Amazon Bedrock vs DeepSeek: Token Pricing, Speed & Intelligence

Full comparison of Amazon Bedrock and DeepSeek — live token pricing, latency, throughput, context window, strengths, weaknesses, and best use cases. Updated July 2026.

Amazon Bedrock

AWS-native LLM access — Nova, Claude, Llama, and more via one API

Amazon Bedrock is AWS's managed LLM service, providing access to Amazon's own Nova models alongside third-party models from Anthropic, Meta, Mistral, and others. It integrates natively with the AWS ecosystem including IAM, VPC, and CloudWatch, making it the default choice for teams already on AWS.

AWS-nativeEnterprise complianceMulti-modelHIPAA workloadsAgents

Proprietary modelsHosts open weights

DeepSeek

Chinese frontier lab — DeepSeek V3 and R1 at remarkably low prices

DeepSeek is a Chinese AI lab that has released highly capable open-weight models at prices far below Western competitors. DeepSeek V3 matches GPT-4 class performance at $0.27/1M input tokens, while DeepSeek R1 is a reasoning model competitive with o1 at a fraction of the cost. Both models are open-weight.

Cost-efficiencyReasoningCodingOpen-sourceSelf-hosting

Proprietary models

Key metrics

Cheapest input ($/1M)

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Cheapest output ($/1M)

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Peak throughput

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Best latency (TTFT)

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Intelligence score

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Context window

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Live token pricing

Strengths & weaknesses

Amazon Bedrock

Native AWS integration — IAM, VPC, CloudWatch, S3

Access to Claude, Llama, Mistral, and Amazon Nova via one API

Enterprise compliance: SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR

Provisioned throughput for guaranteed capacity

No data leaves your AWS account

More complex setup than standalone inference APIs

Pricing can be higher than direct provider APIs

Latency overhead from AWS abstraction layer

DeepSeek

DeepSeek V3 matches GPT-4 class at $0.27/1M input — 10× cheaper

R1 reasoning model competitive with o1 at a fraction of the cost

Both V3 and R1 are open-weight — can be self-hosted

Mixture-of-Experts architecture for efficient inference

Strong coding and math benchmarks

Data residency in China — may not meet compliance requirements

API reliability can lag Western providers during peak demand

Limited multimodal capability vs. Gemini or GPT-4o

Key differentiators

Amazon Bedrock

The only way to run Claude, Llama, and Amazon Nova within your own AWS VPC — data never leaves your account.

DeepSeek

DeepSeek V3 delivers GPT-4 class intelligence at $0.27/1M input tokens — the most disruptive price-to-performance ratio in the LLM market.

Frequently asked questions

Amazon Bedrock FAQs

What models are available on Amazon Bedrock?

Amazon Bedrock offers Amazon Nova (Micro, Lite, Pro), Anthropic Claude (Haiku, Sonnet, Opus), Meta Llama 3.x, Mistral, Cohere, and others. The catalog varies by AWS region.

How does Amazon Bedrock pricing work?

Bedrock uses on-demand pricing per 1M tokens, similar to direct provider APIs. Provisioned throughput is available for guaranteed capacity at a fixed hourly rate. Prices are generally comparable to or slightly above direct provider pricing.

Is Amazon Bedrock HIPAA-compliant?

Yes. Amazon Bedrock is covered under AWS's HIPAA BAA, making it suitable for healthcare applications that require HIPAA compliance. Data processed through Bedrock stays within your AWS account.

DeepSeek FAQs

How much does DeepSeek cost?

DeepSeek V3 costs $0.27/1M input and $1.10/1M output tokens — roughly 10× cheaper than GPT-4o for comparable capability. DeepSeek R1 is $0.55/1M input and $2.19/1M output.

Is DeepSeek open-weight?

Yes. Both DeepSeek V3 and DeepSeek R1 are open-weight models available on Hugging Face. You can self-host them on your own GPU infrastructure, though they require significant compute (671B parameters for R1).

How does DeepSeek R1 compare to OpenAI o1?

DeepSeek R1 scores comparably to OpenAI o1 on math and coding benchmarks at a fraction of the cost. R1 is open-weight and can be self-hosted, while o1 is proprietary. R1 is available via multiple inference providers including Fireworks AI and Together AI.

Provider resources

Amazon Bedrock

Provider page Website Pricing Docs

DeepSeek

Provider page Website Pricing Docs

Amazon Bedrock — AWS-native LLM access — Nova, Claude, Llama, and more via one API

The only way to run Claude, Llama, and Amazon Nova within your own AWS VPC — data never leaves your account.

DeepSeek — Chinese frontier lab — DeepSeek V3 and R1 at remarkably low prices

DeepSeek V3 delivers GPT-4 class intelligence at $0.27/1M input tokens — the most disruptive price-to-performance ratio in the LLM market.

Key strengths compared

Amazon Bedrock

▸Native AWS integration — IAM, VPC, CloudWatch, S3
▸Access to Claude, Llama, Mistral, and Amazon Nova via one API
▸Enterprise compliance: SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR

DeepSeek

▸DeepSeek V3 matches GPT-4 class at $0.27/1M input — 10× cheaper
▸R1 reasoning model competitive with o1 at a fraction of the cost
▸Both V3 and R1 are open-weight — can be self-hosted

Provider category context

Amazon Bedrock is a cloud, founded in 2023. DeepSeek is a frontier lab, founded in 2023. The category difference means these providers serve partially overlapping use cases — compare the model lists and pricing tables above to find the best fit for your specific workload.

How to choose between them

Choose Amazon Bedrock if you need native aws integration — iam, vpc, cloudwatch, s3. Choose DeepSeek if you need deepseek v3 matches gpt-4 class at $0.27/1m input — 10× cheaper. For high-volume production workloads, run a cost comparison using the token pricing table above with your actual prompt/completion token ratio — the cheapest provider depends heavily on your input-to-output token ratio.