The timing looks like they are trying to take the wind out of Qwen's sails by releasing this on the same day that Qwen released the weights of Qwen3.8-max. Or maybe it's coincidence...
For comparison I looked at Qwen's claimed benchmarks for Qwen3.8-max (https://qwen.ai/blog?id=qwen3.8). Assuming each published set of benchmarks is believable, it looks like v4 Pro 0813 is better on average but overall performance is comparable. Pro 0813 is much cheaper. If you don't need vision capabilities then you don't have much reason to use Qwen3.8-max.
- 43.6 on HLE (Presumably without tools). Pro 0813 is a little worse.
- 86.6 on Terminal Bench 2.1. Pro 0813 is better.
- 55.9 on NL2Repo. Pro 0813 is better.
- 27 on Agent's Last Exam. Pro 0813 is a little worse.
- 72.5 on Toolathon-Verified. Pro 0813 is better.
- 56.6 on DeepSWE 1.1. If the DeepSWE listed for Pro 0813 is the same version, then Pro is better.
- 27.3 on AutomationBench. If the AutomationBench (Public) listed for Pro 0813 is the same, then Pro is better.
I guess we do need to wait to see if the upcoming DS pricing increase is enough to change the value proposition. As it is now, they could double or triple prices and it still would be a better value to use DS. I bet they know that.
By that standard, the release of Grok 4.6 was also timed on the same day.
Given how I think DeepSeek operates... I think they just release it when they feel it's ready, and don't even seem that concerned with what other people are doing.
Their leaks would confirm this sort of attitude. They're not trying to become the top player or anything like that - just working to play their part in pushing LLM tech forward and going from there. It was quite refreshing from the 'here's how we're going to dominate the world' nonsense. It's undoubtedly the same attitude that just lets them shrug and cancel the fund raising round after the leaks came from said funding round.
Benefits of having a well performing hedge fund funding DeepSeek.
IIRC, Demis attempted to start a fund inside DeepMind but it was killed off. In an alternative world where he manages to pull that off, perhaps DeepMind would still be independent with Demis at the helm.
It still matters as a point of comparison until other providers come online. If the consensus price from other providers is much different that can be compared then. But for now we have $0.435 / $0.87 for v4 Pro 0813 (with increase announced but we don't know the new pricing), and $2 / $6 for Qwen3.8-max. So until we get other data points that is what we have to look at.
Maybe it's me but I don't see how DS Flash is better than GLM at all, much less by a huge gap. I'd probably protest less against Fable and Opus being put at the same level than many would, but there's no denying the two models are a very different experience from each other. I guess where I'm going is no one should pick a model by the benchmarks.
DSV4Pro vs Fable5
HLE w tools 60.0 vs 63.0
Terminal Bench 2.1 87.9 vs 88.0
Cybergym 83.3 vs 83.1
DeepSWE 62.7 vs 70.0
Toolathlon-Verified 74.1 vs 77.9
AutomationBench (Public) 31.8 vs 29.1
DSBench-FullStack 71.1 vs 77.2
DSBench-Hard 67.2 vs 68.3
We have a first-party figure from the system card [1]:
> Mythos 5 reproduced 83.8% of targeted vulnerabilities on a single try, and produced at
least one crash in 99.4% of tasks. This is comparable to Claude Mythos Preview, which
reproduced 83.1% of targeted vulnerabilities and produced a crash in 97.1% of tasks. By
contrast, Claude Opus 4.8 achieved a score of 78.1% (95.7% any crash).
So their quoted figure exactly matches the figure for Mythos Preview, although they don't state the provenance. It could also quite possibly be an independent measurement of Opus 5.
I don't think so. I specifically kept this PR to test model capabilities, and I've already tested a bunch of models. Current test results show that the more advanced the model is, the easier it passes. For example, GPT-5.5 Medium fails the test(has bug), but High passed.
If that wasn't impressive enough, it's actually ~60x cheaper if you take into account the typical cache-read/input/output split in agentic coding, and the deep discount for cache reads offered by DeepSeek. Opencode has some public data on the typical split [1]:
For DeepSeek V4 Pro the typical split is 750 in, 290 out, 82k cached.
Cost per request for V4 Pro: $0.000875 per request.
Equivalent Opus cost (w/o taking into account cache write costs): $0.052 per request.
I've found Pro to be a lot better per "task" than the recently released Flash for code reviews and things (via OpenRouter running in pi.dev).
Flash makes a lot more initial mistakes, and then has to re-check stuff, and produces much more output compared to Pro. It often gets to the correct result eventually, but the output volume is often 5x more than for Pro, and the initial outputs are often wrong, with the first few saying something wrong (like there's a bug, or the code won't compile when it does), and then saying things like "Wait, let me re-check:", or "Actually, looking at it more carefully:" and then it thinks a bit more and eventually gets to the right answer.
So not worth it over flash? Even at ~7x the size it isn't worth the price hike. Flash may be a monster of a model due to all the RL it received from free usage everywhere.
I haven't tried DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813 yet. Recent experience tells me that larger models are worth it in non-obvious ways. MiMo-V2.5-Pro solved problems that DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 couldn't solve for me: for example, adding a live counter for elided reasoning lines to a terminal-based coding harness. You wouldn't be able to tell from the scores on their respective Artifical Analysis page (https://artificialanalysis.ai/models/mimo-v2-5-pro, https://artificialanalysis.ai/models/deepseek-v4-flash). I like the DeepSeek V4 models, though. They critiqued my engineering decisions better than MiMo, and they seem to have a distinct aesthetic in the SVGs they write.
Interesting - I've been dropping into MiMo-V2.5-Pro-UltraSpeed whenever Flash seems to be "stuck" and it usually figures it out. I use UltraSpeed just because I'm so frustrated by then that I'm impatient.
I still find 5.6-Sol can solve some things neither of those can, but it's so slow (and it's so hard to trace / debug the reasoning) that I just let it run overnight.
What about 5.6 Terra and especially Luna? Luna scores pretty high on benchmarks and seems to have different habits (like a denser pattern of tool use) and blind spots.
I'm trying out a development workflow where I generate mundane code with MiMo and Luna (and soon V4 Pro 0813?) and have Opus 5, which is running on only a Pro subscription, review and refactor it. I'm not sure it will justify the context switching, but it's an interesting exercise.
Yea that's what I was thinking.
Flash is nuts. I find I have to be a more precise and specific with it but damn. It's crossed a threshold of production grade coding for sure.
I was running a session over a couple days and it didnt cross a dollar lol.
I've been using the last Deepseek Flash update for a week and I'm amazed. It was a capable model for easy tasks but now it looks like it can do some heavy development for peanuts.
IME I can't trust it to write it's own plans from a spec, but if I give it a detailed execution plan written by Opus, it's fast and cheap (if chatty) in executing it.
Currently burning money quickly on official deepseek api. They are also increasing pricing starting today. V4 Flash 0731 still feels like the most outstanding model of the past few months and probably to come.
Deepseek seems to have gotten too cheap. I have been using it for a long time and it's at a point now where my credits balance barely moves even at max setting.
i'm doing opencode <-> openrouter <-> official deepseek api (i don't get the opencode hate, i like it)
how are you doing it?
am also using Kimi K3 via kimi-code
and also GLM 5.2 via ZCode
happy with all three, they're trailing frontier but i figure if i'm running GNU/Linux then i ought to favour open weights models with my €s -- reduced my usage of claude/gpt to the ~$20 tier just to keep abreast of claude_code/codex developments
It appears that the only available endpoint (as of this writing) requires enabling "Allow paid endpoints that train on request data" in the OpenRouter privacy settings. I hope additional paid providers will become available that don't require training on data.
What I care about is whether the model is capable of the tasks I give it at the lowest cost. Right now I'm using Kimi-K3/GLM-5.2/Minimax. Sonnet is great but I burn through the tokens too fast. Opus 5 set to max is amazing and more intelligent than all of us. .998 of the time I don't need that kind of intelligence. I just need the job done.
How do you define intelligence? I encounter that kind of sentiment all too often, and I have to assume we go by wildly different understanding of what that might entail.
If you read Opus 5's output, it is beyond the comprehension of virtually all engineers and developers. That is what I mean by intelligence. Math, science, and engineering are all contained in one model. We may be experts in one field. The model is an expert in everything that humans know.
I find it interesting how much adoption seems to be influenced by momentum. Some of these Chinese models are surprisingly capable, but developers often default to the models that are already established as the “industry standard
Well things may change soon. I've been testing Coding fulltime with Deepseek Flash this week to evaluate an eventual shift for the whole company away from anthropic. It has been quite positive and I can't wait to try pro tomorrow. If our data has to be used by either US or China, we might as well go the cheaper and unwalled garden. If only it supported image input ...
Well, one reason is that we always have to work with the quirks of each model. So, a know model is often preferred over a new/unknown one because we have to be vigilant again. (Negative) surprises are mentally exhausting in the long run.
IMO, you can work much better when you know the model.
In an enterprise setting Chinese models are often discouraged due to political risk. They don't want to need to remove a model that's deeply embedded in their stack. And it's entirely feasible that the US gov bans federal contractors from using them in the next 6 months for example, or that EU AI safety rules effectively ban them too.
Based on what the political climate looks like nowadays it's entirely possible the US bans federal contractors from associating with any company that uses the models themselves, regardless of data provenance or where they are hosted. Or they create AI safety rules that make it impossible to release open source models (for example, making it so that closed-source models can be evaluated with a harness but open-source models need to pass the benchmark with the weights alone, which isn't really possible). Or they just declare Chinese models a security risk like TikTok (claiming that the model would be trained to respect Chinese interests).
It may not be likely but it's definitely possible enough to be something people worry about.
Hacker News is very Bay Area/US tech centric where spending a few hundred a month on AI is just pocket change. The weaker AI models with more questionable data retention policies are popular in developing countries. I think the new Facebook muse model will be similarly popular.
Most of my model usage comes from my work’s model selection (which is now down to just Claude models)
I’ll try out the latest models, but mainly stick with Claude only because I’m most used to its quirks and how to work around them. I imagine this is part of these hyperscalers playbook.
I will say though, I miss Sol model at work. It with Codex was amazing at first-shot understanding. Claude i need to scope out where to look otherwise a large portion of my token budget is eaten up
For comparison I looked at Qwen's claimed benchmarks for Qwen3.8-max (https://qwen.ai/blog?id=qwen3.8). Assuming each published set of benchmarks is believable, it looks like v4 Pro 0813 is better on average but overall performance is comparable. Pro 0813 is much cheaper. If you don't need vision capabilities then you don't have much reason to use Qwen3.8-max.
- 43.6 on HLE (Presumably without tools). Pro 0813 is a little worse.
- 86.6 on Terminal Bench 2.1. Pro 0813 is better.
- 55.9 on NL2Repo. Pro 0813 is better.
- 27 on Agent's Last Exam. Pro 0813 is a little worse.
- 72.5 on Toolathon-Verified. Pro 0813 is better.
- 56.6 on DeepSWE 1.1. If the DeepSWE listed for Pro 0813 is the same version, then Pro is better.
- 27.3 on AutomationBench. If the AutomationBench (Public) listed for Pro 0813 is the same, then Pro is better.
I guess we do need to wait to see if the upcoming DS pricing increase is enough to change the value proposition. As it is now, they could double or triple prices and it still would be a better value to use DS. I bet they know that.
Given how I think DeepSeek operates... I think they just release it when they feel it's ready, and don't even seem that concerned with what other people are doing.
Kind of interesting, when compared to the hubris from American frontier labs.
One Man’s “hubris” is another man’s “marketing campaign.”
Drama sells.
IIRC, Demis attempted to start a fund inside DeepMind but it was killed off. In an alternative world where he manages to pull that off, perhaps DeepMind would still be independent with Demis at the helm.
That, and the fact that DS is an insanely capable model.
* GPT-5.6 Sol: 65.5
* Fable 5 (w/ fallback): 64.5
* Opus 5: 64.0
* DS-V4-Pro 0813: 62.5
* Kimi-K3: 62.3
* DS-V4-Flash 0731: 55.8
* GLM-5.2: 47.3
> Mythos 5 reproduced 83.8% of targeted vulnerabilities on a single try, and produced at least one crash in 99.4% of tasks. This is comparable to Claude Mythos Preview, which reproduced 83.1% of targeted vulnerabilities and produced a crash in 97.1% of tasks. By contrast, Claude Opus 4.8 achieved a score of 78.1% (95.7% any crash).
So their quoted figure exactly matches the figure for Mythos Preview, although they don't state the provenance. It could also quite possibly be an independent measurement of Opus 5.
[1]: https://www-cdn.anthropic.com/57a52ea7d8f0e54e8a542e90826608...
Deepseek 4 pro: Worked for 12m 02s - cost $0.12 - has bug.
Grok 4.6: Worked for 3m 18s - cost $ 1.41 - no bug.
BTW, why grok 4.6 news being down voted and disappeared from frontpage?
Competitive with opus 4.8 but weaker than sol or fable. About 20x cheaper.
For DeepSeek V4 Pro the typical split is 750 in, 290 out, 82k cached.
Cost per request for V4 Pro: $0.000875 per request.
Equivalent Opus cost (w/o taking into account cache write costs): $0.052 per request.
[1] https://opencode.ai/docs/go/#usage-limits
I keep track of my token consumption even on subscription plans and my equiv. cost for my 5.6-Sol usage is around $4000-$8000 a month.
Flash makes a lot more initial mistakes, and then has to re-check stuff, and produces much more output compared to Pro. It often gets to the correct result eventually, but the output volume is often 5x more than for Pro, and the initial outputs are often wrong, with the first few saying something wrong (like there's a bug, or the code won't compile when it does), and then saying things like "Wait, let me re-check:", or "Actually, looking at it more carefully:" and then it thinks a bit more and eventually gets to the right answer.
pro plans, flash implements. I am super happy with how flash behaves like that.
I still find 5.6-Sol can solve some things neither of those can, but it's so slow (and it's so hard to trace / debug the reasoning) that I just let it run overnight.
I'm trying out a development workflow where I generate mundane code with MiMo and Luna (and soon V4 Pro 0813?) and have Opus 5, which is running on only a Pro subscription, review and refactor it. I'm not sure it will justify the context switching, but it's an interesting exercise.
I was running a session over a couple days and it didnt cross a dollar lol.
Wasn't worth it.
I can't wait to try this new one.
But their privacy policy is unusually bad - they can train off your prompts and completions.
The prices on OpenRouter still look the same.
i'm doing opencode <-> openrouter <-> official deepseek api (i don't get the opencode hate, i like it)
how are you doing it?
am also using Kimi K3 via kimi-code
and also GLM 5.2 via ZCode
happy with all three, they're trailing frontier but i figure if i'm running GNU/Linux then i ought to favour open weights models with my €s -- reduced my usage of claude/gpt to the ~$20 tier just to keep abreast of claude_code/codex developments
edit: there are banner announcements saying v4 flash pricing will increase first then overall by an undetermined amount
[0] https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/deepseek-pl...
No actual price increase however.
My threat model is that anything I POST to DeepSeek I treat as public to the web, as much as a public GitHub repo is.
In 24-48 hours there will be other options I presume
Fully compatible with the well known Antrophic API.
You only have to replace the URL and your key.
It may not be likely but it's definitely possible enough to be something people worry about.
I'm not even sure what "EU AI safety rules" are. Can't people in the EU just use whatever they want?
For funded startups it mostly just doesn’t matter a ton unless you are passing on inference in your product at scale
I’ll try out the latest models, but mainly stick with Claude only because I’m most used to its quirks and how to work around them. I imagine this is part of these hyperscalers playbook.
I will say though, I miss Sol model at work. It with Codex was amazing at first-shot understanding. Claude i need to scope out where to look otherwise a large portion of my token budget is eaten up
As an American, I'd much rather have my data kept outside the country than here where companies and the government have a lot more leverage over me.