Qwen3.8 27B vs DeepSeek V4-Flash
Qwen3.8 27B is from Alibaba, released August 17, 2026. DeepSeek V4-Flash is from DeepSeek, released July 31, 2026.
- LMArena Elo1438 vs 1436. Qwen3.8 27B is 0.1% ahead on LMArena Elo.
- Input per 1M$0.50 vs $0.15. DeepSeek V4-Flash costs 70% less per million input tokens.
- Output per 1M$3 vs $0.60. DeepSeek V4-Flash costs 80% less per million output tokens.
- Context window1M vs 1M. Both hold 1M tokens of context.
Prices are the vendors’ published API rates; Elo is LMArena’s text board. Each figure is dated on its model page.
Interactive Comparison
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$0.50 / $3 per million tokens | $0.15 / $0.60 per million tokens | |
|---|---|---|
| Identity | ||
| Developer | Alibaba | DeepSeek |
| Released | Aug 2026 | Jul 2026 |
| Retired | — | 10 September 2026 |
| Status | — | Retired. DeepSeek retired V4-Flash on 2026-09-10; requests to deepseek-v4-flash are now served by DeepSeek V4.1-Flash, which has its own page. The figures below are V4.1-Flash's (off-peak), recorded here before that page existed. |
| Licence | Apache 2.0 | MIT |
| Self-hostable | Yes | Yes - open weights on Hugging Face |
| Cost | ||
| Blended $/1M tokensinput × 0.75 + output × 0.25 | $1.125 / 1M tokens | $0.262 / 1M tokens |
| Input price | $0.500 / 1M tokens | $0.150 / 1M tokens |
| Output price | $3.000 / 1M tokens | $0.600 / 1M tokens |
| Cached input | — | $0.014 / 1M tokens (peak); $0.007 off-peak |
| Batch discount | — | Off-peak billing: 50% off all rates outside 01:00-04:00 and 06:00-10:00 UTC |
| Free tier | — | Not offered |
| Capacity | ||
| Context window | 1M tokens | 1M tokens |
| Max output | — | 384k tokens |
| Long-context surcharge | — | None — flat rate across the 1M window |
| Capability | ||
| Vision in | Yes | No |
| Audio in | — | No |
| Function calling | — | Yes |
| Structured output | — | Yes — JSON output |
| Extended reasoning | — | Yes — thinking (default) and non-thinking modes |
| Web search | — | No |
| Code execution | — | No |
| Access | ||
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Chat app | — | Yes |
| Cloud marketplaces | — | Not offered |
| Fine-tuning | — | Not offered |
| Measured quality | ||
| LMArena Elo | 1438 (checked Oct 2026) | 1436 (checked Oct 2026) |
| LMArena rank | Rank 100 | Rank 104 |
| Elo per dollarLMArena Elo ÷ blended $/1M tokens | 1278 | 5470 |
