DeepSeek V4.1 Flash vs Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct
Pick up to 3 models · pricing, context and capabilities · simulate your product cost
Data updated on September 30, 2026· 217 models
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.
- 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
Qwen3-VL-8B-Instruct is a multimodal vision-language model from the Qwen3-VL series, built for high-fidelity understanding and reasoning across text, images, and video.
- Reasoning estimated
- Speed estimated
- Input
- Output
- Context
- 262 K tokens
- Max output
- 33 K
- Input, $ per 1M tokens
- ▲$0.117
- Output, $ per 1M tokens
- ▲$0.455
- Cache read, $ per 1M
- —
- Batch (input / output)
- —
- Tool calling
- Yes
- Released
- 10/14/2025
- Knowledge cutoff
- —
- API id
- qwen/qwen3-vl-8b-instruct
Which is the better API choice: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash vs Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct?
- Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct: cheapest input (61% less than DeepSeek V4.1 Flash)
- Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct: cheapest output
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash: largest context (1 M)
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash: the newest (09/10/2026)
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash: most reasoning (estimated)
Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct costs 61% less on input and 62% less on output than DeepSeek V4.1 Flash ($0.117 / $0.455 versus $0.300 / $1.20 per million tokens). DeepSeek V4.1 Flash accepts more context (1 M). On capabilities, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash has a reasoning mode. 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.
With Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct you save $5.73 a month versus DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (62% less).
The 6 cheapest for this scenario (chat, last 12 months)
- 1Lyria 3 Pro Preview Google$0.00
- 2Lyria 3 Clip Preview Google$0.00
- 3Qwen3.7 Flash Qwen$0.97
- 4DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 DeepSeek$1.55
- 5Ministral 3 3B 2512 Mistral$1.90
- 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.
Cost of sending it 1,000 times (input only)
- 1Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct Qwen$0.009
- 2DeepSeek V4.1 Flash DeepSeek$0.023
- 3Claude Sonnet 5.5 Anthropic$0.152
- 4Claude Sonnet 5 Anthropic$0.152
- 5Claude Opus 5.5 Anthropic$0.304
- 6Claude Opus 5 Anthropic$0.380
- 7Claude Fable 5.1 Anthropic$0.760
- 8Claude Fable 5 Anthropic$0.760
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- Gemini 3.8 Flash vs Grok 4.7
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash vs Grok 4.7
Frequently asked questions
Which is the better API choice: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash vs Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct?
Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct costs 61% less on input and 62% less on output than DeepSeek V4.1 Flash ($0.117 / $0.455 versus $0.300 / $1.20 per million tokens). DeepSeek V4.1 Flash accepts more context (1 M). On capabilities, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash has a reasoning mode. 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 VL 8B Instruct?
Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct is cheaper: $0.117 per million input tokens and $0.455 per million output tokens, versus $0.300 / $1.20 for DeepSeek V4.1 Flash.
Which has more context: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash and Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct?
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash accepts 1 M tokens of context; Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct accepts 262 K.
Which is newer: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash and Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct?
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash was released on 09/10/2026; Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct on 10/14/2025.
What would 10,000 requests a month cost with DeepSeek V4.1 Flash and Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct?
With 1,500 input and 400 output tokens per request: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash: $9.30; Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct: $3.58 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.