DeepSeek updates Flash but keeps the same API name and price
DeepSeek replaced the model behind deepseek-flash on October 17 but kept the same API name and price. The company reports better coding scores and shorter answers.
Verified 12:56 AM PDT · 2 original sources
DeepSeek upgraded its website, app and API to V4.1-Flash-1017 on October 17. The API still uses the deepseek-flash alias at the same price. The company also released the updated weights under the MIT license.
The model card reports a score of 42.3 on Terminal-Bench 4.0, up from 31.2 for the previous version. DeepSeek says the model completes tasks faster and produces shorter answers. The company also opened its search and page-fetching APIs.
DeepSeek supplied the performance and cost claims. HotTea has not reproduced them. Terminal-Bench results can also vary with the benchmark version and the software used to run the test.
The same API name can point to a different model. Teams may get different answers without changing their configuration. Shorter outputs could lower the bill, but only if the model still completes the work.
Run the new version against saved tasks. Compare completed work, retries and total cost. Then watch for independent tests of this revision.
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