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Cost per coding-agent request

Is DeepSeek V4.1 Flash or GPT-6 Luna cheaper for coding agents?

For coding agents, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash costs 1.6x as much as GPT-6 Luna per request ($0.0067 vs $0.0041 on our measured traffic), because at peak hours DeepSeek charges three times Luna's rate for uncached input and 2.4 times for output.

List prices: DeepSeek API pricing, OpenAI API pricing, checked 2026-10-13. Request costs: Standard Compute gateway data, 79,301 coding-agent requests from 75 users, Sep 13 to Oct 12, 2026. How we compute this

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Cost per coding-agent request, side by side

Cost at list priceGPT-6 LunaDeepSeek V4.1 Flash
Prompt under 100K tokens50% of requests, 87% of input cached$0.0015$0.0033
Prompt of 100K to 272K39% of requests, 88% of input cached$0.0039$0.0080
Prompt over 272K tokens11% of requests, 86% of input cached$0.017$0.018
Average request$0.0041$0.0067
100 requests$0.41$0.67
Median session16 requests; a session ends after 10 idle minutes$0.045$0.091
A month of regular usemedian of 20 users active on 5+ days$5.83$9.13

Each logged request priced at the vendor's list rates for its own token counts, including cache reads and any higher rate for long prompts. Average output: 698 tokens per request.

What to watch for

The figures use DeepSeek's peak-hour rates. Off-peak (most of the day and all weekend) DeepSeek charges half, about $0.0033 per request, which is less than Luna. DeepSeek V4.1 Flash also scores slightly higher on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (39 vs 38).

FAQ

Is GPT-6 Luna cheaper than DeepSeek V4.1 Flash for coding agents?
Yes, at list prices. 100 average coding-agent requests cost $0.41 on GPT-6 Luna and $0.67 on DeepSeek V4.1 Flash. A median 16-request session costs $0.045 vs $0.091. Measured on 79,301 real coding-agent requests (Sep 13 to Oct 12, 2026).
How much does a month of DeepSeek V4.1 Flash vs GPT-6 Luna cost?
For the median regular user in our data (1,478 requests in 30 days), about $9.13 on DeepSeek V4.1 Flash and $5.83 on GPT-6 Luna at list price. Heavier users pay proportionally more.
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash vs GPT-6 Luna: which is better for agents?
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash scores higher on output quality (8.8/10 vs 8.7/10), while GPT-6 Luna is the cheaper option. DeepSeek V4.1 Flash is best for cheap, high-volume open-weight agent work; GPT-6 Luna is best for cheap, fast subtasks, routing and subagents in OpenAI-based stacks. Live community votes on this page show what people actually prefer.
Can I switch between DeepSeek V4.1 Flash and GPT-6 Luna in the same agent?
Yes. Model-agnostic agents (Cline, Aider, OpenClaw, Hermes Agent, Kilo Code, OpenCode, Continue) let you swap models per task — many people route hard tasks to the stronger model and routine work to the cheaper one.

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

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