Standard Compute
Model comparison 2026

DeepSeek V4.1 Flash vs Qwen3 235B A22B

DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
DeepSeek · Budget · Open weights
$0.22/1M · 1.0M ctx
Qwen3 235B A22B
Alibaba (Qwen) · Budget · Open weights
$0.23/1M · 262K 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
Qwen3 235B
Maker
DeepSeek
Alibaba (Qwen)
Blended price / 1M
$0.22
$0.23
Input / output
$0.04 in · $0.63 out / 1M tokens
$0.09 in · $0.55 out / 1M tokens
Context window
1.0M
262K
Open weights
Yes
Yes
Tool use
Yes
Yes
Reasoning
Yes
No
Output Quality
8.8
8.0
Agentic Ability
8.8
8.0
Speed
9.4
8.2
Value for money
10.0
10.0
Reliability
8.8
8.8

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

Verdict: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash or Qwen3 235B?

Updated 2026-10-13

Choose DeepSeek V4.1 Flash if you want cheap, high-volume open-weight agent work. Choose Qwen3 235B A22B if you want self-hosted or ultra-cheap open-weight agents.

In our editorial scoring, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash leads in 3 of five dimensions (output quality, agentic ability and speed), while Qwen3 235B A22B leads in 0. On price, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash runs about $0.22 per 1M tokens (blended) and is open-weight; Qwen3 235B A22B is about $0.23 and open-weight.

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 Qwen3 235B falls short
  • Behind frontier models on quality
  • Needs real GPUs to self-host well
Full Qwen3 235B breakdown →

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