The honest, $0-markup cost to run DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B (deepseek-ai, 1.8B) and Phi 4 mini reasoning (microsoft, 3.8B), side by side — free on your own machine, on your own rented GPU at the vendor's price, or via your own API key.
| DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B | Phi 4 mini reasoning | |
|---|---|---|
| Parameters | 1.8B | 3.8B |
| Context window | 131.1K | 131.1K |
| License | Commercial OK | Commercial OK |
| VRAM to run | ✓ ~3.0 GB (Q4_K_M) | ~6.0 GB (Q4_K_M) |
| Rent a GPU | $0.06/hr | $0.06/hr |
| Your API key | ✓ $0.11/1M (est.) | $0.13/1M (est.) |
VRAM, size, context and license are facts from the catalog and the shared cost engine; API prices are real where we have them (labeled "est." otherwise). We don't rank model quality or quote benchmarks here.
Full cost breakdown: DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B →
Full cost breakdown: Phi 4 mini reasoning →
Open the free Spanvero advisor → to compare them live for your exact workload and hardware.
Spanvero · All comparisons · Prices as of 2026-07-06. $0 markup, your own accounts, we never resell compute. © 2026 Cynosure LLC.
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