DeepSeek · open weights on Arena · first on Arena 24 January 2025

deepseek-r1

38 days in first place

It held first place on Arena in Text (38 days).

Embed

Who held first place

<iframe src="https://jesseahawkins.com/frontier/embed/" title="Frontier: who held first place on each Arena leaderboard, and for how long" width="100%" height="560" style="border:0;max-width:100%" loading="lazy"></iframe>

Credits LMArena.

The open-weights catch-up

<iframe src="https://jesseahawkins.com/frontier/embed/catch-up/" title="Frontier: the days until open weights matched each closed leader" width="100%" height="900" style="border:0;max-width:100%" loading="lazy"></iframe>

Credits LMArena.

The saturation clock

<iframe src="https://jesseahawkins.com/frontier/embed/clock/" title="Frontier: the days from each benchmark’s release to a model at 90%" width="100%" height="640" style="border:0;max-width:100%" loading="lazy"></iframe>

Credits Epoch AI.

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Cite

This page

Jesse Hawkins, “deepseek-r1 · Frontier”, jesseahawkins.com, data retrieved 30 Oct 2026. https://jesseahawkins.com/frontier/deepseek-r1/. Data: LMArena, Arena leaderboard dataset, revision 4491b06, CC BY 4.0; Epoch AI, Capabilities & benchmarking, CC BY 4.0.

BibTeX

@misc{hawkins2026frontierdeepseekr1,
  author = {Hawkins, Jesse},
  title = {{deepseek-r1 · Frontier}},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://jesseahawkins.com/frontier/deepseek-r1/}},
  note = {Data: LMArena, Arena leaderboard dataset, revision 4491b06, CC BY 4.0; Epoch AI, Capabilities \& benchmarking, CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-10-30}
}

Arena · LMArena

LMArena, "Arena leaderboard dataset", Hugging Face, revision 4491b06. https://huggingface.co/datasets/lmarena-ai/leaderboard-dataset. CC BY 4.0.

Benchmarks · Epoch AI

Epoch AI, 'Capabilities & benchmarking'. Published online at epoch.ai. Retrieved from 'https://epoch.ai/benchmarks' [online resource]. CC BY 4.0.

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Text: 38 days in first place

place 184 of 419 on 28 October 2026

1st10th100th

On the board: 24 January 2025 to 28 October 2026, the newest snapshot
Score: 1373 (1368–1378) on 28 October 2026 · 18,524 votes
First place: 24 January 2025 to 3 March 2025 · 38 days
Matched: o1-preview on 24 January 2025, 129 days after it took first place
o1-2024-12-17 on 24 January 2025, 25 days after it took first place

Epoch AI: DeepSeek-R1

released 20 January 2025 · Open weights (unrestricted)

GPQA diamond 71.7%
MATH level 5 93.1%
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 53.3%

When each vendor retires it

every model’s dates

Azure AI Foundry 13 Aug 2026 DeepSeek-R1 (version 1)

Sources

Arena scores come from people voting between two anonymous answers. First place is the highest score; the top two are often within each other’s margin of error. LMArena, Arena leaderboard dataset, revision 4491b06, retrieved 30 October 2026; Epoch AI, Capabilities & benchmarking, retrieved 30 October 2026. Both CC BY 4.0. Retirement dates: each vendor’s own deprecation page, quoted and kept, listed with the record.