DeepSeek launching v4.1 flash cheaper and more capable than v4 pro

Post by pimeys » Wed, Sep 09, 2026, 6:53 PM UTC

bitexploder wrote: post #192

pimeys wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Which versions: 3.6 vs 3.7 vs. 3.8 for Gemini Flash, and v4 0731 for Deepseek v4 Flash, and GLM 5.3 Flash - Medium for Gemini, high for Deepseek. - Things like find information, then understand something about it, then send a slack message or email etc. - Completion rates somewhere in 80-90%, Deepseek a bit better than Gemini - Quality evaluated by Fable 5.1 and Astra 6.0 acting as a rubric judge. Gemini quality wo…

Thanks... I have been trying to figure out some things. Been doing my own evals. Flash 3.8 does burn a lot more tokens on high. Interesting how smart and not smart it is. For personal use almost impossible to justify the cost of 3.8 Flash cost.

Post by fdsjgfklsfd » Wed, Sep 09, 2026, 6:57 PM UTC

swiftcoder wrote: post #22

jiehong wrote: post #20

Sounds nice! But, the web ui chat version of flash has very poor language following abilities in my experience: You may ask it something in English, and get a thinking chain in Chinese with an answer in Chinese, or an English thinking chain and an English answer. Using the retry button on the same question has a 50/50 chance of any of those results. Sometimes, asking something in English, but where information are mo…

I've hit this too, but you can just add "in English" to steer it

Post by qeternity » Wed, Sep 09, 2026, 7:06 PM UTC

gpugreg wrote: post #174

nolok wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually I would very much agree with you, but those things are not deterministic so if that's an issue for you you're probably not making the right choices.

> those things are not deterministic Determinism was an explicit goal of DeepSeek-V4. From their paper: https://arxiv.org/html/2606.19348v1#S3.SS3 > we implement end-to-end, bitwise batch-invariant, and deterministic kernels with minimal performance overhead Of course, providers may not implement deterministic inference for various reasons, but it is possible.

Post by Sha1rholder » Wed, Sep 09, 2026, 7:16 PM UTC

monster_truck wrote: post #176

aftbit wrote: post #67

>In keeping with our commitment to user responsibility, following the official launch of V4.1 Flash and prior to the release of V4.1 Pro, all requests to the Pro model will be routed to V4.1 Flash and billed at Flash's price Please don't do this kind of thing. If a user has validated a workflow on V4 Pro, they might not want to suddenly start testing it in production on V4.1 Flash. Instead, keep V4 Pro around but dep…

I'm not sure that anyone is running production workloads against an API that bills twice as much for a chunk of the day. One of the best things about Deepseek is that you can host it yourself and get a ridiculous multiple of usage for what the same dollar amount would yield from their API

Post by surgical_fire » Wed, Sep 09, 2026, 7:31 PM UTC

dandaka wrote: post #166

badatnames wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine they're doing this due to capacity issues or somesuch. They can always relaunch Pro later, meanwhile a little ricered benchmaxxing of their existing flash model provides a temporary cover story. They certainly aren't silly enough to think this won't impact existing Pro users

They could raise prices, if capacity is problem