DeepSeek-R1
DeepSeek · Text generation · MoE 671B-A37B · 131k context · Released 22 January 2025
DeepSeek-R1 is one of the most capable open-weight models released, and its MIT licence makes it unusually permissive for a model at this level. Running it is the hard part: at 671B parameters it needs a multi-GPU server or a very high-memory machine. Community dynamic low-bit quantisations bring it within reach of high-end workstations and large Apple Silicon machines, at some cost to quality. For most people, the R1 distills are the practical way to get its reasoning locally.
Strengths
- Frontier-level reasoning on maths, code, and complex problems
- Fully open under the permissive MIT licence, commercial use included
- Mixture-of-experts design keeps active parameters, and so speed, manageable
Weaknesses
- Enormous, needing a multi-GPU server or very high-memory machine for good quality
- Reasoning traces are long, slow, and verbose
- Out of reach for typical consumer hardware except via aggressive quantisation
Hardware requirements
| Quantisation | Approx. VRAM | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Dynamic 1.5-2 bit (community) | ~140GB | Community dynamic quant; high-end workstation or 192GB Mac, with quality trade-offs |
| Q4_K_M | ~380GB | Server or multi-GPU territory |
| FP8 | ~671GB | Native precision, large multi-GPU server |
Optimised builds available for Apple Silicon.
Licence
MIT — read the licence
Benchmarks
| Benchmark | Score | Source | As of |
|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU | 90.8 | DeepSeek model card | January 2025 |
| AIME 2024 | 79.8% | DeepSeek model card | January 2025 |
| MATH-500 | 97.3% | DeepSeek model card | January 2025 |
| LiveCodeBench | 65.9% | DeepSeek model card | January 2025 |
Availability
- Official page
- Hugging Face
- ollama run deepseek-r1:671b
Recommended for
- Organisations with server-class hardware wanting an open reasoning model
- Enthusiasts with very high-memory machines and dynamic quantisations
- A permissively licensed frontier reasoning model to self-host
Run it with
Related guides
Glossary
Catalogue entry last verified 30 July 2026. Specifications change; verify anything you are about to spend money on.