DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 vs Inkling
Updated October 21, 2026. 31 benchmarks have a result for both. Coding is ranked on the Vibe Coding Index; every other board is shown as published.
Decision reading
Pick DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 for coding: it scores 83.3 on the Vibe Coding Index against 49.7 for Inkling.
Inkling is neither cheaper nor larger in context, and leads no benchmark both models were measured on.
- Shared results
- 31
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 only
- 1
- Inkling only
- 71
- Like-for-like categories
- 6 of 9
Shared results can support a head-to-head reading. Results only one model has describe coverage, not superiority.
Which one for your work
Each card is decided by one number both models carry. Where only one has it, the card says so and makes no call.
Coding
Vibe Coding Index, four public coding benchmarks
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 scores 83.3 against 49.7.
2 benchmarks behind each score
Intelligence
AA Intelligence Index
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 leads, 39.5 against 25.0.
Same board, both measured
Agentic work
AA Agentic Index
No call
Only Inkling has a AA Agentic Index result, 22.5.
Directional only
Reasoning
GPQA Diamond
No call
Only Inkling has a GPQA Diamond result, 87.1%.
Directional only
Knowledge
MMLU Pro
No call
Only Inkling has a MMLU Pro result, 86.3%.
Directional only
Web design
Design Arena: websites
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 leads, 1312 against 1224.
Same board, both measured
General
Vals Index
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 leads, 61.3% against 29.0%.
Same board, both measured
Long documents
Listed context window
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 takes 1.05M tokens against 524K.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 $0.0004, Inkling $0.0030 per turn.
List prices
Cost per solved task
One SWE-bench Verified task, solved
No call
Only Inkling has the number, $0.76.
Directional only
At a glance
- Coding index
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 83.3 from 2 benchmarks, Inkling 49.7 from 2 benchmarks.
- Widest category
- Coding, 33.1 points apart on average over 9 shared benchmarks.
- Widest single gap
- Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI): DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 87.7% against Inkling 19.2%, 68.5 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
- Output price
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 $0.60 against Inkling $4.05 per million output tokens, 6.8x apart.
- Context window
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 takes 1.05M tokens, Inkling 524K.
Benchmark by benchmark
First the score: boards each model leads, per category, where both have a result. Then every board, a category to a fold; bars are each result on a 0 to 100 scale, so compare the two in a row, not one row with another.
| Category | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 | Bars | Inkling | Ties |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | 9 | 0 | ||
| Intelligence | 1 | 0 | ||
| Agentic work | 8 | 0 | ||
| Reasoning | 2 | 0 | ||
| Web design | 8 | 0 | ||
| General | 3 | 0 | ||
| All shared boards | 31 | 0 |
CodingLike-for-likeFour of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index90
| Benchmark | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 | Inkling | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| LiveBench coding | 96.0% | 64.0% | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 |
| LMArena WebDev | 1664 | 1414 | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 |
| AA Coding Index | Not measured | 52.1 | Only Inkling measured |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 85.5% | Only Inkling measured |
| SWE-bench Verified (Vals AI) | Not measured | 77.6% | Only Inkling measured |
| Terminal-Bench 4 (Vals AI) | 31.8% | 0.5% | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 |
| Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI) | 87.7% | 19.2% | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 |
| Code migration (Vals AI) | 44.2% | 11.8% | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 |
| ProgramBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 0.0% | Only Inkling measured |
| IOI (Vals AI) | Not measured | 14.9% | Only Inkling measured |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals AI) | Not measured | 47.6% | Only Inkling measured |
| Vibe Code Bench 1-100 (Vals AI) | Not measured | 7.3% | Only Inkling measured |
| SkillsBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 26.1% | Only Inkling measured |
| CyberBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 66.8% | Only Inkling measured |
| SciCode | 55.9% | 47.0% | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 |
| FrontierCode | Not measured | 14.0% | Only Inkling measured |
| FrontierSWE | Not measured | 4.1% | Only Inkling measured |
| WeirdML | Not measured | 32.3% | Only Inkling measured |
| ALE-Bench | 1622.0 | 946.0 | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 |
| LMArena Text: coding | Not measured | 1466 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: software and IT | Not measured | 1465 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena WebDev: React | 1667 | 1404 | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 |
| LMArena WebDev: HTML | 1687 | 1399 | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 |
| Neither model has a result on the other 15 boards here | |||
IntelligenceLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10
| Benchmark | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 | Inkling | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Intelligence Index | 39.5 | 25.0 | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | Not measured | 148.4 | Only Inkling measured |
Agentic workLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index80
| Benchmark | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 | Inkling | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Agentic Index | Not measured | 22.5 | Only Inkling measured |
| Design Arena: agents building web apps | Not measured | 1196 | Only Inkling measured |
| Design Arena: spreadsheets | 1238 | Not measured | Only DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 measured |
| LiveBench research | 79.5% | 59.9% | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 |
| LiveBench browser | 76.0% | 16.0% | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 |
| LiveBench long agentic | 50.9% | 14.1% | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 |
| SREBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 0.0% | Only Inkling measured |
| Finance Agent (Vals AI) | 57.0% | 46.6% | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 |
| Tax Agent Bench (Vals AI) | 44.4% | 15.3% | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 |
| Legal Research Bench (Vals AI) | 45.2% | 28.4% | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 |
| Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark (Vals AI) | 14.2% | 3.8% | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark (Vals AI) | 61.8% | 38.4% | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 |
| APEX-Agents | Not measured | 33.8% | Only Inkling measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 26 boards here | |||
ReasoningLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index20
| Benchmark | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 | Inkling | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | Not measured | 87.1% | Only Inkling measured |
| LiveBench reasoning | 89.1% | 78.3% | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 |
| MMMU Pro (Vals AI) | Not measured | 78.5% | Only Inkling measured |
| GPQA Diamond (Artificial Analysis run) | Not measured | 87.2% | Only Inkling measured |
| Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run) | 43.3% | 31.9% | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 |
| GPQA Diamond (Epoch AI run) | Not measured | 88.3% | Only Inkling measured |
| ARC-AGI | Not measured | 79.5% | Only Inkling measured |
| ARC-AGI-2 | Not measured | 36.5% | Only Inkling measured |
| SimpleBench | Not measured | 50.0% | Only Inkling measured |
| Chess puzzles | Not measured | 21.0% | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts | Not measured | 1451 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: expert | Not measured | 1466 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts in English | Not measured | 1448 | Only Inkling measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 8 boards here | |||
MathDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index6 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 | Inkling | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME | Not measured | 88.9% | Only Inkling measured |
| FrontierMath, tiers 1 to 3 | Not measured | 33.3% | Only Inkling measured |
| FrontierMath, tier 4 | Not measured | 4.9% | Only Inkling measured |
| ProofBench | Not measured | 0.0% | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: math | Not measured | 1479 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: mathematical work | Not measured | 1460 | Only Inkling measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 7 boards here | |||
KnowledgeDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index11 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 | Inkling | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU Pro | Not measured | 86.3% | Only Inkling measured |
| LegalBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 83.0% | Only Inkling measured |
| CorpFin (Vals AI) | Not measured | 68.6% | Only Inkling measured |
| TaxEval (Vals AI) | Not measured | 75.3% | Only Inkling measured |
| MortgageTax (Vals AI) | Not measured | 64.0% | Only Inkling measured |
| MedCode (Vals AI) | Not measured | 41.2% | Only Inkling measured |
| SimpleQA Verified | Not measured | 40.3% | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: science | Not measured | 1455 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare | Not measured | 1447 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: legal and government | Not measured | 1448 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: business and finance | Not measured | 1438 | Only Inkling measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 6 boards here | |||
Web designLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index80
| Benchmark | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 | Inkling | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Arena: websites | 1312 | 1224 | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 |
| Design Arena: UI components | 1305 | 1200 | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 |
| Design Arena: game dev | 1365 | 1166 | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 |
| Design Arena: data viz | 1330 | 1160 | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 |
| Design Arena: 3D | 1368 | 1161 | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 |
| Design Arena: all code categories | 1335 | 1206 | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 |
| Design Arena: SVG | Not measured | 1109 | Only Inkling measured |
| Design Arena: ASCII art | 1244 | 1089 | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 |
| LiveBench design | 83.4% | 58.3% | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 |
GeneralLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index30
| Benchmark | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 | Inkling | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vals Index | 61.3% | 29.0% | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 |
| LiveBench data analysis | 79.5% | 72.8% | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 |
| Public Benefits Bench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 58.5% | Only Inkling measured |
| SAGE (Vals AI) | Not measured | 36.5% | Only Inkling measured |
| MedScribe (Vals AI) | Not measured | 85.4% | Only Inkling measured |
| Vals Multimodal Index | Not measured | 49.4% | Only Inkling measured |
| Long context reasoning (AA-LCR) | 82.7% | 77.3% | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 |
| DTBench | Not measured | 87.5% | Only Inkling measured |
| LMCA | Not measured | 37.6% | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text | Not measured | 1442 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: instruction following | Not measured | 1425 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: creative writing | Not measured | 1390 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: English | Not measured | 1442 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: non-English | Not measured | 1434 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: Chinese | Not measured | 1493 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: German | Not measured | 1445 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: Japanese | Not measured | 1429 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: Korean | Not measured | 1403 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: French | Not measured | 1455 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: Spanish | Not measured | 1449 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: Russian | Not measured | 1430 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: Polish | Not measured | 1450 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: multi-turn | Not measured | 1437 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: longer queries | Not measured | 1435 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: writing and language | Not measured | 1404 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: entertainment and media | Not measured | 1394 | Only Inkling measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 20 boards here | |||
Image generationNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 | Inkling | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neither model has a result on 5 boards here | |||
What each workload costs
Three fixed token mixes at each model's listed price, so per-token rates become a bill.
Chat turn
1K input + 500 output tokens
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 costs less
Repository review
50K input + 3K output tokens
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 costs less
Agent loop
200K input + 10K output tokens
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 costs less
Listed OpenRouter rates, without cache or batch discounts. A workload that does not fit a model's context window would need splitting.
Specification differences
The leading value in a row is marked; a row with a missing value names no leader. Our two rows are marked in red.
| Specification | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 | Thinking Machines Inkling |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | DeepSeek | Thinking Machines |
| Weights | Open weights | Open weights |
| Released | October 17, 2026 | July 17, 2026 |
| Context window | 1.05M | 524K |
| Input $/Mtok | $0.15 | $1.00 |
| Output $/Mtok | $0.60 | $4.05 |
| Coding index | 83.3 | 49.7 |
| Independent measurements behind it | 2 | 2 |
| Cost per solved task | Not computable | $0.76 |
| Source | OpenRouter listing | OpenRouter listing |
Questions
Is DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 better than Inkling for coding?
Pick DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 for coding: it scores 83.3 on the Vibe Coding Index against 49.7 for Inkling. Inkling is neither cheaper nor larger in context, and leads no benchmark both models were measured on.
Which is cheaper, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 or Inkling?
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 costs $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.60 per million output tokens; Inkling costs $1.00 and $4.05. Cost per solved task is known for Inkling only.
Which has the bigger context window, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 or Inkling?
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017, with 1.05M tokens against 524K.
How many benchmarks is the DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 vs Inkling comparison based on?
31 benchmarks have a result for both models as of October 21, 2026. DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017's coding index rests on 2 independent benchmarks and Inkling's on 2. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.