DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (Max) vs Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning)

Which is better for the money: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (Max) by DeepSeek or Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.

Trade-off

DeepSeekDeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (Max)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 45.10
Total cost: $445

AlibabaQwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 12.70
Total cost: $234

Verdict

Depends on your budget

DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (Max) scores 32.4 points higher (45.1 vs 12.7) but costs 1.9× as much to run the benchmark ($445 vs $234; both mid-range class). Pick DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (Max) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning).

Metric	DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (Max)	Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning)	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	45.1	12.7	−71.8% Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 … is 71.8% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$444.60	$233.56	−47.5% Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 … is 47.5% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	15.96s	22.73s	+42.4% Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 … is 42.4% slower
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$0.30 / $1.20	$0.23 / $2.30
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text

Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning) vs DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (Max): 71.8% less intelligence, 47.5% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 42.4% slower end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (Max): what beats it Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning): what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (Max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium) scores 47.80 for $361.
Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 46.30 for $207.

DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (Max)Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model

Matchup

Compare something else

Agents: Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/deepseek-v4-1-flash-1017/qwen3-235b-a22b-instruct-2507-reasoning · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/deepseek-v4-1-flash-1017/qwen3-235b-a22b-instruct-2507-reasoning?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill