Neither wins outright: DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash is the pick when you need seed (reproducible sampling), MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free) when cost matters at scale.
| Spec | DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash | MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free) |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | DeepSeek | Minimax |
| Input price (per 1M tokens) | $0.04 | $0 |
| Output price (per 1M tokens) | $0.01 | $0 |
| Blended price (3:1 input/output) | $0.03 | $0 |
| Cheaper than … of all models we track | 89% | 90% |
| Context window | 1.0M tokens (~1,573 pages) | 1M tokens (~1,500 pages) |
| Larger context than … of all models | 81% | 69% |
| Max output per response | 944K tokens (~707,800 words) | 524K tokens (~393,200 words) |
| Input types | text, image | text, image, video |
| Output types | text | text |
| Free variant | No | Yes |
| Listed since | 2026-09-10 | 2026-10-19 |
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 | MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Customer-support chatbot 50,000 conversations — each a 6-turn conversation (1,500 in / 400 out tokens) | $2.86 | $0 | MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free) saves $2.86 |
| RAG search over documents 20,000 questions — each a question answered from ~8 retrieved passages (6,000 in / 500 out tokens) | $4.34 | $0 | MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free) saves $4.34 |
| 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) | $4.36 | $0 | MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free) saves $4.36 |
| Batch summarisation 10,000 documents — each a 6,000-word report summarised to a page (8,000 in / 600 out tokens) | $2.88 | $0 | MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free) saves $2.88 |
| Long-document analysis 500 documents — each a 150-page contract or codebase read in one pass (100,000 in / 2,000 out tokens) | $1.77 | $0 | MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free) saves $1.77 |
| Capability | DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash | MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free) | 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 | — | 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-20 | DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash | $0.04 | $0.01 |
| 2026-10-19 | DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash | $0.05 | $0.12 |
| 2026-10-18 | DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash | $0.07 | $0.14 |
| 2026-10-17 | DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash | $0.03 | $0.14 |
| 2026-10-16 | DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash | $0.01 | $0.68 |
| 2026-10-15 | DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash | $0.02 | $0.89 |
| 2026-10-14 | DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash | $0.04 | $0.60 |
| 2026-10-06 | DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash | $0.30 | $1.20 |
Neither wins outright: DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash is the pick when you need seed (reproducible sampling), MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free) when cost matters at scale. In short: DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash when you need seed (reproducible sampling), you need log-probabilities, you generate long outputs in one go; MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free) when cost matters at scale, you want to prototype at zero cost.
MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free) is cheaper: $0 vs $0.03 per 1M tokens at a typical 3:1 input/output mix, 100% less. For 50,000 support conversations a month that is $0 against $2.86.
DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash costs $0.04 per 1M input tokens and $0.01 per 1M output tokens; MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free) costs $0 input and $0 output. Output tokens are billed separately, so long answers shift the gap.
DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash: 1.0M tokens, about 1,573 pages, against 1M (about 1,500 pages) for MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free).
Tool calling — DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash: yes, MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free): yes. JSON-schema structured output — DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash: yes, MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free): yes.
Yes, both accept image input.
MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free) has a free variant (minimax/minimax-m3.1-flash:free). Free variants usually carry tighter rate limits.
DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash can write up to 944K tokens (about 707,800 words) per response; MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free) up to 524K (about 393,200 words).
DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash was listed on 2026-09-10; MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free) on 2026-10-19.
DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash: input price cut 25% ($0.05 → $0.04/1M), output price cut 91% ($0.12 → $0.01/1M) on 2026-10-20 (23 price changes since 2026-09-11). MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free): price unchanged since we started tracking it on 2026-10-20.
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash is a sparse mixture-of-experts model from DeepSeek, and the first built on the company's Causal Encoder-Decoder (CED) architecture. It activates 8B parameters on input and 16B on...
Full DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash specs →MiniMax-M3.1-Flash is a multimodal model from MiniMax. Compared with M3, it delivers significant improvements across multiple benchmarks, particularly in complex agentic tasks, coding, and cybersecurity. It is built for complex,...
Full MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free) specs →