DeepSeek V4.1 Flash vs Qwen3.5-9B

Pick up to 3 models · pricing, context and capabilities · simulate your product cost

Data updated on September 30, 2026· 217 models

DeepSeekV4.1 Flash

DeepSeek V4.1 Flash is a sparse mixture-of-experts model from DeepSeek, and the first built on the company's Causal Encoder-Decoder (CED) architecture.

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Reasoning estimated
Speed estimated
Input
Output
Context
▲1 M tokens
Max output
▲944 K
Input, $ per 1M tokens
$0.300
Output, $ per 1M tokens
$1.20
Cache read, $ per 1M
$0.006
Batch (input / output)
$0.112 / $0.336
Tool calling
Yes
Released
▲09/10/2026
Knowledge cutoff
2025-05
API id
deepseek/deepseek-v4.1-flash
QwenQwen3.5-9B

Qwen3.5-9B is a multimodal foundation model from the Qwen3.5 family, designed to deliver strong reasoning, coding, and visual understanding in an efficient 9B-parameter architecture.

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Reasoning estimated
Speed estimated
Input
Output
Context
262 K tokens
Max output
33 K
Input, $ per 1M tokens
▲$0.100
Output, $ per 1M tokens
▲$0.150
Cache read, $ per 1M
—
Batch (input / output)
—
Tool calling
Yes
Released
02/23/2026
Knowledge cutoff
—
API id
qwen/qwen3.5-9b
Third model (optional)
text image audio video PDF / file reasoning (1 to 5, estimated by family) speed (1 to 4, estimated by family)▲ best value among the selected

Which is the better API choice: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash vs Qwen3.5-9B?

  • Qwen3.5-9B: cheapest input (67% less than DeepSeek V4.1 Flash)
  • Qwen3.5-9B: cheapest output
  • DeepSeek V4.1 Flash: largest context (1 M)
  • DeepSeek V4.1 Flash: the newest (09/10/2026)

Qwen3.5-9B costs 67% less on input and 88% less on output than DeepSeek V4.1 Flash ($0.100 / $0.150 versus $0.300 / $1.20 per million tokens). DeepSeek V4.1 Flash accepts more context (1 M). DeepSeek V4.1 Flash offers a batch tier at half price for jobs that do not need an immediate answer.

What would your product cost?

Estimate the monthly cost with your app's real volume. List prices, no cache or batch discounts.

DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
$9.30/mo
Qwen3.5-9B
$2.10/mo

With Qwen3.5-9B you save $7.20 a month versus DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (77% less).

The 6 cheapest for this scenario (chat, last 12 months)

  1. 1Lyria 3 Pro Preview Google$0.00
  2. 2Lyria 3 Clip Preview Google$0.00
  3. 3Qwen3.7 Flash Qwen$0.97
  4. 4DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 DeepSeek$1.55
  5. 5Ministral 3 3B 2512 Mistral$1.90
  6. 6Qwen3.5-Flash Qwen$2.02

Paste your prompt: tokens and cost per model

Rough estimate (about 4 characters per token). Nothing is sent to any server.

76tokens approx.287 characters

Cost of sending it 1,000 times (input only)

  1. 1Qwen3.5-9B Qwen$0.008
  2. 2DeepSeek V4.1 Flash DeepSeek$0.023
  3. 3Claude Sonnet 5.5 Anthropic$0.152
  4. 4Claude Sonnet 5 Anthropic$0.152
  5. 5Claude Opus 5.5 Anthropic$0.304
  6. 6Claude Opus 5 Anthropic$0.380
  7. 7Claude Fable 5.1 Anthropic$0.760
  8. 8Claude Fable 5 Anthropic$0.760

Popular comparisons

Frequently asked questions

Which is the better API choice: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash vs Qwen3.5-9B?

Qwen3.5-9B costs 67% less on input and 88% less on output than DeepSeek V4.1 Flash ($0.100 / $0.150 versus $0.300 / $1.20 per million tokens). DeepSeek V4.1 Flash accepts more context (1 M). DeepSeek V4.1 Flash offers a batch tier at half price for jobs that do not need an immediate answer.

Which is cheaper: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash and Qwen3.5-9B?

Qwen3.5-9B is cheaper: $0.100 per million input tokens and $0.150 per million output tokens, versus $0.300 / $1.20 for DeepSeek V4.1 Flash.

Which has more context: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash and Qwen3.5-9B?

DeepSeek V4.1 Flash accepts 1 M tokens of context; Qwen3.5-9B accepts 262 K.

Which is newer: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash and Qwen3.5-9B?

DeepSeek V4.1 Flash was released on 09/10/2026; Qwen3.5-9B on 02/23/2026.

What would 10,000 requests a month cost with DeepSeek V4.1 Flash and Qwen3.5-9B?

With 1,500 input and 400 output tokens per request: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash: $9.30; Qwen3.5-9B: $2.10 a month, at list price.

Where do the prices come from and how often are they updated?

From the public catalogs of OpenRouter, models.dev and LiteLLM, which publish each provider's list prices. They sync once a day and the last update date is shown above the comparison.

What does price per million tokens mean?

It is what the provider charges per million tokens you send (input) or the model generates (output). A token is roughly 4 characters. Output almost always costs more than input.

Sources: OpenRouter, models.dev and LiteLLM. Prices in USD per million tokens, list price, no volume discounts. Prompt tokens are an estimate; each provider's tokenizer may differ.