DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash comes out ahead on the data we track: 2 advantages and none for Z.ai: GLM 5.3 Flash (batch).
| Spec | DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash | Z.ai: GLM 5.3 Flash (batch) |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | DeepSeek | Z Ai |
| Input price (per 1M tokens) | $0.03 | $0.05 |
| Output price (per 1M tokens) | $0.14 | $0.18 |
| Blended price (3:1 input/output) | $0.06 | $0.08 |
| Cheaper than … of all models we track | 86% | 83% |
| Context window | 1.0M tokens (~1,573 pages) | 1.0M tokens (~1,573 pages) |
| Larger context than … of all models | 81% | 81% |
| Max output per response | 944K tokens (~707,800 words) | 131K tokens (~98,300 words) |
| Input types | text, image | text, image, video |
| Output types | text | text |
| Free variant | No | No |
| Listed since | 2026-09-10 | 2026-08-26 |
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 | Z.ai: GLM 5.3 Flash (batch) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Customer-support chatbot 50,000 conversations — each a 6-turn conversation (1,500 in / 400 out tokens) | $5.28 | $7.35 | DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash saves $2.07 |
| RAG search over documents 20,000 questions — each a question answered from ~8 retrieved passages (6,000 in / 500 out tokens) | $5.28 | $7.80 | DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash saves $2.52 |
| 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) | $5.57 | $8.16 | DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash saves $2.59 |
| Batch summarisation 10,000 documents — each a 6,000-word report summarised to a page (8,000 in / 600 out tokens) | $3.42 | $5.08 | DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash saves $1.66 |
| Long-document analysis 500 documents — each a 150-page contract or codebase read in one pass (100,000 in / 2,000 out tokens) | $1.74 | $2.68 | DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash saves $0.94 |
| Capability | DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash | Z.ai: GLM 5.3 Flash (batch) | 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 | ✓ 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-17 | DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash | $0.03 | $0.14 |
| 2026-10-16 | DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash | $0.01 | $0.68 |
| 2026-10-16 | Z.ai: GLM 5.3 Flash (batch) | $0.05 | $0.18 |
| 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 |
| 2026-10-04 | DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash | $0.0030 | $2.40 |
| 2026-10-03 | DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash | $0.30 | $1.20 |
No advantage on the data we track — pick it for provider preference or output quality on your own prompts.
DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash comes out ahead on the data we track: 2 advantages and none for Z.ai: GLM 5.3 Flash (batch).
DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash is cheaper: $0.06 vs $0.08 per 1M tokens at a typical 3:1 input/output mix, 27% less. For 50,000 support conversations a month that is $5.28 against $7.35.
DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash costs $0.03 per 1M input tokens and $0.14 per 1M output tokens; Z.ai: GLM 5.3 Flash (batch) costs $0.05 input and $0.18 output. Output tokens are billed separately, so long answers shift the gap.
Both take 1.0M tokens per request — roughly 1,573 pages of text.
Tool calling — DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash: yes, Z.ai: GLM 5.3 Flash (batch): yes. JSON-schema structured output — DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash: yes, Z.ai: GLM 5.3 Flash (batch): yes.
Yes, both accept image input.
No free variant is listed for either; both are pay-per-token.
DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash can write up to 944K tokens (about 707,800 words) per response; Z.ai: GLM 5.3 Flash (batch) up to 131K (about 98,300 words).
DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash was listed on 2026-09-10; Z.ai: GLM 5.3 Flash (batch) on 2026-08-26.
DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash: input price raised 55% ($0.01 → $0.03/1M), output price cut 79% ($0.68 → $0.14/1M) on 2026-10-17 (20 price changes since 2026-09-11). Z.ai: GLM 5.3 Flash (batch): input price cut 17% ($0.06 → $0.05/1M), output price cut 10% ($0.20 → $0.18/1M) on 2026-10-16 (3 price changes since 2026-08-29).
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 →GLM-5.3-Flash is a native multimodal model from Z.ai. It is suited for efficient coding and long-horizon agent tasks. Its hybrid sparse and linear attention architecture maintains accurate long-context behavior while...
Full Z.ai: GLM 5.3 Flash (batch) specs →