Model comparison 2026

Beam 1.0 vs DeepSeek V4 Flash

Beam 1.0
Reflection · Balanced · Open weights
$1.60/1M · 1.0M ctx
DeepSeek V4 Flash
DeepSeek · Budget · Open weights
$0.12/1M · 1.0M ctx

Community vote

Pick a winner in each dimension. You can change your vote any time.

Output Quality

Correctness and depth of what it produces

Agentic Ability

Tool calls, instruction-following, and multi-step tasks

Speed

Tokens per second and time-to-first-token

Value for Money

How much capability you get per dollar

Reliability

Consistent results: fewer refusals, loops and format breaks

Specs and pricing side by side

Spec
Beam 1.0
DeepSeek V4 Flash
Maker
Reflection
DeepSeek
Blended price / 1M
$1.60
$0.12
Input / output
$1.00 in · $3.00 out / 1M tokens
$0.09 in · $0.18 out / 1M tokens
Context window
1.0M
1.0M
Open weights
Yes
Yes
Tool use
Yes
Yes
Reasoning
Yes
Yes
Output Quality
7.0
7.7
Agentic Ability
5.0
7.1
Speed
7.0
9.1
Value for Money
5.7
9.4
Reliability
8.0
8.7

Pricing and capabilities synced from the OpenRouter catalogue. Scores are editorial (0–10).

Verdict: Beam 1.0 or DeepSeek V4 Flash?

Updated 2026-10-17

Choose Beam 1.0 if you want trying a permissively licensed open-weight coding model through OpenRouter, or self-hosting it where code must stay on your own hardware. Choose DeepSeek V4 Flash if you want existing setups that still call the deepseek-v4-flash name.

In our editorial scoring, DeepSeek V4 Flash leads in 5 of five dimensions (output quality, agentic ability, speed, value for money and reliability), while Beam 1.0 leads in 0. On price, Beam 1.0 runs about $1.60 per 1M tokens (blended) and is open-weight; DeepSeek V4 Flash is about $0.12 and open-weight.

Where Beam 1.0 falls short
  • Every published benchmark figure is Reflection's own so far
  • Text only: no image input
Full Beam 1.0 breakdown →
Where DeepSeek V4 Flash falls short
  • Retired as a DeepSeek API name; calls run V4.1 Flash instead
  • Third-party hosts of the original weights vary in price and speed
Full DeepSeek V4 Flash breakdown →

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