o4-mini vs DeepSeek V4.1-Flash
Benchmarks, API Token Pricing, Context Window & Speed Comparison
Related topics (12)
o4-mini by OpenAI and DeepSeek V4.1-Flash by DeepSeek represent two of the frontier AI models analyzed in our comprehensive 2026 AI benchmark and LLM comparison. In this head-to-head evaluation, we examine API token pricing, context window specifications, inference speed (tokens per second), and empirical reasoning performance. From a pure economic perspective, DeepSeek V4.1-Flash holds a notable pricing advantage for token ingestion. On output generation, DeepSeek V4.1-Flash is more economical per million generated tokens. In data-heavy architectures requiring extensive repository or document analysis, DeepSeek V4.1-Flash provides an expanded memory horizon with 1,000K tokens. In latency-sensitive production environments, DeepSeek V4.1-Flash leads in tokens-per-second throughput, making it ideal for real-time conversational agents and high-concurrency workflows. Below is the complete empirical head-to-head breakdown across cost, speed, context, and capability matrices.
Changez et Comparez les Modèles
Select any AI models from our verified benchmark database to generate live side-by-side matrices.
o4-mini
Raisonneur compact rapideun rapide o-series modèle combining compact raisonnement avec codage et utilisation d'outils.
$1.10 / 1M
$4.40 / 1M
200K tokens
57.5%
DeepSeek V4.1-Flash
Tueur de cache KV763B total / 16B actif causal encoder-decoder MoE avec 1/4 KV-cache usage, natif vision, MIT license, et monde-record faible off-sommet tarification.
$0.30 / 1M
$1.20 / 1M
1M tokens
74.2%
Différences Clés en un Coup d’Œil
- DeepSeek V4.1-Flash is 3.9x cheaper for API usage (input + output tokens combined).
- DeepSeek V4.1-Flash has a larger context window (1M vs 200K tokens).
- DeepSeek V4.1-Flash is faster at 110 tok/s vs 105 tok/s.
- DeepSeek V4.1-Flash leads on SWE-bench coding (74.2% vs 57.5%).
| Caractéristique | o4-mini | DeepSeek V4.1-Flash |
|---|---|---|
Intelligence Index Composite reasoning & knowledge score (0-100) | 50 | 58 |
Provider | OpenAI | DeepSeek |
Input Price Cost per million input tokens | $1.10 / 1M | $0.30 / 1M |
Output Price Cost per million output tokens | $4.40 / 1M | $1.20 / 1M |
Blended Price Weighted 7:2:1 cache:input:output per 1M | $0.85 / 1M | $0.18 / 1M |
Context Window Maximum input + output tokens | 200K tokens~300 A4 pages of text | 1M tokens~1,500 A4 pages of text |
Max Output Tokens Per single request | 100K | 384K |
Throughput Speed Tokens generated per second | 105 tok/s | 110 tok/s |
SWE-bench Verified Real-world software engineering | 57.5% | 74.2% |
GPQA Diamond Graduate-level reasoning | 73% | 90.9% |
Cached Input Price Prompt caching discount per 1M tokens | $0.28 / 1M | $0.01 / 1M |
Qui gagne où ?
At-a-glance decision frameworkScores de Benchmarks Vérifiés
Official evaluation metrics verified by independent third-party research labs.
Industry benchmark evaluating real-world GitHub issue resolution and multi-file debugging.
Challenging questions created by domain experts to test complex PhD-level reasoning.
Hardened reasoning and academic knowledge benchmark with reduced lucky-guess probability.
Crowdsourced human preference evaluation based on blind, head-to-head model battles.
Extremely difficult, closed-ended questions spanning the frontier of human expert knowledge.
Autonomous multi-step tasks executed inside a real command-line terminal environment.
Research-grade coding problems drawn from real scientific and numerical workloads.
Contamination-free competitive programming problems collected continuously over time.
American Invitational Mathematics Examination — multi-step Olympiad-level reasoning.
Accuracy when reasoning over very large inputs that fill the model context window.
Tokens emitted per second during active generation streaming.
Latence et Temps de Réponse
Time to first token (TTFT) and estimated end-to-end response time for a typical 500-token response.
Simulateur Interactif de Coût de Tokens
Adjust sliders to calculate projected monthly cloud API spending with prompt caching discounts.
o4-mini · Strengths & Key Advantages
- Cheap raisonnement avec vision et appel d'outils
- rapide enough pour interactif agent boucles
- solide maths performances pour son prix band
- Excellent maths précision par dollar among o-series modèles
Considerations & Trade-offs
- Clearly weaker que o3 sur difficult multi-étapes problems
- pensée tokens add latence sur hard prompts
DeepSeek V4.1-Flash · Strengths & Key Advantages
- MIT permissive ouvert license avec complet weights, architecture, et code
- Revolutionary causal encoder-decoder architecture: KV cache seulement 890 bytes/token (fonctionne sur commodity NVMe SSDs)
- de monde le plus bas tarification: off-sommet cached entrée à just $0.003/1M et $0.27 coût par benchmark tâche
- Colossal 1M contexte entrée paired avec 384,000 maximum sortie tokens et natif vision
Considerations & Trade-offs
- Extremely verbose génération (averages 8.9K sortie tokens par inquiry sans explicit caps)
- à long terme performances degrades sur Terminal-Bench 4.0 (31.2%)
- Factual knowledge recall dips sur SimpleQA (42.3) et vision résolution est capped à 672x672
Token Use & Task Economics
Estimated cost and token consumption to complete one representative agentic task.
| Metric | o4-mini | DeepSeek V4.1-Flash |
|---|---|---|
Cost per Task Estimated USD to finish one task | $0.72 | $0.27 |
Output Tokens / Task Tokens generated per task | 45K | 58K |
Reasoning Tokens / Task Thinking tokens burned per task | 25K | 28K |
Spécifications Techniques
Architecture, release timeline, capabilities, and modalities.
| Caractéristique | o4-mini | DeepSeek V4.1-Flash |
|---|---|---|
| Official API Model ID (SDK) | o4-mini | deepseek-reasoner |
| API Protocol | OpenAI Responses API & Chat Completions v1 | OpenAI-Compatible REST / vLLM / SGLang / HuggingFace TGI |
| Release Date | 2025-04 | 2026-09 |
| Knowledge Cutoff | June 2024 | June 2026 |
| Architecture | Compact reasoning transformer | Causal Encoder-Decoder (20 enc + 20 dec layers) |
| Parameters | Confidential | 763B total (8B prefill / 16B decode active) |
| Enterprise Rate Limits (RPM / TPM) | 10,000 – 30,000 RPM (Tier 5 Enterprise) · 800,000 – 2,000,000 TPM | Unlimited (Hardware-bound on self-hosted GPU) / 10,000 RPM Cloud · Unlimited local throughput / 10M+ TPM Managed Cloud |
| Long-Context Tier (>128K/200K) | Flat rate ($1.1/1M in) across full 200K window | Flat rate ($0.3/1M in) across full 1000K window |
| Prompt Cache Policy & TTL | Automatic prefix caching at $0.275/1M (no extra cache-write fee) | Automatic prefix caching at $0.006/1M (no extra cache-write fee) |
| Computer Use / GUI Agent | Supported (Screen coordinate grounding, browser & desktop GUI action loops) | API / CLI Tool-Use & DOM Agent ready (no raw pixel desktop click loop) |
| MCP & Parallel Tool Calling | Native MCP Client/Server ready · Parallel function calling · 100% Strict JSON Schema | Native MCP Client/Server ready · Parallel function calling · 100% Strict JSON Schema |
| Web Search Grounding & Sandbox | Native Web Search tool + Hosted Code Interpreter & File Search RAG | Supported via external Tavily/Exa Search & E2B/Docker Sandbox tools |
| Official Fine-Tuning Support | Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT), Direct Preference (DPO) & Reinforcement Fine-Tuning (RFT) | Full Weights SFT, LoRA, QLoRA, DPO & GRPO RL (Unsloth / Axolotl / Llama-Factory) |
| Multimodal Token Billing | Text BPE (~4 chars/token) · Vision (~258–765 tokens per image tile) | Text BPE (~4 chars/token) · Vision (~258–765 tokens per image tile) |
| Quantization & Min GPU VRAM | Cloud-Hosted Proprietary (FP8 / BF16 Tensor Core Cluster) · Zero Local VRAM Required (100% Serverless Cloud API) | BF16 / FP16, FP8 Dynamic, INT4 AWQ / GPTQ, GGUF (Q4_K_M / Q8_0) · 473 GB VRAM (4-bit Quantized) · 1640 GB VRAM (Native BF16) |
| Safety & Frontier Classification | OpenAI Preparedness Framework Audited & System Card Published | Open-Weights System Card + Customizable Guardrail Layer (Llama Guard / ShieldGemma) |
| Enterprise Compliance (ZDR/HIPAA/SOC2) | SOC2 Type II · GDPR · Zero Data Retention (ZDR) & HIPAA BAA Available on Enterprise Tier | 100% Air-Gapped On-Premises / Private VPC · Full HIPAA, GDPR & SOC2 Control |
| Input Modalities | text, vision | text, vision |
| Output Modalities | text | text |
o4-mini vs DeepSeek V4.1-Flash: Réponses Rapides (FAQ)
Which is more intelligent, o4-mini or DeepSeek V4.1-Flash?
DeepSeek V4.1-Flash is more intelligent. It scores 58 compared with 50 on the composite Intelligence Index.
Which model is faster?
DeepSeek V4.1-Flash is faster, generating 110 tokens per second compared with 105 tokens per second.
Which model is cheaper to run?
DeepSeek V4.1-Flash is cheaper at $0.18 per 1M tokens blended, compared with $0.85 (7:2:1 cache:input:output ratio).
Which model has lower latency?
DeepSeek V4.1-Flash has lower latency, with a time to first token of 0.46s compared with 1.80s.
Which model has a larger context window?
DeepSeek V4.1-Flash has a larger context window, supporting 1M tokens compared with 200K tokens.
Verdict
Verdict & Model Selection Recommendation: Choose o4-mini if your priority is Budget reasoning inside agent pipelines and coding assistants. Its performance in demanding tasks justifies its operational token cost. Choose DeepSeek V4.1-Flash if your workflow prioritizes Extreme budget batch processing, self-hosted commodity hardware clusters, and massive long-form reasoning tasks. For large-scale batch processing or customer-facing conversational interfaces, its balance of speed and economics delivers superior ROI.
Questions fréquentes
How does o4-mini compare to DeepSeek V4.1-Flash in API token pricing and cost per token?+
o4-mini costs $1.10 per 1M input tokens and $4.40 per 1M output tokens, whereas DeepSeek V4.1-Flash costs $0.30 input and $1.20 output. Overall, DeepSeek V4.1-Flash is the more cost-effective model for high-volume API pipelines. Both models support prompt caching discounts of up to 90% for repeated prompt prefixes.
Which model has a larger context window: o4-mini or DeepSeek V4.1-Flash?+
o4-mini supports a context window of 200K tokens (~150k words), while DeepSeek V4.1-Flash supports 1,000K tokens (~750k words). Therefore, DeepSeek V4.1-Flash can process more textual data and document context in a single prompt.
Which AI model is better for software engineering and coding: o4-mini or DeepSeek V4.1-Flash?+
o4-mini scores 57.5% on SWE-bench Verified while DeepSeek V4.1-Flash scores 74.2%. For autonomous software engineering and multi-file debugging, DeepSeek V4.1-Flash holds the verified benchmark lead.
What is the difference in reasoning capability and extended thinking between o4-mini and DeepSeek V4.1-Flash?+
o4-mini features native chain-of-thought extended thinking mode with configurable reasoning effort. In contrast, DeepSeek V4.1-Flash provides chain-of-thought reasoning depth for complex math and science.
How does inference speed (tokens per second) compare between o4-mini and DeepSeek V4.1-Flash?+
o4-mini generates approximately 105 tokens per second, while DeepSeek V4.1-Flash delivers 110 tokens per second. In latency-sensitive production environments, DeepSeek V4.1-Flash provides faster time-to-first-token (TTFT) and higher streaming response velocity.
Can you implement a tiered LLM routing setup combining o4-mini and DeepSeek V4.1-Flash to optimize costs?+
Yes! High-efficiency architectures route high-frequency routine classification and conversational tasks to DeepSeek V4.1-Flash to save operational costs, and dynamically escalate complex architectural queries or reasoning tasks to o4-mini. This tiered routing pattern cuts overall API bills by up to 70%.
Understand key metrics like context window, token pricing, reasoning mode, and SWE-bench scores in our comprehensive AI glossary.
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Les scores de benchmarks, tarifs par token et limites évoluent rapidement. Vérifiez toujours les spécifications actuelles sur la documentation officielle du fournisseur.
Sources: GetInfoUs Independent AI Benchmarks & Official API Specs