// head_to_head
ERNIE-5.5-Flash-Preview (free) vs DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017
Published LiveBench scores across all seven categories, live list pricing, context windows, and the measured cost of a point of capability — for both models, side by side.
ERNIE-5.5-Flash-Preview (free) is the cheaper of the two; neither can be ranked on quality here.
ERNIE-5.5-Flash-Preview (free) does not have a published LiveBench run, so this comparison covers price, context and declared capabilities only. A missing score means "not evaluated", not "worse" — the right way to separate these two is an eval on your own workload.
baidu
ERNIE-5.5-Flash-Preview (free)
- Blended / 1M
- Free
- Context
- 1.0M
- Released
- Nov 10, 2026
- Overall score
- Not evaluated
deepseek
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017
- Blended / 1M
- $0.130
- Context
- 1.0M
- Released
- Oct 17, 2026
- Overall score
- 70.3
Specs and pricing
| Metric | ERNIE-5.5-Flash-Preview (free) | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench overall Weighted mean of the seven LiveBench category scores, 0–100. Higher is better. | — | 70.3 |
| Cost per point Measured benchmark spend divided by overall score — dollars per point of capability. | — | $0.0019 |
| Blended price / 1M 3:1 input:output mix, the usual shape of production traffic. | Freewin | $0.130 |
| Input price / 1M | Freewin | $0.0060 |
| Output price / 1M | Freewin | $0.500 |
| Cached input / 1M Price of an input token served from the prompt cache, where the provider publishes one. | — | $0.0050 |
| Context window | 1.0M | 1.0M |
| Max output tokens | 922K | 944K |
Benchmarks by category
An overall score averages away the thing you probably care about. These are the seven LiveBench categories scored separately — ERNIE-5.5-Flash-Preview (free) on top, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 below, both out of 100.
What each one costs to run
Per-token prices are hard to feel. These are monthly list costs for both models across five workload shapes, using each provider's published cached-input rate where there is one.
| Workload | ERNIE-5.5-Flash-Preview (free) | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 |
|---|---|---|
| Support chatbot 1.2K in / 400 out × 200K requests | $0/mo | $41.37/mo |
| RAG assistant 8K in / 600 out × 100K requests | $0/mo | $34.40/mo |
| Coding agent 40K in / 4K out × 20K requests | $0/mo | $44.24/mo |
| Document extraction 20K in / 1.5K out × 50K requests | $0/mo | $43.45/mo |
| Bulk classification 500 in / 20 out × 5M requests | $0/mo | $64.50/mo |
Which should you pick?
You are cost-constrained
ERNIE-5.5-Flash-Preview (free)
Cheaper on blended list price at Free per million tokens.
ERNIE-5.5-Flash-Preview (free) vs DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 FAQ
Which is better, ERNIE-5.5-Flash-Preview (free) or DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017?
ERNIE-5.5-Flash-Preview (free) is the cheaper of the two; neither can be ranked on quality here. ERNIE-5.5-Flash-Preview (free) does not have a published LiveBench run, so this comparison covers price, context and declared capabilities only. A missing score means "not evaluated", not "worse" — the right way to separate these two is an eval on your own workload.
Is ERNIE-5.5-Flash-Preview (free) cheaper than DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017?
ERNIE-5.5-Flash-Preview (free) is cheaper. On a 3:1 input:output blend, ERNIE-5.5-Flash-Preview (free) lists at Free per million tokens and DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 at $0.130. Input and output are priced separately — ERNIE-5.5-Flash-Preview (free) charges Free in and Free out, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 charges $0.0060 and $0.500 — so the model that looks cheaper flips depending on how output-heavy your workload is.
Does ERNIE-5.5-Flash-Preview (free) or DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 have a bigger context window?
They are effectively the same — 1.0M for ERNIE-5.5-Flash-Preview (free) and 1.0M for DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017.
Do ERNIE-5.5-Flash-Preview (free) and DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 support prompt caching?
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 publishes a cached-input rate of $0.0050 per million tokens against a full input rate of $0.0060. The catalogue lists no separate cached rate for ERNIE-5.5-Flash-Preview (free), which means the provider does not price it separately here — not that caching is unavailable.
Related comparisons
How these numbers are produced
- Price — provider list price from OpenRouter, refreshed every 15 minutes. “Blended” is a 3:1 input:output mix.
- Scores — LiveBench release 2026-11-06, using their own category map. Each model shows its strongest published run. A blank means “not evaluated”, never “bad”.
- Cost per point — the measured dollars LiveBench spent on the run, divided by the score it earned.
- “Win” — awarded only past a threshold: one full point on a benchmark score, 10% on a price, 25% on a context window. Anything tighter reports as a tie, because effort settings alone move a LiveBench score by more than that.
Published benchmarks rank models on someone else's tasks. Before committing, see LLM & agent evaluation for building an eval on your own.