Side-by-side comparison of pricing, 12 benchmarks, and generation speed.
| Metric | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Reasoning, Max Effort) | Solar Pro 4 |
|---|---|---|
| Input ($/M tokens) | $0.3 | $0.3 |
| Output ($/M tokens) | $1.2 | $1.2 |
Verdict. DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Reasoning, Max Effort) and Solar Pro 4 split the benchmark comparison evenly at 1–1. The tiebreaker here is price, speed, and what you actually run them on.
Pricing. Both models sit in the budget bracket for output-token pricing. At 1.0× the per-million-token cost, Solar Pro 4 is meaningfully cheaper if your traffic is output-heavy (long completions, document generation, agent loops). Solar Pro 4 makes more sense when output volume is low and absolute reasoning quality justifies the premium.
Strengths. DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Reasoning, Max Effort) is strongest on Intelligence Index (39.5). Solar Pro 4 leads on Coding Index (52.7), Intelligence Index (28.2).
Speed. On throughput, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Reasoning, Max Effort) generates tokens at 223 tok/s versus 76 tok/s — about 66% faster. On time-to-first-token, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Reasoning, Max Effort) responds in 1190ms vs 1990ms, which matters most for chat-style UIs.
Provider. DeepSeek and Upstage sell to overlapping but distinct developer audiences: DeepSeek tends to ship frontier reasoning models with premium positioning, while Upstage often prices more aggressively. Your existing vendor relationships, billing, and SLA preferences may matter as much as the raw numbers above.
Workload cost. Workload scenarios (per million requests at 30M input + 15M output tokens): DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Reasoning, Max Effort) costs $27.00 ($324/year); Solar Pro 4 costs $27.00 ($324/year). At a smaller 5M-input/2M-output scale (single-developer tool or prototype): DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Reasoning, Max Effort) ≈ $3.90/run, Solar Pro 4 ≈ $3.90/run. At agent/realtime scale (200M input / 100M output per million requests): DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Reasoning, Max Effort) ≈ $180/run, Solar Pro 4 ≈ $180/run.
Recommendation. Both models have legitimate use cases — the right answer depends on whether you are optimizing for benchmark ceiling, latency, or unit cost. Start with the cheaper / faster model, evaluate against your specific task, and only switch if the upgrade shows a meaningful lift.
Head-to-head deltas
Data from Artificial Analysis API — 12 benchmarks
Both models have similar pricing. Check the detailed breakdown above for input vs output token costs.
It's a tie — both models win 1 benchmarks each across 12 evaluated categories. See the detailed benchmark chart above for per-category results.
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Reasoning, Max Effort) generates tokens faster at 223 tok/s vs 76 tok/s. DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Reasoning, Max Effort) also has lower time-to-first-token (1.19s vs 1.99s).
Choose based on your priorities: both are similarly priced, both perform similarly on benchmarks, and DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (Reasoning, Max Effort) for faster generation. For latency-sensitive apps, check the TTFT comparison above.