DeepSeek's new AI model is by far the cheapest of well-known models to run, research firm says
QQQ•Benchmark costs and performance rankings
DeepSeek's V4-Flash charges $0.14 per million input tokens and $0.28 per million output tokens, according to research firm Artificial Analysis. A token is a unit of data used to measure AI usage.
San Francisco-based Artificial Analysis estimated V4-Flash's average cost at 3 cents per test, compared with 86 cents for Kimi K3 from Chinese rival Moonshot AI, $1.86 for OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol and $3.15 for Claude Fable 5.
The comparison provides a more realistic measure of value than pricing alone because it accounts for the amount of data a model must process and generate to complete a task. A model with low headline price can still prove expensive if it requires significantly more steps to produce an answer.
Artificial Analysis said DeepSeek's V4-Flash model scored 50 out of 100 on its Intelligence Index, which combines results from nine benchmarks spanning coding, reasoning and workplace-style assignments.
