// head_to_head
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash vs GLM 5.3 Flash
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 scores higher, GLM 5.3 Flash costs less — it depends on your workload.
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash is ahead by 9.5 points overall, and GLM 5.3 Flash lists 11% cheaper per blended million tokens. Whether 9.5 points is worth that depends on how much a wrong answer costs you.
deepseek
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
- Blended / 1M
- $0.262
- Context
- 1.0M
- Released
- Sep 10, 2026
- Overall score
- 81.1
z-ai
GLM 5.3 Flash
- Blended / 1M
- $0.237
- Context
- 1.3M
- Released
- Aug 26, 2026
- Overall score
- 71.6
Specs and pricing
| Metric | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash | GLM 5.3 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench overall Mean of the seven LiveBench category scores, 0–100. Higher is better. | 81.1win | 71.6 |
| Cost per point Measured benchmark spend divided by overall score — dollars per point of capability. | $0.0157 | $0.0161 |
| Blended price / 1M 3:1 input:output mix, the usual shape of production traffic. | $0.262 | $0.237win |
| Input price / 1M | $0.150 | $0.150 |
| Output price / 1M | $0.600 | $0.500win |
| Cached input / 1M Price of an input token served from the prompt cache, where the provider publishes one. | $0.0030win | $0.030 |
| Context window | 1.0M | 1.3M |
| Max output tokens | 384Kwin | 131K |
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 on top, GLM 5.3 Flash 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 | GLM 5.3 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| Support chatbot 1.2K in / 400 out × 200K requests | $73.42/mo | $67.36/mo |
| RAG assistant 8K in / 600 out × 100K requests | $97.20/mo | $102.00/mo |
| Coding agent 40K in / 4K out × 20K requests | $85.68/mo | $92.80/mo |
| Document extraction 20K in / 1.5K out × 50K requests | $187.65/mo | $181.50/mo |
| Bulk classification 500 in / 20 out × 5M requests | $361.50/mo | $365.00/mo |
Which should you pick?
Quality matters more than the bill
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
Highest overall LiveBench score of the two at 81.1.
The workload is coding or agentic work
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
Leads on agentic coding — 77.3 against 56.8.
You are cost-constrained
GLM 5.3 Flash
Cheaper on blended list price at $0.237 per million tokens.
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash vs GLM 5.3 Flash FAQ
Which is better, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash or GLM 5.3 Flash?
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash scores higher, GLM 5.3 Flash costs less — it depends on your workload. DeepSeek V4.1 Flash is ahead by 9.5 points overall, and GLM 5.3 Flash lists 11% cheaper per blended million tokens. Whether 9.5 points is worth that depends on how much a wrong answer costs you.
Is DeepSeek V4.1 Flash cheaper than GLM 5.3 Flash?
GLM 5.3 Flash is cheaper. On a 3:1 input:output blend, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash lists at $0.262 per million tokens and GLM 5.3 Flash at $0.237 — GLM 5.3 Flash is 11% cheaper. Input and output are priced separately — DeepSeek V4.1 Flash charges $0.150 in and $0.600 out, GLM 5.3 Flash charges $0.150 and $0.500 — so the model that looks cheaper flips depending on how output-heavy your workload is.
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash vs GLM 5.3 Flash: which scores higher on benchmarks?
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash scores 81.1 and GLM 5.3 Flash scores 71.6 overall on LiveBench, the mean of its seven categories. That is a 9.5-point lead for DeepSeek V4.1 Flash. Category scores differ from the overall figure — a model can lead on reasoning and trail on coding, which the per-category table above breaks out.
Which gives better value for money, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash or GLM 5.3 Flash?
They are close. DeepSeek V4.1 Flash costs $0.0157 per point of overall capability and GLM 5.3 Flash costs $0.0161, a difference small enough that workload shape will matter more than the rate.
Does DeepSeek V4.1 Flash or GLM 5.3 Flash have a bigger context window?
They are effectively the same — 1.0M for DeepSeek V4.1 Flash and 1.3M for GLM 5.3 Flash.
Do DeepSeek V4.1 Flash and GLM 5.3 Flash support prompt caching?
Both publish a cached-input rate: $0.0030 per million for DeepSeek V4.1 Flash and $0.030 for GLM 5.3 Flash, against full input rates of $0.150 and $0.150. 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 2026-06-25, 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.