R1

DeepSeek R1 is an open-weight reasoning model that applies chain-of-thought inference to work through complex problems step-by-step before answering.

Strengths

Excels at problems requiring logical reasoning, mathematical derivation, and multi-step problem-solving through explicit chain-of-thought thinking.

Best for

Tasks that benefit from transparent reasoning chains—math, science, coding problems, and other domains where intermediate steps matter as much as the final answer.

Limitations

Longer inference latency due to explicit reasoning; the 64k context window is smaller than contemporary DeepSeek models like V3.2, which offer 163k tokens.