// head_to_head
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 vs Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview Custom Tools
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.
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 is the cheaper of the two; neither can be ranked on quality here.
Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview Custom Tools 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.
deepseek
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017
- Blended / 1M
- $0.262
- Context
- 1.0M
- Released
- Oct 17, 2026
- Overall score
- 74.0
Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview Custom Tools
- Blended / 1M
- $4.50
- Context
- 1.0M
- Released
- Feb 25, 2026
- Overall score
- Not evaluated
Specs and pricing
| Metric | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 | Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview Custom Tools |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench overall Weighted mean of the seven LiveBench category scores, 0–100. Higher is better. | 74.0 | — |
| Cost per point Measured benchmark spend divided by overall score — dollars per point of capability. | $0.0018 | — |
| Blended price / 1M 3:1 input:output mix, the usual shape of production traffic. | $0.262win | $4.50 |
| Input price / 1M | $0.150win | $2.00 |
| Output price / 1M | $0.600win | $12.00 |
| Cached input / 1M Price of an input token served from the prompt cache, where the provider publishes one. | $0.0030win | $0.200 |
| Context window | 1.0M | 1.0M |
| Max output tokens | 393Kwin | 66K |
Benchmarks by category
An overall score averages away the thing you probably care about. These are the seven LiveBench categories scored separately — DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 on top, Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview Custom Tools 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 | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 | Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview Custom Tools |
|---|---|---|
| Support chatbot 1.2K in / 400 out × 200K requests | $73.42/mo | $1,310/mo |
| RAG assistant 8K in / 600 out × 100K requests | $97.20/mo | $1,600/mo |
| Coding agent 40K in / 4K out × 20K requests | $85.68/mo | $1,552/mo |
| Document extraction 20K in / 1.5K out × 50K requests | $187.65/mo | $2,810/mo |
| Bulk classification 500 in / 20 out × 5M requests | $361.50/mo | $5,300/mo |
Which should you pick?
You are cost-constrained
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017
Cheaper on blended list price at $0.262 per million tokens.
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 vs Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview Custom Tools FAQ
Which is better, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 or Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview Custom Tools?
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 is the cheaper of the two; neither can be ranked on quality here. Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview Custom Tools 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 DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 cheaper than Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview Custom Tools?
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 is cheaper. On a 3:1 input:output blend, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 lists at $0.262 per million tokens and Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview Custom Tools at $4.50 — DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 is 17× cheaper. Input and output are priced separately — DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 charges $0.150 in and $0.600 out, Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview Custom Tools charges $2.00 and $12.00 — so the model that looks cheaper flips depending on how output-heavy your workload is.
Does DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 or Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview Custom Tools have a bigger context window?
They are effectively the same — 1.0M for DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 and 1.0M for Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview Custom Tools.
Do DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 and Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview Custom Tools support prompt caching?
Both publish a cached-input rate: $0.0030 per million for DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 and $0.200 for Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview Custom Tools, against full input rates of $0.150 and $2.00. On a workload with a long stable prefix — a system prompt, a tool schema, a retrieved corpus — that changes the economics more than the headline price does.
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 2026-10-25, 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.