.
Same board, both measured
Long documents
Listed context window
Grok 4.6
Grok 4.6 takes 500K tokens against 164K.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
DeepSeek V3
DeepSeek V3 $0.0008, Grok 4.6 $0.0050 per turn.
List prices
Cost per solved task
One SWE-bench Verified task, solved
No call
Only Grok 4.6 has the number, $0.82.
Directional only
At a glance
- Coding index
- DeepSeek V3 70.2 from 1 benchmark, Grok 4.6 76.4 from 2 benchmarks.
- Widest category
- Math, 50.3 points apart on average over 1 shared benchmark.
- Widest single gap
- OTIS Mock AIME: DeepSeek V3 48.9% against Grok 4.6 99.2%, 50.3 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
- Output price
- DeepSeek V3 $1.0287 against Grok 4.6 $6.00 per million output tokens, 5.8x apart.
- Context window
- DeepSeek V3 takes 164K tokens, Grok 4.6 500K.
Benchmark by benchmark
First the score: boards each model leads, per category, where both have a result. Then every board, a category to a fold; bars are each result on a 0 to 100 scale, so compare the two in a row, not one row with another.
| Category | DeepSeek V3 | Bars | Grok 4.6 | Ties |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reasoning | 0 | 1 | ||
| Math | 0 | 1 | ||
| Web design | 0 | 7 | ||
| General | 0 | 2 | ||
| All shared boards | 0 | 11 |
CodingDirectional onlyFour of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index26 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | DeepSeek V3 | Grok 4.6 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aider polyglot | 70.2% | Not measured | Only DeepSeek V3 measured |
| SWE-bench Lite | 30.7% | Not measured | Only DeepSeek V3 measured |
| LiveBench coding | Not measured | 89.1% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LMArena WebDev | Not measured | 1617 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| AA Coding Index | Not measured | 76.8 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 88.2% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| SWE-bench Verified (Vals AI) | Not measured | 95.6% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| Terminal-Bench 4 (Vals AI) | Not measured | 17.2% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 76.2% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| Code migration (Vals AI) | Not measured | 44.6% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| ProgramBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 1.0% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| IOI (Vals AI) | Not measured | 47.6% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals AI) | Not measured | 78.3% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| Vibe Code Bench 1-100 (Vals AI) | Not measured | 14.8% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| SkillsBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 55.8% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| CyberBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 67.7% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| SciCode | Not measured | 56.5% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| FrontierCode | Not measured | 48.0% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| FrontierSWE | Not measured | 25.3% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| WeirdML | Not measured | 67.3% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| ALE-Bench | Not measured | 1508.1 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: coding | Not measured | 1466 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: software and IT | Not measured | 1457 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LMArena WebDev: React | Not measured | 1631 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LMArena WebDev: HTML | Not measured | 1597 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LMArena WebDev: from an image | Not measured | 1603 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 12 boards here | |||
IntelligenceDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index2 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | DeepSeek V3 | Grok 4.6 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Intelligence Index | Not measured | 44.3 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | Not measured | 156.6 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
Agentic workDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index22 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | DeepSeek V3 | Grok 4.6 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Agentic Index | Not measured | 53.0 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building web apps | Not measured | 1247 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building full-stack apps | Not measured | 1264 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building mobile apps | Not measured | 1234 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building Android apps | Not measured | 1297 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building Godot games | Not measured | 1276 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building games | Not measured | 1208 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| Design Arena: HTML slides | Not measured | 1249 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| Design Arena: PowerPoint slides | Not measured | 1241 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LiveBench research | Not measured | 84.5% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LiveBench browser | Not measured | 64.0% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LiveBench long agentic | Not measured | 40.7% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| Finance Agent (Vals AI) | Not measured | 53.7% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| Tax Agent Bench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 33.1% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| Legal Research Bench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 48.1% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark (Vals AI) | Not measured | 62.7% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| BioMysteryBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 72.2% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| Terminal-Bench-Science (Vals AI) | Not measured | 11.4% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| Vals Science Index | Not measured | 38.1% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| Time Horizon Index (Vals AI) | Not measured | 5.8% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| APEX-Agents | Not measured | 65.3% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| Vending-Bench 2 | Not measured | $9,047 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 17 boards here | |||
ReasoningLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index01
| Benchmark | DeepSeek V3 | Grok 4.6 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | Not measured | 94.7% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LiveBench reasoning | Not measured | 91.2% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| MysteryMechanism (Vals AI) | Not measured | 30.6% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| GPQA Diamond (Artificial Analysis run) | Not measured | 94.9% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run) | Not measured | 44.1% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| GPQA Diamond (Epoch AI run) | 71.2% | 94.0% | Grok 4.6 |
| ARC-AGI | Not measured | 87.5% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| ARC-AGI-2 | Not measured | 67.1% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| SimpleBench | Not measured | 75.9% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| Chess puzzles | Not measured | 33.0% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| Mystery game puzzles | Not measured | 34.0% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| EBR-bench | Not measured | 30.5% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts | Not measured | 1448 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: expert | Not measured | 1469 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts in English | Not measured | 1445 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Vision: diagrams | Not measured | 1285 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Vision: homework | Not measured | 1283 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 4 boards here | |||
MathLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index01
| Benchmark | DeepSeek V3 | Grok 4.6 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME | 48.9% | 99.2% | Grok 4.6 |
| FrontierMath, tiers 1 to 3 | Not measured | 66.0% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| FrontierMath, tier 4 | Not measured | 31.7% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| ProofBench | Not measured | 51.0% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: math | Not measured | 1417 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: mathematical work | Not measured | 1464 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 7 boards here | |||
KnowledgeDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index11 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | DeepSeek V3 | Grok 4.6 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU Pro | Not measured | 89.4% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LegalBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 86.3% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| CorpFin (Vals AI) | Not measured | 66.2% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| TaxEval (Vals AI) | Not measured | 71.1% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| MortgageTax (Vals AI) | Not measured | 64.2% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| MedCode (Vals AI) | Not measured | 44.7% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| SimpleQA Verified | Not measured | 49.3% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: science | Not measured | 1437 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare | Not measured | 1420 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: legal and government | Not measured | 1429 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: business and finance | Not measured | 1416 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 6 boards here | |||
Web designLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index07
| Benchmark | DeepSeek V3 | Grok 4.6 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Arena: websites | 1120 | 1289 | Grok 4.6 |
| Design Arena: UI components | 1093 | 1294 | Grok 4.6 |
| Design Arena: game dev | 1054 | 1296 | Grok 4.6 |
| Design Arena: data viz | 1089 | 1283 | Grok 4.6 |
| Design Arena: 3D | 1087 | 1277 | Grok 4.6 |
| Design Arena: all code categories | 1108 | 1292 | Grok 4.6 |
| Design Arena: SVG | 976 | 1239 | Grok 4.6 |
| Design Arena: ASCII art | Not measured | 1278 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LiveBench design | Not measured | 79.8% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
GeneralLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index02
| Benchmark | DeepSeek V3 | Grok 4.6 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| LiveBench data analysis | Not measured | 75.3% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| Public Benefits Bench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 66.8% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| SAGE (Vals AI) | Not measured | 28.9% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| MedScribe (Vals AI) | Not measured | 86.5% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| Long context reasoning (AA-LCR) | Not measured | 81.0% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| DTBench | 62.7% | 97.3% | Grok 4.6 |
| LMCA | 15.2% | 48.5% | Grok 4.6 |
| Furniture assembly | Not measured | 40.0% | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text | Not measured | 1429 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: instruction following | Not measured | 1431 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: creative writing | Not measured | 1426 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Vision | Not measured | 1263 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: English | Not measured | 1433 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: non-English | Not measured | 1420 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: Chinese | Not measured | 1476 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: German | Not measured | 1426 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: Japanese | Not measured | 1378 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: Korean | Not measured | 1391 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: French | Not measured | 1455 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: Spanish | Not measured | 1414 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: Russian | Not measured | 1421 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: Polish | Not measured | 1430 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: multi-turn | Not measured | 1425 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: longer queries | Not measured | 1456 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: writing and language | Not measured | 1429 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: entertainment and media | Not measured | 1421 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Vision: English | Not measured | 1270 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Vision: Chinese | Not measured | 1289 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Vision: reading text | Not measured | 1272 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Vision: humor | Not measured | 1270 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Vision: creative writing | Not measured | 1262 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Document | Not measured | 1452 | Only Grok 4.6 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 14 boards here | |||
Image generationNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | DeepSeek V3 | Grok 4.6 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neither model has a result on 5 boards here | |||
What each workload costs
Three fixed token mixes at each model's listed price, so per-token rates become a bill.
Chat turn
1K input + 500 output tokens
DeepSeek V3 costs less
Repository review
50K input + 3K output tokens
DeepSeek V3 costs less
Agent loop
200K input + 10K output tokens
DeepSeek V3 costs less
Listed OpenRouter rates, without cache or batch discounts. A workload that does not fit a model's context window would need splitting.
Specification differences
The leading value in a row is marked; a row with a missing value names no leader. Our two rows are marked in red.
| Specification | DeepSeek V3 | SpaceXAI Grok 4.6 |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | DeepSeek | xAI |
| Weights | Open weights | No public weights listed |
| Released | December 26, 2024 | August 12, 2026 |
| Context window | 164K | 500K |
| Input $/Mtok | $0.2574 | $2.00 |
| Output $/Mtok | $1.0287 | $6.00 |
| Coding index | 70.2 | 76.4 |
| Independent measurements behind it | 1 | 2 |
| Cost per solved task | Not computable | $0.82 |
| Source | OpenRouter listing | OpenRouter listing |
Questions
Is DeepSeek V3 better than Grok 4.6 for coding?
DeepSeek V3 scores 70.2 and Grok 4.6 76.4 on the Vibe Coding Index, but no coding benchmark measured both, so the gap is directional, not a ranking. Pick DeepSeek V3 when output tokens cost 5.8x less; pick Grok 4.6 when the context window is larger, 500K against 164K tokens, or when what matters is GPQA Diamond (Epoch AI run) or OTIS Mock AIME, where it leads.
Which is cheaper, DeepSeek V3 or Grok 4.6?
DeepSeek V3 costs $0.2574 per million input tokens and $1.0287 per million output tokens; Grok 4.6 costs $2.00 and $6.00. Cost per solved task is known for Grok 4.6 only.
Which has the bigger context window, DeepSeek V3 or Grok 4.6?
Grok 4.6, with 500K tokens against 164K.
How many benchmarks is the DeepSeek V3 vs Grok 4.6 comparison based on?
11 benchmarks have a result for both models as of October 21, 2026. DeepSeek V3's coding index rests on 1 independent benchmark and Grok 4.6's on 2. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.