DeepSeek V4-Flash Review: Needs Max Effort to Tie Grok, but Cost Per Task is Insanely Low

teortaxesTex · x · 2026-08-03

Third-party benchmarks have been updated for DeepSeek V4-Flash, which currently offers three effort levels: Low, High, and Max (no Medium).

Tests show DeepSeek needs to be set to Max effort to tie with Grok 4.5 at Medium effort. However, its cost-per-task is insanely low, making it incredibly cost-effective. Additionally, observations indicate that while OpenAI models show clear linear scaling with genuine effort, DeepSeek's cost-efficiency curve does not currently form a Pareto frontier.

Related event: DeepSeek V4-Flash Costs 105x Less, But Stability and Benchmark Overfitting Questioned(17 posts)→

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