DeepSeek-R1

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Paper Link👁️

1. Introduction

We introduce our first-generation reasoning models, DeepSeek-R1-Zero and DeepSeek-R1. DeepSeek-R1-Zero, a model trained via large-scale reinforcement learning (RL) without supervised fine-tuning (SFT) as a preliminary step, demonstrated remarkable performance on reasoning. With RL, DeepSeek-R1-Zero naturally emerged with numerous powerful and interesting reasoning behaviors. However, DeepSeek-R1-Zero encounters challenges such as endless repetition, poor readability, and language mixing. To address these issues and further enhance reasoning performance, we introduce DeepSeek-R1, which incorporates cold-start data before RL. DeepSeek-R1 achieves performance comparable to OpenAI-o1 across math, code, and reasoning tasks. To support the research community, we have open-sourced DeepSeek-R1-Zero, DeepSeek-R1, and six dense models distilled from DeepSeek-R1 based on Llama and Qwen. DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-32B outperforms OpenAI-o1-mini across various benchmarks, achieving new state-of-the-art results for dense models.

NOTE: Before running DeepSeek-R1 series models locally, we kindly recommend reviewing the Usage Recommendation section.

2. Model Summary

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Post-Training: Large-Scale Reinforcement Learning on the Base Model

• We directly apply reinforcement learning (RL) to the base model without relying on supervised fine-tuning (SFT) as a preliminary step. This approach allows the model to explore chain-of-thought (CoT) for solving complex problems, resulting in the development of DeepSeek-R1-Zero. DeepSeek-R1-Zero demonstrates capabilities such as self-verification, reflection, and generating long CoTs, marking a significant milestone for the research community. Notably, it is the first open research to validate that reasoning capabilities of LLMs can be incentivized purely through RL, without the need for SFT. This breakthrough paves the way for future advancements in this area.

• We introduce our pipeline to develop DeepSeek-R1. The pipeline incorporates two RL stages aimed at discovering improved reasoning patterns and aligning with human preferences, as well as two SFT stages that serve as the seed for the model's reasoning and non-reasoning capabilities. We believe the pipeline will benefit the industry by creating better models.

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Distillation: Smaller Models Can Be Powerful Too

• We demonstrate that the reasoning patterns of larger models can be distilled into smaller models, resulting in better performance compared to the reasoning patterns discovered through RL on small models. The open source DeepSeek-R1, as well as its API, will benefit the research community to distill better smaller models in the future.
• Using the reasoning data generated by DeepSeek-R1, we fine-tuned several dense models that are widely used in the research community. The evaluation results demonstrate that the distilled smaller dense models perform exceptionally well on benchmarks. We open-source distilled 1.5B, 7B, 8B, 14B, 32B, and 70B checkpoints based on Qwen2.5 and Llama3 series to the community.

3. Model Downloads

DeepSeek-R1 Models

DeepSeek-R1-Zero & DeepSeek-R1 are trained based on DeepSeek-V3-Base. For more details regarding the model architecture, please refer to DeepSeek-V3 repository.

DeepSeek-R1-Distill Models

DeepSeek-R1-Distill models are fine-tuned based on open-source models, using samples generated by DeepSeek-R1. We slightly change their configs and tokenizers. Please use our setting to run these models.

4. Evaluation Results

DeepSeek-R1-Evaluation

For all our models, the maximum generation length is set to 32,768 tokens. For benchmarks requiring sampling, we use a temperature of $0.6$, a top-p value of $0.95$, and generate 64 responses per query to estimate pass@1.

Distilled Model Evaluation

5. Chat Website & API Platform

You can chat with DeepSeek-R1 on DeepSeek's official website: chat.deepseek.com, and switch on the button "DeepThink"

We also provide OpenAI-Compatible API at DeepSeek Platform: platform.deepseek.com

6. How to Run Locally

DeepSeek-R1 Models

Please visit DeepSeek-V3 repo for more information about running DeepSeek-R1 locally.

NOTE: Hugging Face's Transformers has not been directly supported yet.

DeepSeek-R1-Distill Models

DeepSeek-R1-Distill models can be utilized in the same manner as Qwen or Llama models.

For instance, you can easily start a service using vLLM:

vllm serve deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-32B --tensor-parallel-size 2 --max-model-len 32768 --enforce-eager

You can also easily start a service using SGLang

python3 -m sglang.launch_server --model deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-32B --trust-remote-code --tp 2

Usage Recommendations

We recommend adhering to the following configurations when utilizing the DeepSeek-R1 series models, including benchmarking, to achieve the expected performance:

1. Set the temperature within the range of 0.5-0.7 (0.6 is recommended) to prevent endless repetitions or incoherent outputs.
2. Avoid adding a system prompt; all instructions should be contained within the user prompt.
3. For mathematical problems, it is advisable to include a directive in your prompt such as: "Please reason step by step, and put your final answer within \boxed{}."
4. When evaluating model performance, it is recommended to conduct multiple tests and average the results.

Additionally, we have observed that the DeepSeek-R1 series models tend to bypass thinking pattern (i.e., outputting "<think>\n\n</think>") when responding to certain queries, which can adversely affect the model's performance. To ensure that the model engages in thorough reasoning, we recommend enforcing the model to initiate its response with "<think>\n" at the beginning of every output.

7. License

This code repository and the model weights are licensed under the MIT License. DeepSeek-R1 series support commercial use, allow for any modifications and derivative works, including, but not limited to, distillation for training other LLMs. Please note that:

• DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-1.5B, DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-7B, DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-14B and DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-32B are derived from Qwen-2.5 series, which are originally licensed under Apache 2.0 License, and now finetuned with 800k samples curated with DeepSeek-R1.
• DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama-8B is derived from Llama3.1-8B-Base and is originally licensed under llama3.1 license.
• DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama-70B is derived from Llama3.3-70B-Instruct and is originally licensed under llama3.3 license.

8. Citation

@misc{deepseekai2025deepseekr1incentivizingreasoningcapability,
      title={DeepSeek-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in LLMs via Reinforcement Learning}, 
      author={DeepSeek-AI and Daya Guo and Dejian Yang and Haowei Zhang and Junxiao Song and Ruoyu Zhang and Runxin Xu and Qihao Zhu and Shirong Ma and Peiyi Wang and Xiao Bi and Xiaokang Zhang and Xingkai Yu and Yu Wu and Z. F. Wu and Zhibin Gou and Zhihong Shao and Zhuoshu Li and Ziyi Gao and Aixin Liu and Bing Xue and Bingxuan Wang and Bochao Wu and Bei Feng and Chengda Lu and Chenggang Zhao and Chengqi Deng and Chenyu Zhang and Chong Ruan and Damai Dai and Deli Chen and Dongjie Ji and Erhang Li and Fangyun Lin and Fucong Dai and Fuli Luo and Guangbo Hao and Guanting Chen and Guowei Li and H. Zhang and Han Bao and Hanwei Xu and Haocheng Wang and Honghui Ding and Huajian Xin and Huazuo Gao and Hui Qu and Hui Li and Jianzhong Guo and Jiashi Li and Jiawei Wang and Jingchang Chen and Jingyang Yuan and Junjie Qiu and Junlong Li and J. L. Cai and Jiaqi Ni and Jian Liang and Jin Chen and Kai Dong and Kai Hu and Kaige Gao and Kang Guan and Kexin Huang and Kuai Yu and Lean Wang and Lecong Zhang and Liang Zhao and Litong Wang and Liyue Zhang and Lei Xu and Leyi Xia and Mingchuan Zhang and Minghua Zhang and Minghui Tang and Meng Li and Miaojun Wang and Mingming Li and Ning Tian and Panpan Huang and Peng Zhang and Qiancheng Wang and Qinyu Chen and Qiushi Du and Ruiqi Ge and Ruisong Zhang and Ruizhe Pan and Runji Wang and R. J. Chen and R. L. Jin and Ruyi Chen and Shanghao Lu and Shangyan Zhou and Shanhuang Chen and Shengfeng Ye and Shiyu Wang and Shuiping Yu and Shunfeng Zhou and Shuting Pan and S. S. Li and Shuang Zhou and Shaoqing Wu and Shengfeng Ye and Tao Yun and Tian Pei and Tianyu Sun and T. Wang and Wangding Zeng and Wanjia Zhao and Wen Liu and Wenfeng Liang and Wenjun Gao and Wenqin Yu and Wentao Zhang and W. L. Xiao and Wei An and Xiaodong Liu and Xiaohan Wang and Xiaokang Chen and Xiaotao Nie and Xin Cheng and Xin Liu and Xin Xie and Xingchao Liu and Xinyu Yang and Xinyuan Li and Xuecheng Su and Xuheng Lin and X. Q. Li and Xiangyue Jin and Xiaojin Shen and Xiaosha Chen and Xiaowen Sun and Xiaoxiang Wang and Xinnan Song and Xinyi Zhou and Xianzu Wang and Xinxia Shan and Y. K. Li and Y. Q. Wang and Y. X. Wei and Yang Zhang and Yanhong Xu and Yao Li and Yao Zhao and Yaofeng Sun and Yaohui Wang and Yi Yu and Yichao Zhang and Yifan Shi and Yiliang Xiong and Ying He and Yishi Piao and Yisong Wang and Yixuan Tan and Yiyang Ma and Yiyuan Liu and Yongqiang Guo and Yuan Ou and Yuduan Wang and Yue Gong and Yuheng Zou and Yujia He and Yunfan Xiong and Yuxiang Luo and Yuxiang You and Yuxuan Liu and Yuyang Zhou and Y. X. Zhu and Yanhong Xu and Yanping Huang and Yaohui Li and Yi Zheng and Yuchen Zhu and Yunxian Ma and Ying Tang and Yukun Zha and Yuting Yan and Z. Z. Ren and Zehui Ren and Zhangli Sha and Zhe Fu and Zhean Xu and Zhenda Xie and Zhengyan Zhang and Zhewen Hao and Zhicheng Ma and Zhigang Yan and Zhiyu Wu and Zihui Gu and Zijia Zhu and Zijun Liu and Zilin Li and Ziwei Xie and Ziyang Song and Zizheng Pan and Zhen Huang and Zhipeng Xu and Zhongyu Zhang and Zhen Zhang},
      year={2025},
      eprint={2501.12948},
      archivePrefix={arXiv},
      primaryClass={cs.CL},
      url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.12948}, 
}

9. Contact

If you have any questions, please raise an issue or contact us at service@deepseek.com.