Neither wins outright: DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 is the pick when you need to fit long inputs in one request, inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL when cost matters at scale.
| Spec | DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 | inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | DeepSeek | inclusionAI |
| Input price (per 1M tokens) | $0.30 | $0.06 |
| Output price (per 1M tokens) | $1.20 | $0.18 |
| Blended price (3:1 input/output) | $0.52 | $0.09 |
| Cheaper than … of all models we track | 52% | 82% |
| Context window | 1.0M tokens (~1,573 pages) | 131K tokens (~197 pages) |
| Larger context than … of all models | 80% | 22% |
| Max output per response | 393K tokens (~294,900 words) | 33K tokens (~24,600 words) |
| Input types | text, image | text, image, video |
| Output types | text | text |
| Free variant | No | Yes |
| Listed since | 2026-10-17 | 2026-09-10 |
Monthly cost at list price for five common workloads. Token counts per unit are stated so you can scale them to your own traffic. A workload that does not fit a model's context window is marked rather than priced.
| Workload (per month) | DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 | inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Customer-support chatbot 50,000 conversations — each a 6-turn conversation (1,500 in / 400 out tokens) | $46.50 | $8.10 | inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL saves $38.40 |
| RAG search over documents 20,000 questions — each a question answered from ~8 retrieved passages (6,000 in / 500 out tokens) | $48.00 | $9.00 | inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL saves $39.00 |
| Coding / tool-using agent 2,000 tasks — each a multi-step task with tool calls and file context (60,000 in / 6,000 out tokens) | $50.40 | $9.36 | inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL saves $41.04 |
| Batch summarisation 10,000 documents — each a 6,000-word report summarised to a page (8,000 in / 600 out tokens) | $31.20 | $5.88 | inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL saves $25.32 |
| Long-document analysis 500 documents — each a 150-page contract or codebase read in one pass (100,000 in / 2,000 out tokens) | $16.20 | $3.18 | inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL saves $13.02 |
| Capability | DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 | inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL | What it lets you do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tool / function calling | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | call your APIs and run agent loops |
| Structured output (JSON schema) | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | return JSON that validates against your schema |
| Reasoning / thinking mode | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | spend extra tokens thinking before answering hard problems |
| Image input | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | read screenshots, charts and scanned pages |
| Audio input | — | — | take speech or audio directly |
| File / PDF input | — | — | accept documents without your own parsing step |
| Image output | — | — | generate images, not just text |
| Built-in web search | — | — | answer from live web results |
| Seed (reproducible sampling) | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | repeat a generation for tests and evals |
| Log-probabilities | ✓ Yes | — | read token confidence for classification and scoring |
From each model's published parameters and input/output types. “—” means not advertised, not proven absent.
| Date | Model | Input / 1M | Output / 1M |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-26 | DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 | $0.30 | $1.20 |
| 2026-10-24 | DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 | $0.15 | $0.60 |
| 2026-10-19 | DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 | $0.30 | $1.20 |
| 2026-10-14 | inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL | $0.06 | $0.18 |
| 2026-09-26 | inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL | $0.02 | $0.06 |
Neither wins outright: DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 is the pick when you need to fit long inputs in one request, inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL when cost matters at scale. In short: DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 when you need to fit long inputs in one request, you need log-probabilities, you generate long outputs in one go; inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL when cost matters at scale, you want to prototype at zero cost.
inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL is cheaper: $0.09 vs $0.52 per 1M tokens at a typical 3:1 input/output mix, 83% less. For 50,000 support conversations a month that is $8.10 against $46.50.
DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 costs $0.30 per 1M input tokens and $1.20 per 1M output tokens; inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL costs $0.06 input and $0.18 output. Output tokens are billed separately, so long answers shift the gap.
DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017: 1.0M tokens, about 1,573 pages, against 131K (about 197 pages) for inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL.
Tool calling — DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017: yes, inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL: yes. JSON-schema structured output — DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017: yes, inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL: yes.
Yes, both accept image input.
inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL has a free variant (inclusionai/ling-3.0-flash-vl:free). Free variants usually carry tighter rate limits.
DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 can write up to 393K tokens (about 294,900 words) per response; inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL up to 33K (about 24,600 words).
DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 was listed on 2026-10-17; inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL on 2026-09-10.
DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017: input price raised 50% ($0.15 → $0.30/1M), output price raised 50% ($0.60 → $1.20/1M) on 2026-10-26 (3 price changes since 2026-10-18). inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL: input price raised 65% ($0.02 → $0.06/1M), output price raised 66% ($0.06 → $0.18/1M) on 2026-10-14 (2 price changes since 2026-09-12).
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 is the October 17, 2026 snapshot of DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, served by DeepSeek under the `deepseek-flash` API model name. V4.1 Flash is a sparse mixture-of-experts model...
Full DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 specs →Ling 3.0 Flash VL builds on Ling 3.0 Flash (124B total / 5.5B active MoE from InclusionAI), further strengthening its language capabilities while adding native visual perception and advanced visual...
Full inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL specs →