Qwen3.8 Flash vs DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
Qwen3.8 Flash is the better buy: the AIGROW small-business benchmark cannot tell the two apart, and Qwen3.8 Flash has the lower list price. Qwen3.8 Flash passed 19 of 20 tasks and costs $0.15 in and $0.47 out per million tokens; DeepSeek V4.1 Flash passed 18 and costs $0.30 in and $1.20 out.
AIGROW credit covers Claude Opus 5.5, Claude Fable 5.2, Claude Fable 5.1, GPT-6 Astra, Claude Sonnet 5.5, GPT-6.1 Sol, GPT-6.1 Terra, Grok 4.7 and Gemini 4 Argon. See API credit
$25 a month brings $110 of API credit and cancels any time; $25 once buys $100. US dollars, standard rate, shortest context band. Cost per pass from the AIGROW small-business benchmark.
- Qwen3.8 Flash
- $1.09
- Tasks passed
- 19 of 20
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
- $1.05
- Tasks passed
- 18 of 20
AIGROW small-business benchmark, failed runs included.
Chinese budget APIs, with Qwen's list price about half of DeepSeek's peak rate. DeepSeek V4.1 Flash costs $1.05 per 1,000 passing answers on the AIGROW small-business benchmark, Qwen3.8 Flash $1.09. 1,000 support replies cost $1.38 on DeepSeek V4.1 Flash and $0.64 on Qwen3.8 Flash, so DeepSeek V4.1 Flash costs 2.2 times as much.
What each one costs
The API price per million tokens and the cheapest app plan with each model, from the makers’ own pages. Each name opens that model’s full price page.
- Qwen3.8 Flash
- On the Alibaba (Qwen) API, Qwen3.8 Flash costs $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.47 per million output tokens.
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
- On the DeepSeek API, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash costs $0.30 per million input tokens and $1.20 per million output tokens.
Side by side
Each maker’s published rate for its standard tier. Cached input is what a repeated prompt prefix costs once the provider has stored it.
| Fact | Qwen3.8 Flash | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Alibaba (Qwen) | DeepSeek |
| Tier | Small and fast | Small and fast |
| Input, per M tokens | $0.15 | $0.30 |
| Output, per M tokens | $0.47 | $1.20 |
| Cached input | Not published | $0.006 |
| Context window | 1M | 1M |
| Released | Not published | 10 Sep 2026 |
| Weights | Closed weights | Open weights |
What a job costs on each
1,000 runs of each job at the two list prices. The gap moves from job to job because the models price input, output and cached context differently.
| Job | Qwen3.8 Flash | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| Support reply3,000 in, 400 out. | $0.64 | $1.38 | Qwen3.8 Flash, 54% less |
| Document summary25,000 in, 1,000 out. | $4.22 | $8.70 | Qwen3.8 Flash, 51% less |
| Agent task80,000 in (70,000 cached), 3,000 out. | $13.41 | $7.02 | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, 48% less |
The token counts are ours, chosen to look like real work; the prices are the makers’. A model with no published cache price bills the agent task’s repeated context at its full input rate.
The small print
What each base rate leaves out, from the makers’ own pages: surcharges, discounts, promotions and cache pricing.
- Qwen3.8 Flash
- International deployment, one tier up to 1M input tokens. Cache discounts as for Qwen3.8 Max. Context taken from the top pricing tier (1M). Alibaba (Qwen)’s pricing page
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
- Peak-hour rate, recorded as the list price. Off-peak is half: $0.15 / $0.60, cache hit $0.003. API name deepseek-flash, which serves DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-1017 since 2026-10-17 at unchanged prices. Max output 384K. DeepSeek’s pricing page
Other comparisons
Every head to head on the list that involves Qwen3.8 Flash or DeepSeek V4.1 Flash.
Compare Qwen3.8 Flash and DeepSeek V4.1 Flash with 52 other models
The price list sets every model’s input and output price side by side, with what a support reply, a document summary and an agent task cost on each.
Prices checked 12 November 2026