DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Non-reasoning) vs Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning)

Which is better for the money: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Non-reasoning) by DeepSeek or Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning) by Google? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.

Trade-off

DeepSeekDeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Non-reasoning)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 24.70
Total cost: $239

GoogleGemma 4 E4B (Reasoning)On the open-weights frontier

Intelligence: 8.90
Total cost: $14.7

Verdict

Depends on your budget

DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Non-reasoning) scores 15.8 points higher (24.7 vs 8.9) but costs 16× as much to run the benchmark ($239 vs $14.7; mid-range vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Non-reasoning) when you need intelligence above 8.9, and Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning) when 8.9 is enough.

Metric	DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Non-reasoning)	Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning)	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	24.7	8.9	−64.0% Gemma 4 E4B (Reasonin… is 64.0% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$238.91	$14.68	−93.9% Gemma 4 E4B (Reasonin… is 93.9% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	2.61s	57.75s	+2112.6% Gemma 4 E4B (Reasonin… is 2112.6% slower
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$0.30 / $1.20	$0.02 / $0.10
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text, Image, Speech, Video

Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning) vs DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Non-reasoning): 64.0% less intelligence, 93.9% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 2112.6% slower end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Non-reasoning): what beats it Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning): what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Non-reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 46.30 for $207.
Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Low) scores 21.50 for $10.6.

DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Non-reasoning)Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model

Matchup

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Agents: Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/deepseek-v4-1-flash-non-reasoning/gemma-4-e4b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/deepseek-v4-1-flash-non-reasoning/gemma-4-e4b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill