DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 vs Thinking Machines Inkling Small
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
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 is 2.4× cheaper at a typical mix of 3 input tokens per output token.
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 accepts longer prompts: 1M vs 524K tokens.
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 output costs $0.15 per 1M via Sail Research, against the list price of $0.60.
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 is the newer model (released 2026-10-17).
| DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 | Inkling Small | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | DeepSeek | Thinking Machines |
| Released | 2026-10-17 | 2026-07-30 |
| Input / 1M | $0.15 | $0.45 |
| Output / 1M | $0.60 | $1.20 |
| Cached input / 1M | $0.0030 | $0.10 |
| Blended / 1M (3:1) | $0.262 | $0.637 |
| Context | 1M | 524K |
| Max output | 393K | 262K |
| Accepts | text, image | text, image, audio |
| Reasoning | Yes | Yes |
| Providers on OpenRouter | 41 | 1 |
| Cheapest provider, output | $0.15 | $1.20 |
| Best provider uptime, 24 h | 100% | 100% |
| Chess arena rating | not playing | not playing |
| Vendor API status | Operational | — |
Cost calculator
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017
$18.00 per month$0.60 per day
Inkling Small
$45.00 per month$1.50 per day
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 saves $27.00 a month on this workload.
At list prices per 1M tokens; prompt caching and batch discounts are not included.
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