Standard Compute
Model comparison 2026

DeepSeek V4.1 Flash vs Gemini 3.5 Flash

DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
DeepSeek · Budget · Open weights
$0.22/1M · 1.0M ctx
Gemini 3.5 Flash
Google · Balanced · Proprietary
$3.75/1M · 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
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
Gemini 3.5 Flash
Maker
DeepSeek
Google
Blended price / 1M
$0.22
$3.75
Input / output
$0.04 in · $0.63 out / 1M tokens
$1.50 in · $9.00 out / 1M tokens
Context window
1.0M
1.0M
Open weights
Yes
No
Tool use
Yes
Yes
Reasoning
Yes
Yes
Output Quality
8.8
8.9
Agentic Ability
8.8
8.9
Speed
9.4
9.4
Value for money
10.0
8.7
Reliability
8.8
8.9

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

Verdict: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash or Gemini 3.5 Flash?

Updated 2026-10-13

Choose DeepSeek V4.1 Flash if you want cheap, high-volume open-weight agent work. Choose Gemini 3.5 Flash if you want high-throughput agents that need big context cheaply.

In our editorial scoring, Gemini 3.5 Flash leads in 3 of five dimensions (output quality, agentic ability and reliability), while DeepSeek V4.1 Flash leads in 1. On price, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash runs about $0.22 per 1M tokens (blended) and is open-weight; Gemini 3.5 Flash is about $3.75 and proprietary.

Where DeepSeek V4.1 Flash falls short
  • Well below the frontier on long agentic tasks
  • DeepSeek API prices differ between peak and off-peak hours
Full DeepSeek V4.1 Flash breakdown →
Where Gemini 3.5 Flash falls short
  • Below Pro on hard reasoning
  • Occasional verbosity
Full Gemini 3.5 Flash breakdown →

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