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DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4 Pro 0423 vs Qwen: Qwen3.8 Flash

A side-by-side comparison of DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4 Pro 0423 ($5.60 / 1M tokens) and Qwen: Qwen3.8 Flash ($0.52 / 1M tokens) using current USD prices and capabilities from the api14 catalog. Both run through the same OpenAI-compatible API.

Specifications

	DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4 Pro 0423	Qwen: Qwen3.8 Flash
Provider	DeepSeek	Qwen
Input	$5.60 / 1M tokens	$0.52 / 1M tokens
Output	$11.20 / 1M tokens	$1.65 / 1M tokens
Cache read	$0.47 / 1M tokens	$0.06 / 1M tokens
Context window	1,048,576	1,000,000
Max output	393,216	131,072
Input	text	text, image, video
Output	text	text
Tool calling
Structured output
Reasoning control
Added	Apr 24, 2026	Aug 26, 2026

Key differences

Qwen: Qwen3.8 Flash is 91% cheaper on input tokens.
Qwen: Qwen3.8 Flash is 85% cheaper on output tokens.
A request with 1,000 input and 500 output tokens costs $0.01 with DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4 Pro 0423 and $0.00135 with Qwen: Qwen3.8 Flash.

In depth

DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4 Pro 0423 is a text model from DeepSeek, released on 2026-04-24. Qwen: Qwen3.8 Flash is a text model from Qwen, released on 2026-08-26. Both are served through api14 under the same OpenAI-compatible surface, so the choice between them comes down to what you are sending in and how much you are willing to pay for it, not to any difference in how you integrate.

The clearest split is in input modalities. DeepSeek V4 Pro 0423 accepts text only and returns text. Qwen3.8 Flash accepts text, images and video on the input side, and returns text. If your request contains a screenshot, a scanned page, a chart or a video frame, Qwen3.8 Flash can take it directly while DeepSeek V4 Pro 0423 cannot. On context, the two are close enough that the difference is not worth planning around: DeepSeek V4 Pro 0423 lists 1,048,576 tokens and Qwen3.8 Flash lists 1,000,000, so both comfortably hold very large documents. The parameter lists are also broadly similar, with tools, structured outputs and reasoning available on both, so neither model locks you out of tool calling or JSON-shaped responses. Qwen3.8 Flash is the cheaper of the two on both input and output, though the live price table on this page has the current numbers.

For a developer picking one, start with the input. If the task is pure text, such as long document summarisation, code review, extraction from logs or multi-turn chat over a large corpus, DeepSeek V4 Pro 0423 is a reasonable default and its slightly larger context gives you a bit more headroom on very long inputs. If the task involves images or video, Qwen3.8 Flash is the only one of the two that can accept them, so it wins by default regardless of anything else. If cost is the deciding factor and the task is text-only, Qwen3.8 Flash is the cheaper option and is worth trying first, then falling back to DeepSeek V4 Pro 0423 if the output quality does not hold up on your workload.

Calling either model through api14 works the same way. Point your OpenAI-compatible client at the api14 base URL, use your api14 key, and set the model field to either "deepseek/deepseek-v4-pro" or "qwen/qwen3.8-flash". Everything else in the request body, including messages, temperature, tools, response_format and streaming, stays as it is. Switching between the two is a one-line change to the model id, which makes it cheap to A/B them on real traffic rather than guessing from a description.

There are still cases where DeepSeek V4 Pro 0423 is the better pick even though Qwen3.8 Flash is cheaper. If you have already tuned prompts, tool schemas or structured output formats against DeepSeek V4 Pro 0423 and they behave reliably, moving to save on token cost may not be worth the revalidation effort. The same applies when you want the extra context headroom for a single very large text input, or when your pipeline is text-only and you would rather not introduce a model whose multimodal path you will never exercise.

Switch with one string

Both models use the same endpoint and request shape. Change the model value from "deepseek/deepseek-v4-pro" to "qwen/qwen3.8-flash" and prompts, streaming and tools keep working.

DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4 Pro 0423 details & playground →Qwen: Qwen3.8 Flash details & playground →

import OpenAI from "openai";

const client = new OpenAI({
  baseURL: "https://api14.com/api/v1",
  apiKey: process.env.API14_API_KEY,
});

const result = await client.chat.completions.create({
  "model": "qwen/qwen3.8-flash",
  "messages": [
    {
      "role": "user",
      "content": "Explain vector databases in two sentences."
    }
  ]
});
console.log(result.choices[0].message.content);

More comparisons

DeepSeek V4 Pro 0423 vs Qwen3.8 Flash: API price, context & features · api14