DeepSeek V3.2: Open-Weight Frontier at Closed-Source Quality
DeepSeek V3.2 is the latest in China's most prolific open-weight model line — and the gap between open and closed frontier models has never been smaller. 86% on LiveCodeBench, 92% on AIME 2025, and you can run it yourself.
DeepSeek has become one of the most consistent names in frontier AI. Each release in the V3 line has pushed open-weight performance closer to what closed labs charge premium prices for. V3.2 continues that trajectory.
What's Strong
The benchmark picture at launch:
- LiveCodeBench: 86% — Top open-weight coding score available. Competitive with GPT-5.2 and Gemini 3 Pro on programming tasks.
- AIME 2025: 92% — Strong math reasoning. Trails Gemini 3.1 Pro and Grok 3 Thinking at the very top but close.
- MMLU-Pro: 86% — Broad knowledge, competitive with closed frontier models.
- HLE (text-only): ~31% — Below Gemini 3.1 Pro (44.4%) and Opus 4.6 (40%), but reasonable for an open-weight model.
What makes it useful for teams:
- Self-hostable — you own your infrastructure, your data, your inference costs
- Fine-tunable — extensive community around DeepSeek fine-tuning for domain-specific tasks
- API access also available via DeepSeek's own inference at very competitive pricing
- Strong Chinese and English bilingual quality
How It Compares at Launch
| Model | Type | LiveCodeBench | AIME 2025 | Self-Host |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DeepSeek V3.2 | Open | 86% | 92% | ✅ |
| Qwen 3.5 (235B) | Open MoE | ~85% | ~95% | ✅ |
| Kimi K2.5 Thinking | Open | 85% | 96% | ✅ |
| Gemini 3 Pro | Closed | top | top | ❌ |
| GPT-5.2 | Closed | top | top | ❌ |
In the open-weight tier, DeepSeek V3.2, Qwen 3.5, and Kimi K2.5 Thinking are all extremely competitive. The right choice depends on your specific task and infrastructure.
Best For
- Cost-efficient production at scale — self-host and eliminate per-token API costs
- Coding-heavy workloads where 86% LiveCodeBench is sufficient
- Teams with compliance requirements around data residency
- Fine-tuning on proprietary data (legal, medical, finance)
Not For
- Agentic coding — Claude Code is purpose-built and still leads here
- Tasks where absolute top-of-leaderboard reasoning matters — closed models still lead
- Teams without GPU infrastructure who want the simplest deployment
Verdict
DeepSeek V3.2 is one of the best open-weight models available and a compelling alternative to closed-source APIs for cost-sensitive production workloads. The V3 line has been consistently impressive, and V3.2 continues that. If you're evaluating open-weight options for 2026, this and Kimi K2.5 Thinking are your starting point.
Part of our Model Watch series.