DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B vs GPT-4 Turbo
GPT-4 Turbo significantly outperforms across most benchmarks.
DeepSeek · OpenAI · Updated for 2026
Which is better?
DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B outperforms in 0 benchmarks, while GPT-4 Turbo is better at 1 benchmark (GPQA). GPT-4 Turbo significantly outperforms across most benchmarks.
Based on current benchmark, pricing, and model metadata for 2026.
Choose DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B
- you want the most recent training data — it shipped Jan 2025
- you need open weights you can self-host or fine-tune
Choose GPT-4 Turbo
- you want the strongest raw capability — it leads on 1 of 1 shared benchmarks
At a glance
The differences that matter most.
Performance Benchmarks
Comparative analysis across standard metrics
DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B outperforms in 0 benchmarks, while GPT-4 Turbo is better at 1 benchmark (GPQA).
GPT-4 Turbo significantly outperforms across most benchmarks.
Arena Performance
Playground indexes and blind preference scores
Context Window
Maximum input and output token capacity
Only GPT-4 Turbo specifies input context (128,000 tokens). Only GPT-4 Turbo specifies output context (4,096 tokens).
License
Usage and distribution terms
DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B is licensed under MIT, while GPT-4 Turbo uses a proprietary license.
License differences may affect how you can use these models in commercial or open-source projects.
MIT
Open weights
Proprietary
Closed source
Release Timeline
When each model was launched
DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B was released on 2025-01-20, while GPT-4 Turbo was released on 2024-04-09.
DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B is 10 months newer than GPT-4 Turbo.
Jan 20, 2025
1.6 years ago
9mo newerApr 9, 2024
2.4 years ago
Knowledge Cutoff
When training data ends
GPT-4 Turbo has a documented knowledge cutoff of 2023-12-31, while DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B's cutoff date is not specified.
We can confirm GPT-4 Turbo's training data extends to 2023-12-31, but cannot make a direct comparison without DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B's cutoff date.
—
Dec 2023
Outputs Comparison
Judge for yourself.
Run your own prompts against DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B and GPT-4 Turbo side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.
FAQ
Common questions about DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B vs GPT-4 Turbo.