Azure AI Foundry vs DeepSeek
Same workloads, both price lists, refreshed daily. On shared line items today: Azure AI Foundry is cheaper on 1 of 5 shared models (input or output price), DeepSeek on 3.
Azure AI Foundry
OpenAI models with Azure enterprise controls plus a broad third-party model catalog. The compliance-friendly way to run GPT-class models.
- Azure compliance/enterprise controls
- OpenAI models with SLAs
- Provisioned throughput
DeepSeek
Frontier-class reasoning and coding models at a fraction of Western lab prices, with off-peak discounts and open weights for self-hosting..
- Extreme price/performance
- Off-peak pricing windows
- Open weights available
Shared models, priced by both
List prices refreshed 2026-08-23 ยท input $/1M tokens| Model | Azure AI Foundry in/out | DeepSeek in/out | Cheaper input |
|---|---|---|---|
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | $0.190 / $0.510 | $0.440 / $1.32 | Azure AI Foundry |
| DeepSeek V3.2 | $0.580 / $1.68 | $0.280 / $0.400 | DeepSeek |
| DeepSeek V3 | $1.14 / $4.56 | $0.270 / $1.10 | DeepSeek |
| DeepSeek R1 | $1.35 / $5.40 | $0.550 / $2.19 | DeepSeek |
| DeepSeek V4 Pro | $1.74 / $3.48 | $1.32 / $3.96 | DeepSeek |
Cheaper-on-count is a tally of listed prices, not a quality verdict: throughput, reliability and quantization differ between providers. Disclosure.