DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017: Fast, Competitive Open-Weight Model

DeepSeek released V4.1 Flash 1017 (Max) in October 2026 as an open-weight reasoning model that scores 45 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index—well above the median of 19 for comparable models. It outputs at 230 tokens per second, supports multimodal input (text and images), and maintains a 1M token context window. The architecture uses a mixture-of-experts design with 552 billion total parameters, though only 16 billion remain active during inference.

Pricing undercuts its category at $0.30 per million input tokens and $1.20 per million output tokens. However, benchmarking reveals a notable trade-off: the model generates 210 million tokens during evaluation versus the median 140 million, making it substantially more verbose than peers. This verbosity could inflate operational costs for applications sensitive to token consumption.

Released under the MIT license and available through five API providers, the model supports commercial deployment and self-hosting. It incorporates extended thinking for complex reasoning tasks. While it offers competitive benchmarks, fast inference, and accessible pricing, the verbose output pattern represents a meaningful consideration for production use.