Model comparison 2026

DeepSeek V4.1 Flash vs GPT-5.4 Mini

DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
DeepSeek · Budget · Open weights
$0.22/1M · 1.0M ctx
GPT-5.4 Mini
OpenAI · Budget · Proprietary
$1.88/1M · 400K 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
GPT-5.4 Mini
Maker
DeepSeek
OpenAI
Blended price / 1M
$0.22
$1.88
Input / output
$0.04 in · $0.63 out / 1M tokens
$0.75 in · $4.50 out / 1M tokens
Context window
1.0M
400K
Open weights
Yes
No
Tool use
Yes
Yes
Reasoning
Yes
Yes
Output Quality
8.8
8.0
Agentic Ability
8.8
8.1
Speed
9.4
9.0
Value for money
10.0
8.2
Reliability
8.8
8.7

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

Verdict: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash or GPT-5.4 Mini?

Updated 2026-10-13

Choose DeepSeek V4.1 Flash if you want cheap, high-volume open-weight agent work. Choose GPT-5.4 Mini if you want high-volume, low-complexity agent steps on a budget.

In our editorial scoring, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash leads in 5 of five dimensions (output quality, agentic ability, speed, value for money and reliability), while GPT-5.4 Mini leads in 0. On price, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash runs about $0.22 per 1M tokens (blended) and is open-weight; GPT-5.4 Mini is about $1.88 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 GPT-5.4 Mini falls short
  • Not for hard reasoning or tricky refactors
  • Quality below the full GPT-5.4
Full GPT-5.4 Mini breakdown →

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