DeepSeek V4.1 Flash Open vs 
Mistral Medium 3.5 Open
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash vs Mistral Medium 3.5 compared — price per token, context window, multimodality, openness and which to choose. Full 2026 breakdown.
Prices & specs refreshed from live data · olud.ai
Open-model prices = cheapest provider via OpenRouter; official maker rates may be higher.
$2.4 /M outputNo per-token fees if you self-host
$7.5 /M outputNo per-token fees if you self-host
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash vs Mistral Medium 3.5 specs
| Spec | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash | Mistral Medium 3.5 | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Maker | DeepSeek | Mistral AI | – |
| Type | Open-weight | Open-weight | – |
| Context window | 1M tokens | 262K tokens | |
| Input price | Free/M · free self-host | $1.5/M · free self-host | |
| Output price | $2.4/M · free self-host | $7.5/M · free self-host | |
| Vision / multimodal | Yes | Yes | = Tie |
| Tool / function calling | Yes | Yes | = Tie |
| Self-hostable | Yes | Yes | = Tie |
| License | MIT | Apache 2.0 | – |
Price gap & when to choose each
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash is ~3.1× cheaper than Mistral Medium 3.5 on output tokens ($2.4 vs $7.5 per M tokens).
- You want to self-host or run on your cloud
- You need the longer 1M context window
- You prioritize data privacy & control
- You want the lowest operating costs
- You are building open or reproducible AI
- You want to self-host or run on your cloud
- You prioritize data privacy & control
- You are building open or reproducible AI
Feature comparison
| Capability | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash | Mistral Medium 3.5 |
|---|---|---|
| Open weights (downloadable) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Self-hostable | ✓ | ✓ |
| Runs fully offline | ✓ | ✓ |
| Vision / multimodal | ✓ | ✓ |
| Tool / function calling | ✓ | ✓ |
| 1M+ context window | ✓ | ✗ |
Benchmarks: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash vs Mistral Medium 3.5
Independent benchmark scores measured by Artificial Analysis. Higher is better (except latency).
Benchmark data by Artificial Analysis.
How DeepSeek V4.1 Flash and Mistral Medium 3.5 score
| Criterion | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash | Mistral Medium 3.5 |
|---|---|---|
| Cost-efficiency | 4.5 | 4.0 |
| Context window | 5.0 | 4.0 |
| Openness | 5.0 | 5.0 |
| Self-hosting | 5.0 | 5.0 |
| Multimodality | 5.0 | 5.0 |
Scores come from live data — output price (cost), context length, open vs closed weights (openness & self-hosting) and vision/tool support (multimodality). Raw task quality isn't scored here; it depends on your benchmark — see the verdict.
What each model is
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash Open
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash is a sparse mixture-of-experts model from DeepSeek, and the first built on the company's Causal Encoder-Decoder (CED) architecture. It activates 8B parameters on input and 16B on...
Mistral Medium 3.5 Open
Mistral Medium 3.5 is a dense 128B instruction-following model from Mistral AI. It supports text and image inputs with text output, and is designed for agentic workflows, coding, and complex...
Other models in these families
These variants are tracked but not compared here — one page per family keeps the comparison readable.
Frequently asked questions
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash vs Mistral Medium 3.5 — which is cheaper?
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash is cheaper on output ($2.4/M vs $7.5/M).
Which has the larger context window?
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash offers the larger context window (1M tokens).
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash vs Mistral Medium 3.5 — which should I pick in 2026?
Choose DeepSeek V4.1 Flash for the lower output price ($2.4/M vs $7.5/M). It also gives you the larger 1M context window.
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