Standard Compute
Cost per coding-agent request

Is DeepSeek V4 Pro or Gemini 3.1 Pro cheaper for coding agents?

For coding agents, Gemini 3.1 Pro costs 3.1x as much as DeepSeek V4 Pro per request ($0.095 vs $0.030 on our measured traffic), because Gemini 3.1 Pro lists at $2 input, $0.20 cached input and $12 output per million tokens against $1.32, $0.044 and $3.96 for DeepSeek V4 Pro, and Gemini 3.1 Pro charges more for prompts over 200K tokens.

List prices: DeepSeek API pricing, Gemini 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 priceDeepSeek V4 ProGemini 3.1 Pro
Prompt under 100K tokens50% of requests, 87% of input cached$0.014$0.032
Prompt of 100K to 272K39% of requests, 88% of input cached$0.036$0.11
Prompt over 272K tokens11% of requests, 86% of input cached$0.084$0.34
Average request$0.030$0.095
100 requests$3.04$9.48
Median session16 requests; a session ends after 10 idle minutes$0.41$0.93
A month of regular usemedian of 20 users active on 5+ days$42.42$135

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.

Benchmarks, speed and latency, side by side

Artificial AnalysisDeepSeek V4 ProGemini 3.1 Pro
Intelligence Index10 evaluations, 0 to 1003630
Terminal-Bench 4.0agentic coding in a terminal14.1%4.0%
Output speedmedian99 tokens/s144 tokens/s
Time to first answer tokenincludes thinking time22 s23 s

Source: Artificial Analysis (artificialanalysis.ai). Measured variants: DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813 (Max), speed on DeepSeek; Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview, speed on Google. Fetched October 13, 2026. Artificial Analysis runs Terminal-Bench 4.0 in its own setup, so its scores differ from the tbench.ai leaderboard.

What to watch for

The gap widens on long prompts: under 100K tokens Gemini 3.1 Pro costs 2.2x as much per request, over 272K 4.1x. 87% of agent input is read from cache, and Gemini 3.1 Pro charges $0.20 per million for it against $0.044. DeepSeek figures use its peak-hour rates; the rest of the time it costs half, $1.52 per 100 requests.

FAQ

Is DeepSeek V4 Pro cheaper than Gemini 3.1 Pro for coding agents?
Yes, at list prices. 100 average coding-agent requests cost $3.04 on DeepSeek V4 Pro and $9.48 on Gemini 3.1 Pro. A median 16-request session costs $0.41 vs $0.93. Measured on 79,301 real coding-agent requests (Sep 13 to Oct 12, 2026).
How much does a month of Gemini 3.1 Pro vs DeepSeek V4 Pro cost?
For the median regular user in our data (1,478 requests in 30 days), about $135 on Gemini 3.1 Pro and $42.42 on DeepSeek V4 Pro at list price. Heavier users pay proportionally more.
DeepSeek V4 Pro vs Gemini 3.1 Pro: which is better for agents?
DeepSeek V4 Pro scores higher on output quality (7.2/10 vs 6.4/10), while DeepSeek V4 Pro is the cheaper option. DeepSeek V4 Pro is best for self-hosted setups that want DeepSeek's larger V4 model; Gemini 3.1 Pro is best for long multimodal inputs and Gemini CLI setups that still pin 3.1 Pro. Live community votes on this page show what people actually prefer.
Can I switch between DeepSeek V4 Pro and Gemini 3.1 Pro in the same agent?
Yes. Model-agnostic agents (Cline, Aider, OpenClaw, Hermes Agent, Kilo Code, OpenCode) 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. 5 votes cast so far.

Output Quality

Correctness and depth of what it produces

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Agentic Ability

Tool calls, instruction-following, and multi-step tasks

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Speed

Tokens per second and time-to-first-token

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Value for Money

How much capability you get per dollar

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Reliability

Consistent results: fewer refusals, loops and format breaks

100%1 vote0%

Related comparisons

Setting it up? DeepSeek V4 Pro: model ID, providers and agent config · Gemini 3.1 Pro: model ID, providers and agent config

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