DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 vs Gemini 4 Argon
Full profiles: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (DeepSeek) and Gemini 4 Argon (Google): every benchmark, price and rank.
Updated · Data from 8 sources
As of 24 Oct 2026, Gemini 4 Argon (high) leads on quality (70.8 vs 64.0 on the BenchLeader Index), but DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (max) costs 7.6× less, so it is the better buy unless you need the extra quality. Gemini 4 Argon (high)'s current price runs until 30 Nov 2026; from 1 Dec 2026 DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (max) costs 15× less ($0.525 vs $8.00 per 1M blended); on use case, pick DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 for long context (66 vs 65), Gemini 4 Argon for knowledge (77 vs 57).
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 benchmarks max DeepSeek
Gemini 4 Argon benchmarks high GoogleOpen in the comparison toolWhich to pick for…
The pick's numbers come first. Category scores on the BenchLeader scale (50 is the average model, 15 points one standard deviation). High confidence means a lead of half a standard deviation or more; under one point is called either.
| Use case | Pick | Why | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | Gemini 4 Argon | 72 vs 70 category score; Arena WebDev 1673 vs 1664 | Medium |
| Agents & tool use | Gemini 4 Argon | 72 vs 63 category score; Finance Agent v2 65.4% vs 57.0% | High |
| Maths | Gemini 4 Argon | 71 vs 62 category score; FrontierMath Tiers 1–3 86.0% vs 71.2% | High |
| Reasoning | Gemini 4 Argon | 75 vs 71 category score; GPQA Diamond 96.4% vs 93.2% | Medium |
| Knowledge | Gemini 4 Argon | 77 vs 57 category score; SimpleQA Verified 76.0% vs 42.5% | High |
| Long documents | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 | 66 vs 65 category score; AA-LCR 82.7% vs 79.7% | Medium |
| Chat quality (human preference) | – | Only Gemini 4 Argon has an Arena rating (72 category score) | Not comparable |
| Lowest cost | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 | $0.525 vs $4.00 per 1M blended; agentic coding session $0.023 vs $0.160; from 1 Dec 2026: $0.525 vs $8.00 | – |
| Fastest first answer | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 | 11.2 s (DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (max)) vs 57.0 s (Gemini 4 Argon (high)) to the first answer token | – |
| High volume on a budget | Neither flagship | A smaller model is usually the better fit: Cheapest good LLMs, Fastest LLMs | – |
Key differences
- Gemini 4 Argon (high) leads on quality: 70.8 vs 64.0.
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (max) is stronger in long context, multimodal.
- Gemini 4 Argon (high) is stronger in agents & tools, coding, composite, knowledge, maths, reasoning, human preference.
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (max) is 7.6× cheaper ($0.525 vs $4.00 per 1M blended) until 30 Nov 2026, then $0.525 vs $8.00 from 1 Dec 2026.
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (max) streams 2.5× faster (198 vs 79 tokens per second).
At a glance
| Spec | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 | Gemini 4 Argon |
|---|---|---|
| Developer | DeepSeek | |
| Released | 17 Oct 2026 | 30 Sept 2026 |
| Generally available | 17 Oct 2026 | 13 Oct 2026 |
| Context window (tokens) | 1,048,576 | 1,048,576 |
| Max output (tokens) | – | 65,536 (up to 1,048,576 with long decode) |
| Input types | – | text, image, video, audio, PDF |
| Reasoning effort settings | – | low, medium, high |
| Compared at | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (max) | Gemini 4 Argon (high) |
| Open weights | Yes | No |
| Price in / out / cached input per 1M | $0.300 / $1.20 / $0.0060 | $2.00 / $10.00 / $0.100 |
| Announced price change | None announced | $4.00 / $20.00 / $0.200 from 1 Dec 2026 |
| API model ID | – | gemini-4-argon |
| Where to use it | – | Gemini API (AI Studio), Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, Gemini app |
Limits, availability and announced prices from the vendors' own pages: ai.google.dev, ai.google.dev pricing (checked 20 Oct 2026). Everything else is from the day's data.
Category by category
Category scores on the BenchLeader scale: 50 is the average evaluated model, 15 points is one standard deviation. A gap under one point is called level.
| Category | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (max) | Gemini 4 Argon (high) | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reasoning | 70.6 | 74.8 | Gemini 4 Argon |
| Coding | 70.1 | 71.8 | Gemini 4 Argon |
| Agents & tools | 63.0 | 71.8 | Gemini 4 Argon |
| Maths | 61.8 | 70.5 | Gemini 4 Argon |
| Knowledge | 57.1 | 76.6 | Gemini 4 Argon |
| Human preference | – | 71.7 | not comparable |
| Multimodal | 63.7 | – | not comparable |
| Long context | 66.4 | 64.9 | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 |
| Composite | 80.0 | 88.3 | Gemini 4 Argon |
Where sources disagree
Across the 38 benchmarks both have, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 leads 5, Gemini 4 Argon leads 33. Every overall index that rates both puts Gemini 4 Argon ahead.
| Overall index | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (max) | Gemini 4 Argon (high) | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | 64.0 | 70.8 | Gemini 4 Argon |
| AA Intelligence Index v4.3.2 | 45.1 | 52.6 | Gemini 4 Argon |
| Vals Index | 61.3 | 69.2 | Gemini 4 Argon |
Each publisher runs its own tasks, harnesses and effort settings, so their overall verdicts can differ; BenchLeader reconciles them on one scale. † measured at another effort setting of the same model (the publisher did not test the one compared here).
Price, speed and latency
List prices blended at three input tokens per output token. Per-task prices use the token counts on the methodology page; suite cost is what Artificial Analysis paid to run its whole Intelligence Index.
| Measure | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (max) | Gemini 4 Argon (high) |
|---|---|---|
| Blended price per 1M tokens, until 30 Nov 2026 | $0.525 | $4.00 |
| Input / output per 1M | $0.300 / $1.20 | $2.00 / $10.00 |
| Blended price per 1M from 1 Dec 2026 | $0.525 | $8.00 |
| Input / output per 1M from 1 Dec 2026 | $0.300 / $1.20 | $4.00 / $20.00 |
| Cached input per 1M | $0.0060 | $0.100 |
| Price per task: chat reply | $0.0005 | $0.0038 |
| Price per task: summarize a 30-page report | $0.0043 | $0.030 |
| Price per task: code edit | $0.0036 | $0.027 |
| Price per task: agentic coding session | $0.023 | $0.160 |
| Price per task: structured extraction | $0.0008 | $0.0060 |
| Cost to run a full benchmark suite | $0.262 | $1.99 |
| Output speed | 198 tok/s | 79 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | 11.2 s | 57.0 s |
| Time to a complete answer | 13.7 s | 63.3 s |
Per token is not per task: on Artificial Analysis' full suite DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (max) cost $0.262 and Gemini 4 Argon (high) $1.99, because DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (max) used about 1.0× as many tokens for the same work.
Each model is compared at its best-ranked reasoning-effort setting. DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (max) scores 64.0 and takes 11 s to its first answer token. Gemini 4 Argon (high) scores 70.8 and takes 57 s to its first answer token; Gemini 4 Argon scores 64.9 in 5 s. Higher effort means more thinking before the answer: better scores, longer waits and more tokens billed. How reasoning effort changes scores and cost.
Every benchmark
110 benchmarks, grouped by category; each name links to the board and its leaders. † measured at another effort setting of the same model, shown for reference and not counted as a win.
| Metric | Publisher | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (max) | Gemini 4 Argon (high) |
|---|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | BenchLeader | 64.0 | 70.8 |
| Agents & tools score | BenchLeader | 63.0 | 71.8 |
| Coding score | BenchLeader | 70.1 | 71.8 |
| Composite score | BenchLeader | 80.0 | 88.3 |
| Knowledge score | BenchLeader | 57.1 | 76.6 |
| Long context score | BenchLeader | 66.4 | 64.9 |
| Maths score | BenchLeader | 61.8 | 70.5 |
| Multimodal score | BenchLeader | 63.7 | – |
| Reasoning score | BenchLeader | 70.6 | 74.8 |
| Human preference score | BenchLeader | – | 71.7 |
| Blended price $/M | BenchLeader | $0.525 | $4.00 |
| Output speed | BenchLeader | 198 tok/s | 79 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | BenchLeader | 11.2 s | 57.0 s |
| Context window | BenchLeader | 1,048,576 tokens | 1,048,576 tokens |
| Reasoning | |||
| GPQA Diamond | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 93.2% | 96.4% |
| Arena Hard Prompts | Arena (LMArena) | – | 1540 |
| LiveBench 2.0 Reasoning | LiveBench | 89.1%† | 95.1%† |
| Humanity's Last Exam (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 43.3% | 57.1% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | ARC Prize | 93.5% | 98.5% |
| ARC-AGI-2 | ARC Prize | 78.1% | 91.3% |
| ARC-AGI-3 | ARC Prize | – | 97.3% |
| CritPt | Artificial Analysis | 24.0% | 27.1% |
| MysteryMechanism | Vals AI | – | 45.5% |
| Chess Puzzles | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 46.0% | 59.0% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 49.0% | 64.0% |
| LMCA | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 63.7% |
| DTBench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 97.3% |
| Coding | |||
| SciCode | SciCode | – | 61.8% |
| FrontierCode | Cognition | – | 47.5%† |
| Arena Coding | Arena (LMArena) | – | 1552 |
| Arena WebDev | Arena (LMArena) | 1664 | 1673 |
| LiveBench 2.0 Coding | LiveBench | 96.0%† | 89.7%† |
| SciCode (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 55.9% | 61.8% |
| IOI | Vals AI | – | 100.0% |
| Code Migration | Vals AI | 44.2% | 68.2% |
| Code Migration v1.1 | Vals AI | 67.5% | 70.8% |
| ProgramBench | Vals AI | – | 2.5% |
| SWE-bench Multimodal | Vals AI | – | 56.0% |
| Vibe Code Bench 1-100 | Vals AI | – | 21.2% |
Show all 110 benchmarks
| Metric | Publisher | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (max) | Gemini 4 Argon (high) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | |||
| Vibe Code Bench v1.1 | Vals AI | 87.7% | 91.9% |
| MirrorCode | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 58.9% |
| CursorBench | Cursor | – | 52.9% |
| ALE-Bench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 2100.1 |
| FrontierSWE | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 55.0% |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 33.8% | 57.1% |
| FrontierCode 1.1 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 43.7% | 43.5% |
| Agents & tools | |||
| APEX-Agents | Mercor | – | 82.4%† |
| Arena Agent | Arena (LMArena) | – | 12 |
| LiveBench Long Agentic | LiveBench | 50.9%† | 69.9%† |
| LiveBench Browser | LiveBench | 76.0%† | 92.0%† |
| HiL-Bench | Scale AI SEAL | – | 62.0%† |
| GDPval-AA v2.1 | Artificial Analysis | 62.3% | 56.2% |
| Analyst Agent (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 48.8% |
| CUA-bench | Vals AI | – | 4.8% |
| CyberBench | Vals AI | – | 77.9% |
| Finance Agent v2 | Vals AI | 57.0% | 65.4% |
| Finance Agent v2.1 | Vals AI | 62.9% | 67.7% |
| Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark v1.1 | Vals AI | 14.2% | 27.1% |
| Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark v1 | Vals AI | 9.2% | 19.6% |
| Legal Research Bench | Vals AI | 45.2% | 54.8% |
| Robo-bench | Vals AI | – | 0.8% |
| SREBench | Vals AI | – | 44.3% |
| Tax Agent Bench | Vals AI | 44.4% | 44.6% |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 (Vals) | Vals AI | 31.8% | 57.6% |
| Terminal-Bench Science | Vals AI | – | 44.3% |
| Time Horizon Index: KSP | Vals AI | – | 52.5% |
| Vending-Bench 2 | Andon Labs | – | 13718.2† |
| AutomationBench | Artificial Analysis | 66.6% | 77.5% |
| GDP.pdf (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 17.2% | 21.8% |
| Harvey LAB-AA v1.1 | Harvey | – | 3.9% |
| AA-Briefcase v1.1 | Artificial Analysis | 1570 | 1486 |
| Terminal-Bench-Science 0.1 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 12.9% | 52.9% |
| CWE-Bench (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 69.2% | – |
| DeepSec-Bench (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 24.9% | – |
| CyberGym end-to-end (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 76.3% | – |
| FACTS Search | – | 84.0%† | |
| Maths | |||
| FrontierMath Tiers 1–3 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 71.2% | 86.0% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 46.3% | 78.0% |
| OTIS Mock AIME | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 99.4% | 100.0% |
| ProofBench | Vals AI | – | 99.0%† |
| Arena Maths | Arena (LMArena) | – | 1532 |
| Knowledge | |||
| SimpleQA Verified | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 42.5% | 76.0% |
| LiveBench 2.0 Data Analysis | LiveBench | 79.5%† | 85.2%† |
| LiveBench Research | LiveBench | 79.5%† | 83.1%† |
| AA-Omniscience | Artificial Analysis | 4.7 | 42.4 |
| LegalBench | Vals AI | – | 88.3% |
| PRBench Finance | Scale AI SEAL | – | 49.9%† |
| PRBench Legal | Scale AI SEAL | – | 49.4%† |
| BioMysteryBench | Vals AI | – | 76.3% |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark | Vals AI | 61.8% | 75.2% |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark v1.1 | Vals AI | 69.2% | 74.8% |
| MedCode | Vals AI | – | 58.8% |
| MedScribe | Vals AI | – | 87.4% |
| Public Benefits Bench v1.1 | Vals AI | – | 69.8% |
| DrugDiscoveryBench | Scale AI SEAL | – | 65.4% |
| EBR-bench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 64.8% |
| GDP.pdf | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 28.4% |
| AA-Omniscience: accuracy | Artificial Analysis | 42.9% | 49.9% |
| AA-Omniscience: non-hallucination | Artificial Analysis | 33.3% | 84.9% |
| Instruction following | |||
| MultiChallenge | Scale AI SEAL | – | 78.7%† |
| Arena Instruction Following | Arena (LMArena) | – | 1519 |
| Human preference | |||
| Arena Text | Arena (LMArena) | – | 1517 |
| Arena Creative Writing | Arena (LMArena) | – | 1512 |
| Arena Multi-turn | Arena (LMArena) | – | 1544 |
| Arena Longer Queries | Arena (LMArena) | – | 1535 |
| Multimodal | |||
| LiveBench Design | LiveBench | 83.4%† | 73.7%† |
| MMMU-Pro | Artificial Analysis | 80.6% | – |
| SAGE | Vals AI | – | 53.6% |
| AudioMC | Scale AI SEAL | – | 58.4% |
| AudioMC (text output) | Scale AI SEAL | – | 58.4% |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 54.5%† |
| AA-3D | Artificial Analysis | – | 1154 |
| Long context | |||
| AA-LCR | Artificial Analysis | 82.7% | 79.7% |
| MLCR | Artificial Analysis | 26.7% | 13.9% |
| Composite | |||
| Epoch Capabilities Index | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 166.4† |
| LiveBench 2.0 | LiveBench | 79.2%† | 84.1%† |
| AA Intelligence Index v4.3.2 | Artificial Analysis | 45.1 | 52.6 |
| Vals Index | Vals AI | 61.3 | 69.2 |
| Vals Finance Index | Vals AI | 60.9% | 64.9% |
| Vals RSI Index | Vals AI | – | 30.6% |
| Vals Science Index | Vals AI | – | 55.4% |
| Vals Router Index | Vals AI | 61.3%† | 69.2%† |
| AA Cyber Index | Artificial Analysis | 56.8 | – |
| Metadata | |||
| AA Openness Index | Artificial Analysis | 44.4 | – |
Data as of 2026-10-24. Best configuration of each model; every score links to its source on the model pages.
What changed
- Gemini 4 Argon: list price moves to $4.00 / $20.00 per 1M input / output tokens (announced).
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (max): 10 new results (MLCR, AA Cyber Index, CWE-Bench (AA)…).
- Gemini 4 Argon (high): 10 new results (Code Migration v1.1, Excel Modeling Benchmark v1.1, Finance Agent v2.1…); 7 score revisions.
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (max): BenchLeader Index 63.1 → 63.9.
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (max): 11 new results (GPQA Diamond, FrontierMath Tiers 1–3, FrontierMath Tier 4…).
- Gemini 4 Argon (high): 2 new results (MirrorCode, MLCR).
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (max): 1 new result (FrontierCode 1.1 (AA)); 2 score revisions.
- Gemini 4 Argon (high): 1 new result (Harvey LAB-AA v1.1); 2 score revisions.
- Gemini 4 Argon (high): 3 new results (LMCA, DTBench, ALE-Bench).
- Gemini 4 Argon (high): 5 new results (Analyst Agent (AA), FrontierCode 1.1 (AA), Terminal-Bench-Science 0.1 (AA)…); 1 score revision.
Related comparisons
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 vs Claude Opus 5.5
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 vs Muse Wonder Full
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 vs Claude Fable 5.1
- Gemini 4 Argon vs Claude Opus 5.5
- Gemini 4 Argon vs Muse Wonder Full
- Gemini 4 Argon vs Claude Fable 5.1
- Gemini 4 Argon vs GPT-6 Astra
- DeepSeek V4 Pro vs Gemini 4 Argon
Rankings: Best LLM overall · Best LLM for coding · Best LLM for agents · Best cheap LLMs
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 vs Gemini 4 Argon: questions
- Is DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 better than Gemini 4 Argon?
- Gemini 4 Argon (high) leads on quality: 70.8 vs 64.0. The BenchLeader Index combines every independent quality benchmark; Gemini 4 Argon (high) is ahead overall as of 2026-10-24, but check the category scores for your use.
- Which is cheaper, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 or Gemini 4 Argon, and will that change?
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 is cheaper today: $0.525 against $4.00 per million tokens, blended at three input tokens per output token. Yes, that changes: Gemini 4 Argon's list price changes on 1 Dec 2026, and from then DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 is cheaper ($0.525 vs $8.00 blended).
- Is DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 better than Gemini 4 Argon for coding?
- Gemini 4 Argon scores higher in coding (72 vs 70 on the category index, where 50 is average). On Arena WebDev, the top shared coding benchmark, it is 1664 for DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 against 1673 for Gemini 4 Argon.
- Is DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 better than Gemini 4 Argon for agents and tool use?
- Gemini 4 Argon scores higher in agentic tasks (72 vs 63 on the category index, where 50 is average).
- Which is better for long documents?
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 scores higher on long-context benchmarks (66 vs 65). Both accept 1,048,576 tokens of context.
- Which has lower latency?
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (max) answers first: 11.2 s against 57.0 s to the first answer token, as Artificial Analysis measures it. Reasoning effort drives most of this: a higher setting thinks longer before it answers.
- Which is faster, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 or Gemini 4 Argon?
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 streams faster: 198 against 79 output tokens per second.
- Do independent benchmarks agree on DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 vs Gemini 4 Argon?
- Across the 38 benchmarks both have, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 leads 5, Gemini 4 Argon leads 33. Every overall index that rates both puts Gemini 4 Argon ahead.
- When was DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 released?
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 was released on 17 Oct 2026.