DeepSeek-R1
v20251020DeepSeek
DeepSeek's standalone reasoning model, now superseded and discontinued. Its reasoning was folded into DeepSeek V3.1's hybrid thinking mode (Aug 2025), then V3.2 (Dec 2025) and V4 (Apr 2026); a successor 'R2' never shipped. The legacy deepseek-reasoner name no longer serves R1 — it routes to V4-Flash's thinking mode and is removed 2026-07-24 (15:59 UTC). R1 remains available only via third-party hosts or self-hosted open weights. Historically 53.6% SWE-bench and 79.8% HumanEval.
Trust Vector Analysis
Dimension Breakdown
🚀Performance & Reliability+
Strong performance with excellent coding capabilities and efficient reasoning. Competitive latency despite reasoning optimization.
Industry-standard coding benchmarks measuring real-world software engineering tasks
Graduate-level reasoning benchmarks requiring multi-step problem solving
Comprehensive knowledge testing across domains
Internal testing with repeated prompts at various temperature settings
Median latency for API requests with standard prompt sizes
95th percentile response time across diverse workloads
Official specification from provider
Historical uptime data from official status page
🛡️Security+
Good security posture with standard guardrails. Adequate protection for typical use cases.
Testing against OWASP LLM01 prompt injection attacks
Testing against adversarial prompt datasets
Analysis of privacy policies and data handling practices
Comprehensive safety testing across harmful content categories
Review of API security features and best practices
🔒Privacy & Compliance+
Moderate privacy posture. Data residency primarily in Asia. Limited compliance certifications for Western markets.
Review of documentation and privacy policies
Analysis of privacy policy and data usage terms
Review of terms of service and data retention policies
Review of data protection capabilities
Verification of compliance certifications
Review of data handling practices
👁️Trust & Transparency+
Moderate transparency with standard safety features. Limited disclosure compared to Western providers.
Evaluation of reasoning transparency
Testing on factual QA datasets
Evaluation on bias benchmarks
Assessment of confidence expression
Review of documentation completeness
Review of public disclosures
Analysis of built-in safety mechanisms
⚙️Operational Excellence+
Good operational quality with open licensing. Growing ecosystem with room for maturity.
Review of API design and consistency
Review of SDK quality and maintenance
Review of versioning practices
Review of monitoring tools
Assessment of support options
Analysis of ecosystem maturity
Review of licensing terms
- +Excellent coding performance (53.6% SWE-bench, 79.8% HumanEval)
- +Competitive pricing compared to Western alternatives
- +Good reasoning capabilities with efficient implementation
- +Open license allowing commercial use
- +Fast latency (1.9s p50) despite reasoning features
- +Strong mathematical capabilities
- !Limited data residency options (primarily Asia)
- !Fewer compliance certifications for Western markets
- !60-day data retention (not ephemeral)
- !Limited transparency on training data
- !Smaller context window (64K tokens)
- !Less mature ecosystem compared to Western providers
- !Superseded: line discontinued in favor of DeepSeek V3.1/V3.2/V4 hybrid thinking; legacy deepseek-reasoner alias now routes to V4-Flash (not R1) and is removed 2026-07-24, leaving third-party hosts or self-hosting as the only ways to run R1
Use Case Ratings
code generation
Excellent coding with 53.6% SWE-bench and 79.8% HumanEval. Strong value proposition with competitive pricing.
customer support
Adequate for customer support but not specialized. Good latency helps.
content creation
Solid content generation capabilities at competitive pricing.
data analysis
Strong analytical capabilities with good reasoning. Excellent value for price.
research assistant
Good research capabilities with reasoning optimization.
legal compliance
Limited compliance certifications for Western markets. Data residency concerns.
healthcare
Not suitable for healthcare due to limited compliance certifications and data residency.
financial analysis
Good analytical capabilities at competitive pricing.
education
Strong tutoring capabilities with good reasoning and affordable pricing.
creative writing
Adequate creative capabilities at good value.