Model comparison
DeepSeek V4 Flash vs Gemini 3.8 Flash
DeepSeek against Google, compared on context, price, and verified benchmark results.
Catalog record checked September 3, 2026Individual provider fields may changeEvidence confidence: High — see receipts below
DeepSeek
DeepSeek V4 Flash
Balanced · Open weights
Gemini 3.8 Flash
Balanced
| Specification | DeepSeek V4 Flash | Gemini 3.8 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | DeepSeek | |
| Tier | Balanced | Balanced |
| Context window | 1M | Winner: 1.05M |
| Max output | Winner: 384K | 66K |
| Input / 1M tokens | Winner: $0.44 | $0.75 |
| Output / 1M tokens | Winner: $1.32 | $3.75 |
| Weights | Open | Closed |
| Parameters | 284B total / 13B active (MoE) | Not disclosedUnverified |
| Reasoning levels | low, high, max | low, medium, high |
| Modalities | text | text, image, video, audio, pdf |
| License | MIT | Not disclosedUnverified |
| API model id | deepseek-v4-flash | gemini-3.8-flash |
| Released | April 24, 2026 | September 2, 2026 |
| Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (2026-08-14) | 49 | Not verifiedUnverified |
| Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index [high] (2026-09-02) | Not verifiedUnverified | 58.7 |
| SWE-bench Verified (2026-04-24) | 79 | Not verifiedUnverified |
| GPQA Diamond (2026-04-24) | 88.1 | Not verifiedUnverified |
| Humanity's Last Exam (2026-04-24) | 45.1 | Winner: 54.9 |
| MMLU-Pro (2026-04-24) | 86.2 | Not verifiedUnverified |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (2026-09-02) | Not verifiedUnverified | 89.4 |
Prices are USD per million tokens at standard rates, excluding batch and caching discounts. Bold indicates the better figure where one is objectively better. Values we could not confirm from the provider are shown as “Not verified” rather than estimated.
Benchmark receipts
- 2026-09-02: Google official blog (vendor, HLE-Verified full set)Frontier-knowledge ceiling: extremely hard multi-domain questions written to be near-impossible without deep expertise. Comparability: comparable with caveat — Subset/tool configurations (text-only vs with-tools) differ between vendors and materially change scores; must match configuration to compare.
- 2026-09-02: Google launch eval table (transcribed by Vellum)Agentic terminal work: multi-step tasks executed in a sandboxed shell environment. Comparability: comparable with caveat — Scores across Terminal-Bench major versions (v1 vs v2) are NOT comparable; harness configuration (container, time limits) also shifts results.
- 2026-09-02: Artificial AnalysisComposite index blending reasoning, knowledge, and coding evals into one 0–100 score. Comparability: directly comparable — AA occasionally rebaselines the index scale between snapshots — a score captured on one date is only comparable to same-snapshot scores (check measuredAt).
- 2026-04-24: DeepSeek family HF model card (vendor, Think Max, exact match)Real GitHub issue resolution: does the model's patch pass the hidden tests. Comparability: comparable with caveat — Post-audit vendor claims and pre-audit scores sit on different task trust levels; scaffolding (agent harness, compute budget) also dominates results. Never aggregate across scaffolds.
Pricing tiers: DeepSeek V4 Flash: Official peak rates $0.44/$1.32 per MTok; off-peak $0.22/$0.66 (cache hit $0.014). Open weights (MIT). 284B/13B active MoE. · Gemini 3.8 Flash: Intro $0.75/$3.75 per MTok through 2026-12-31, rising to $1.50/$7.50 from 2027-01-01; batch/Flex half price. Free tier available. Companion Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber (defensive security) is restricted to the Fairwind Program with no public pricing.
DeepSeek V4 Flash
DeepSeek V4 Flash is the efficient open-weight (MIT) sibling of V4 Pro with a 1M-token context.
Best for
- Open-weight deployments
- Cost-sensitive inference
- High-volume serving
Watch out
Peak/off-peak billing means the hour you run matters; off-peak is half price.
Gemini 3.8 Flash
Gemini 3.8 Flash is Google's most-intelligent workhorse Flash — tied for the top of DeepSWE 1.1 with Claude Opus 5 at roughly a fifth of the cost per task, three Flash releases in six weeks.
Best for
- Agentic coding at scale
- Mid-difficulty engineering
- Multimodal pipelines
Watch out
Intro pricing doubles on 2027-01-01, and Google says it can consume more tokens than 3.7 Flash — 3.7 Flash stays available for efficiency-first workloads.
Benchmark
DeepSWE 1.1 in context
Only Gemini 3.8 Flash has a published DeepSWE 1.1 result. It is shown against the wider field, with cost per completed task alongside the score.
Local leader
Gemini 3.8 Flash [high]
74%
Rows shown
27
Highest published reasoning effort per model (not best Pass@1)
Snapshot date
2026-09-03
Mirrored from deepswe.datacurve.ai
Better is toward the top-right (higher pass rate, lower cost). X-axis is reversed to match DeepSWE’s public chart. v1.1 uses average cost / tokens / steps; v1 uses published medians.
| # | Model | Pass@1 | Cost / task | Tokens / task | Steps / task |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Gemini 3.8 Flash [high] | 74% | $2.36 | 143k | 166 |
| 2 | Claude Opus 5 [max] | 74% | $11.84 | 118k | 99 |
| 3 | GPT-5.6 Sol [max] | 73% | $8.39 | 60k | 61 |
| 4 | Claude Fable 5 [max] | 70% | $21.63 | 119k | 88 |
| 5 | GPT-5.6 Terra [max] | 70% | $4.95 | 72k | 76 |
| 6 | GLM 5.3 [max] | 69% | $3.99 | 80k | 124 |
| 7 | Kimi K3 [max] | 69% | $4.65 | 82k | 98 |
| 8 | GPT-5.6 Luna [max] | 67% | $3.03 | 73k | 102 |
| 9 | GPT-5.5 [xhigh] | 67% | $7.23 | 46k | 82 |
| 10 | Grok 4.6 [xhigh] | 67% | $5.50 | 71k | 87 |
| 11 | Gemini 3.7 Flash [high] | 65% | $2.18 | 107k | 125 |
| 12 | GLM 5.3 Flash [max] | 63% | $0.48 | 73k | 123 |
| 13 | DeepSeek V4-Pro [max] | 63% | $0.24 | 106k | 155 |
| 14 | Claude Opus 4.8 [max] | 59% | $13.22 | 135k | 120 |
| 15 | Qwen3.8-Max [xhigh] | 58% | $3.73 | 95k | 111 |
| 16 | Muse Spark 1.2 [xhigh] | 55% | $3.70 | 99k | 101 |
| 17 | Claude Sonnet 5 [max] | 54% | $26.40 | 214k | 268 |
| 18 | Grok 4.5 [high] | 54% | $2.42 | 36k | 61 |
| 19 | DeepSeek V4-Flash [max] | 53% | $0.10 | 108k | 153 |
| 20 | Muse Spark 1.1 [xhigh] | 53% | $2.36 | 74k | 96 |
| 21 | GPT-5.4 [xhigh] | 52% | $5.65 | 71k | 70 |
| 22 | Gemini 3.6 Flash [high] | 47% | $4.42 | 96k | 117 |
| 23 | GLM 5.2 [max] | 44% | $3.92 | 78k | 129 |
| 24 | Gemini 3.5 Flash [high] | 36% | $3.45 | 76k | 105 |
| 25 | Kimi K2.7 Code | 31% | $2.82 | 59k | 149 |
| 26 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 [high] | 30% | $5.52 | 76k | 134 |
| 27 | Gemini 3.1 Pro [high] | 12% | $2.14 | 28k | 76 |
DeepSWE “Best” picks the highest published reasoning effort per model (not the highest pass rate). Small gaps may not be statistically meaningful — confirm on deepswe.datacurve.ai.
When the cheaper one wins
DeepSeek V4 Flash is cheaper on output at $1.32 per million tokens against $3.75 for Gemini 3.8 Flash — about 2.8×. Use the cheaper tier for classification, extraction, summarisation, and any task where the expensive model’s extra score does not change the accepted output. The expensive one only pays if your hardest task actually fails on the cheap tier. These are standard-tier API rates, excluding batch and cache discounts.
Run the model pickerEvidence confidence: High
How strong and complete the evidence behind this comparison is — not a prediction of which model is better.
- Pricing verified on both sides — Input and output rates are verified for both models.
- 4/5 core specs verified on both sides — Not published for at least one side: parameter count.
- 2 shared named benchmarks with differing scores — Measured on: Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, Humanity's Last Exam.
- Verified within the last 90 days — Newest catalog check was 8 days ago.
- Both models carry source citations — Each side has at least two catalog sources on record.
Source receipts
Each catalog figure was checked against the provider or an independent second source on the date shown.
- DeepSeek V4 Flash: DeepSeek — V4 news (accessed 2026-08-29)
- DeepSeek V4 Flash: DeepSeek API pricing (accessed 2026-08-29)
- Gemini 3.8 Flash: Google — Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber (accessed 2026-09-03)
- Gemini 3.8 Flash: Gemini API pricing (gemini-3.8-flash $0.75/$3.75 intro) (accessed 2026-09-03)
- Gemini 3.8 Flash: DeepSWE 1.1 leaderboard — gemini-3.8-flash [high] 73.8% at $2.36/task (accessed 2026-09-03)
Related comparisons
- Claude Opus 5 vs DeepSeek V4 Flash
- Claude Opus 5 vs Gemini 3.8 Flash
- DeepSeek V4 Flash vs GPT-5.6 Luna
- DeepSeek V4 Flash vs GPT-5.6 Sol
- Gemini 3.8 Flash vs GPT-5.6 Sol
- Amazon Nova 2 Pro vs DeepSeek V4 Flash
Diving deeper on one model? DeepSeek V4 Flash · Gemini 3.8 Flash
Common questions
DeepSeek V4 Flash vs Gemini 3.8 Flash
Answered from the verified figures on this page rather than general guidance.
Is DeepSeek V4 Flash or Gemini 3.8 Flash cheaper for input?
DeepSeek V4 Flash is cheaper at $0.44 per million input tokens, against $0.75 for Gemini 3.8 Flash — roughly 1.7× the price. Output tokens usually dominate a real bill, so weigh the output rate more heavily than the input rate. These are base rates; DeepSeek V4 Flash has tiered pricing: Official peak rates $0.44/$1.32 per MTok; off-peak $0.22/$0.66 (cache hit $0.014). Open weights (MIT). 284B/13B active MoE. Gemini 3.8 Flash has tiered pricing: Intro $0.75/$3.75 per MTok through 2026-12-31, rising to $1.50/$7.50 from 2027-01-01; batch/Flex half price. Free tier available. Companion Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber (defensive security) is restricted to the Fairwind Program with no public pricing.
Is DeepSeek V4 Flash or Gemini 3.8 Flash cheaper for output?
DeepSeek V4 Flash is cheaper at $1.32 per million output tokens, against $3.75 for Gemini 3.8 Flash — roughly 2.8× the price. Output tokens usually dominate a real bill, so weigh the output rate more heavily than the input rate. These are base rates; DeepSeek V4 Flash has tiered pricing: Official peak rates $0.44/$1.32 per MTok; off-peak $0.22/$0.66 (cache hit $0.014). Open weights (MIT). 284B/13B active MoE. Gemini 3.8 Flash has tiered pricing: Intro $0.75/$3.75 per MTok through 2026-12-31, rising to $1.50/$7.50 from 2027-01-01; batch/Flex half price. Free tier available. Companion Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber (defensive security) is restricted to the Fairwind Program with no public pricing.
Which has the larger context window, DeepSeek V4 Flash or Gemini 3.8 Flash?
Gemini 3.8 Flash accepts 1.05M tokens against 1M for DeepSeek V4 Flash. This only matters if you routinely send very long documents or large codebases.
Do DeepSeek V4 Flash and Gemini 3.8 Flash support the same reasoning levels?
DeepSeek V4 Flash exposes low, high, max, while Gemini 3.8 Flash exposes low, medium, high.
Should I use DeepSeek V4 Flash or Gemini 3.8 Flash?
Both sit in the balanced tier, so the choice usually comes down to price and context rather than capability. DeepSeek V4 Flash suits open-weight deployments; Gemini 3.8 Flash suits agentic coding at scale.
Can I self-host DeepSeek V4 Flash or Gemini 3.8 Flash?
DeepSeek V4 Flash publishes open weights, but self-hosting and third-party provider access depend on the licence, hardware, serving support, and availability. Gemini 3.8 Flash is a closed model whose supported access paths are controlled by its provider.
Next step
Choosing between them
The verified figures that separate this pair, computed from the catalog rather than restated boilerplate.
- Input price: DeepSeek V4 Flash costs $0.44 per 1M tokens versus $0.75 for Gemini 3.8 Flash — a 1.7x difference at the headline tier.
- Context: Gemini 3.8 Flash takes 1.05M against 1M for DeepSeek V4 Flash — only decisive if your prompts approach the smaller window.
- Measured capability: Gemini 3.8 Flash leads Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index 58.7 to 49 (measured 2026-08-14).
- Deployment: DeepSeek V4 Flash publishes weights you can self-host; the other is API-only.
Choosing a harness rather than a model — Cursor, Copilot, Claude Code, Windsurf, or Lovable? Compare agentic harnesses · Latest releases.