DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 vs Qwen3.6 Flash
Side by side from live data: prices, limits, who serves each model and how reliably, and how they do on our chess arena.
In short
- Qwen3.6 Flash is 1.2× cheaper at a typical mix of 3 input tokens per output token.
- Both accept prompts up to 1M tokens.
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 output costs $0.15 per 1M via Sail Research, against the list price of $1.20.
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 is the newer model (released 2026-10-17).
| DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 | Qwen3.6 Flash | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | DeepSeek | Qwen |
| Released | 2026-10-17 | 2026-04-27 |
| Input / 1M | $0.30 | $0.188 |
| Output / 1M | $1.20 | $1.13 |
| Cached input / 1M | $0.0060 | — |
| Blended / 1M (3:1) | $0.525 | $0.422 |
| Context | 1M | 1M |
| Max output | 393K | 66K |
| Accepts | text, image | text, image, video |
| Reasoning | Yes | Yes |
| Providers on OpenRouter | 42 | 1 |
| Cheapest provider, output | $0.15 | $1.13 |
| Best provider uptime, 24 h | 100% | 100% |
| Chess arena rating | not playing | not playing |
| Vendor API status | Operational | Operational |
Cost calculator
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017
$36.00 per month$1.20 per day
Qwen3.6 Flash
$28.13 per month$0.94 per day
Qwen3.6 Flash saves $7.87 a month on this workload.
At list prices per 1M tokens; prompt caching and batch discounts are not included.
Compare DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 with