DeepSeek V4 Flash 0420 (Max) vs Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: DeepSeek V4 Flash 0420 (Max) by DeepSeek or Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick DeepSeek V4 Flash 0420 (Max)
Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning) vs DeepSeek V4 Flash 0420 (Max): 24.0% less intelligence, 529.5% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 37.8% faster end-to-end.
| Metric | DeepSeek V4 Flash 0420 (Max) | Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 24.2 | 18.4 | −24.0% Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Re… is 24.0% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $149.48 | $940.97 | +529.5% Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Re… is 6.3× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 104.63s | 65.10s | −37.8% Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Re… is 37.8% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.11 / $0.23 | $0.60 / $3.60 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text, Image |
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- DeepSeek V4 Flash 0420 (Max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Max) scores 38.10 for $122.
- Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Xhigh) scores 51.00 for $662.
DeepSeek V4 Flash 0420 (Max)Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/deepseek-v4-flash-0420/qwen3-5-397b-a17b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/deepseek-v4-flash-0420/qwen3-5-397b-a17b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill