In short
How they differ.
Worked out from the figures below. Prices and specs are the makers' own, read Oct 20, 2026.
- DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-1017 is cheaper per output token: $1.20 against $6 per million tokens, so Qwen3.8-Max costs 5 times as much.
- DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-1017 can be downloaded and run on your own machine; Qwen3.8-Max can't.
- On the 1 independent board that rank both, Qwen3.8-Max places higher on 1 and DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-1017 on 0.
Side by side
The specs.
| DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-1017 | Qwen3.8-Max | |
|---|---|---|
| Made by | DeepSeek · China | Alibaba (Qwen) · China |
| Released | Oct 17, 2026 | Sep 2, 2026 |
| Price per 1M tokens | $0.30 in / $1.20 out (peak-hours price) | $2 in / $6 out |
| Context window | 1M | 1M |
| Takes in | text, image | text, image, video |
| Download and run it yourself | Yes (MIT) | No |
| Size | 552B backbone parameters parameters, 8B per token during prefill, 16B during decode active | 2.4T (MoE) parameters, 95B active |
| Maker says | “Stronger benchmark performance, faster task completion, and shorter outputs than the previous version.” | “A 2.4-trillion-parameter MoE flagship with a major leap in coding and office productivity” |
| Sources | Prices, Oct 20, 2026 · Description | Prices, Oct 11, 2026 · Description |
Independent tests
Where they place.
Position on each board we follow (1 is best). Epoch AI's and Vectara's scores are shown; the other boards are linked for their own figures.
| Board | DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-1017 | Qwen3.8-Max |
|---|---|---|
| Epoch Capabilities IndexEpoch AI, Oct 20, 2026 | Not listed | #20156.88 |
| LMArena creative writingLMArena, Oct 15, 2026 | Not listed | #19 |
| LMArena WebDevLMArena, Oct 19, 2026 | Not listed | #11 |
| LMArena mathLMArena, Oct 15, 2026 | Not listed | #18 |
| LMArena visionLMArena, Oct 19, 2026 | Not listed | #2 |
| Vals IndexVals AI, Oct 19, 2026 | #8 | Not listed |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0Vals AI, Oct 19, 2026 | #17 | #16 |
| Vibe Code BenchVals AI, Oct 18, 2026 | #11 | Not listed |
| GPQA Diamond (run by Vals AI, archived)Vals AI, Sep 1, 2026 | Not listed | #6 |
| MMMU Pro (run by Vals AI, archived)Vals AI, Sep 1, 2026 | Not listed | #12 |
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