Standard Compute
Model Comparison 2026

DeepSeek V4 Flash vs Qwen3 235B A22B

DeepSeek V4 Flash
DeepSeek · Budget · Open weights
$0.18/1M · 1.0M ctx
Qwen3 235B A22B
Alibaba (Qwen) · Budget · Open weights
$0.23/1M · 262K ctx

Community Vote

Pick a winner in each dimension — change your vote anytime. 1 votes cast so far.

Output Quality
Correctness and depth of what it produces
DeepSeek V4 Flash 100%0% Qwen3 235B
Agentic Ability
Tool calls, instruction-following, and multi-step tasks
Speed
Tokens per second and time-to-first-token
Value for $
How much capability you get per dollar
Reliability
Consistent results — fewer refusals, loops, and format breaks

Specs & Pricing, Side by Side

Spec
DeepSeek V4 Flash
Qwen3 235B
Maker
DeepSeek
Alibaba (Qwen)
Blended price / 1M
$0.18
$0.23
Input / output
$0.14 in · $0.28 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
8.2
8.0
Agentic Ability
8.1
8.0
Speed
9.0
8.2
Value for $
10.0
10.0
Reliability
8.9
8.8

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

Verdict: DeepSeek V4 Flash or Qwen3 235B?

Updated 2026-08-02

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

In our editorial scoring, DeepSeek V4 Flash leads in 4 of five dimensions (output quality, agentic ability, speed and reliability), while Qwen3 235B A22B leads in 0. On price, DeepSeek V4 Flash runs about $0.18 per 1M tokens (blended) and is open-weight; Qwen3 235B A22B is about $0.23 and open-weight.

Across 1 community votes on this matchup, DeepSeek V4 Flash currently leads in 1 of five dimensions. Cast your own vote above to move the needle.

Where DeepSeek V4 Flash falls short
  • Not for the hardest tasks
  • Quality below V4 Pro
Full DeepSeek V4 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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