Dev finds DeepSeek 4.1 Flash faster and cheaper than Gemini Flash — but drops it over data concerns

julianharris · x · 2026-09-19

A developer reports DeepSeek 4.1 Flash is faster, more accurate, and much cheaper than Gemini Flash — yet rules out all Chinese APIs anyway because customer data can't go near China. He's considering fine-tuning a small model instead, since he has plenty of ground truth data. A real-world trade-off between price/performance and data compliance.

Related event: DeepSeek 4.1 Flash Beats Gemini Flash in Test, but Developer Drops It Over Compliance(3 posts)→

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