Pick DeepSeek V4.1 Flash for software engineering (deepswe v1.1: 74.2, essentially level with claude opus 5's 74.0) or 1m-token context window at a fraction of frontier pricing ($0.15/$0.60 per million tokens off-peak). Pick Hunyuan Hy4 Preview for gpqa diamond (92.3) or terminal-bench (85.4). On a tight budget at scale, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash is the value pick.
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (DeepSeek) and Hunyuan Hy4 Preview (Tencent) are two of the models people most often weigh against each other in 2026. DeepSeek V4.1 Flash is deepSeek's September 2026 flash-tier update adds native vision and a 1M-token window to its cost-efficient V4 line, at $0.15/$0.60 per million tokens. Hunyuan Hy4 Preview is tencent's open-sourced (Apache 2.0) next-generation Hunyuan flagship preview, released August 28, 2026 as a 770B-parameter (49B active) MoE model that helped optimize its own training pipeline. They diverge most on price and context window — each quantified below from the models' real specs.
Key differences
Price: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash is about 5.6× cheaper on input ($0.15/$0.6 per 1M tokens vs $0.834/$2.501 per 1M tokens) — a large enough gap that at scale it can be the single biggest line item in the decision.
Context window: 1.05M tokens vs 1M+ tokens — within a few percent of each other, so treat this as a tie and test on your own long inputs, since usable recall varies by model.
Specifications
Spec
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
Hunyuan Hy4 Preview
Provider
DeepSeek (China)
Tencent (China)
Released
September 10, 2026
August 28, 2026
Context window
1.05M tokens (~1,573 pages)
1M+ tokens (~1,500 pages)
Price (in/out)
$0.15/$0.6 per 1M tokens
$0.834/$2.501 per 1M tokens
Open weight?
Yes — self-hostable
Yes — self-hostable
Modalities
text, image
text
SWE-Bench Verified
Not published
Not published
MRCR v2 @ 1M
Not published
Not published
Who wins what
Software engineering (DeepSWE v1.1: 74.2, essentially level with Claude Opus 5's 74.0): DeepSeek V4.1 Flash — DeepSeek's September 2026 flash-tier update adds native vision and a 1M-token window to its cost-efficient V4 line, at $0.15/$0.60 per million tokens — and it runs cheaper at $0.15/$0.6 per 1M tokens.
1M-token context window at a fraction of frontier pricing ($0.15/$0.60 per million tokens off-peak): DeepSeek V4.1 Flash — DeepSeek's September 2026 flash-tier update adds native vision and a 1M-token window to its cost-efficient V4 line, at $0.15/$0.60 per million tokens — and it is the newer of the two.
Native multimodal vision, added over the text-only V4-Flash it replaces on most traffic: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash — Hunyuan Hy4 Preview is comparatively weak here — text-only, no native vision support
GPQA Diamond (92.3): Hunyuan Hy4 Preview — Hunyuan Hy4 Preview lists gPQA Diamond (92.3) among its strengths; DeepSeek V4.1 Flash does not.
Terminal-Bench (85.4): Hunyuan Hy4 Preview — Hunyuan Hy4 Preview lists terminal-Bench (85.4) among its strengths; DeepSeek V4.1 Flash does not.
SWE-bench Multilingual (82.9): Hunyuan Hy4 Preview — Hunyuan Hy4 Preview lists sWE-bench Multilingual (82.9) among its strengths; DeepSeek V4.1 Flash does not.
Lowest cost at scale: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash — At $0.15/$0.6 per 1M tokens, it is the cheaper of the two — the gap dominates the bill on high-volume workloads.
Which should you pick?
A cost-sensitive startup shipping high volume: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash — At $0.15/$0.6 per 1M tokens it undercuts Hunyuan Hy4 Preview, and on millions of tokens that margin decides the monthly bill.
Someone analysing very long documents or codebases: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash — Larger 1.05M tokens window fits more in one prompt.
Anyone whose priority is software engineering (deepswe v1.1: 74.2, essentially level with claude opus 5's 74.0): DeepSeek V4.1 Flash — It is specifically built for that.
Anyone whose priority is gpqa diamond (92.3): Hunyuan Hy4 Preview — That is its strongest area.
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash: where it fits
DeepSeek's September 2026 flash-tier update adds native vision and a 1M-token window to its cost-efficient V4 line, at $0.15/$0.60 per million tokens. Released September 10, 2026 by DeepSeek, it is built for software engineering (DeepSWE v1.1: 74.2, essentially level with Claude Opus 5's 74.0), 1M-token context window at a fraction of frontier pricing ($0.15/$0.60 per million tokens off-peak), native multimodal vision, added over the text-only V4-Flash it replaces on most traffic, and mIT-licensed open weights, self-hostable.
Its trade-offs are real: the $0.15/$0.60 pricing is an off-peak rate — cost reportedly doubles during peak-demand hours, new Causal Encoder-Decoder architecture (8B active for input, 16B for output) is unproven at broader scale versus DeepSeek's mainline V4/V4-Pro line, and positioned as a cost/speed tier, not a frontier-reasoning flagship — DeepSeek kept V4-Pro running in parallel rather than replacing it outright. At $0.15 in / $0.6 out per million tokens, it sits in the budget price band.
Hunyuan Hy4 Preview: where it fits
Tencent's open-sourced (Apache 2.0) next-generation Hunyuan flagship preview, released August 28, 2026 as a 770B-parameter (49B active) MoE model that helped optimize its own training pipeline. Released August 28, 2026 by Tencent, it is built for gPQA Diamond (92.3), terminal-Bench (85.4), sWE-bench Multilingual (82.9), and large jump in long-horizon coding vs prior Hunyuan model (DeepSWE 28.0 to 64.3).
Its trade-offs: text-only, no native vision support, labeled a 'preview', not yet Tencent's finalized GA flagship, and sWE-Marathon score still low in absolute terms (31.9) despite a large relative jump. At $0.834 in / $2.501 out per million tokens, it sits in the budget price band.
The bottom line for this matchup
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash and Hunyuan Hy4 Preview overlap enough that the right pick depends on your specific job. DeepSeek V4.1 Flash costs less per token; DeepSeek V4.1 Flash holds the larger context; and each leads in its own area — DeepSeek V4.1 Flash for software engineering (deepswe v1.1: 74.2, essentially level with claude opus 5's 74.0), Hunyuan Hy4 Preview for gpqa diamond (92.3). Rather than crowning one, run the same hard task through both once and let the results decide.
Frequently asked questions
Is DeepSeek V4.1 Flash or Hunyuan Hy4 Preview better for coding?
Public SWE-Bench figures are not available for either model, so the honest test is your own repository — run an identical real bug through both. By design, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash leans toward software engineering (deepswe v1.1: 74.2, essentially level with claude opus 5's 74.0) while Hunyuan Hy4 Preview leans toward gpqa diamond (92.3), and that positioning usually predicts which feels better on your codebase.
Which is cheaper, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash or Hunyuan Hy4 Preview?
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash is cheaper — $0.15/$0.6 per 1M tokens vs $0.834/$2.501 per 1M tokens, roughly 5.6× apart on input.
Which has the bigger context window?
Effectively neither — 1.05M tokens vs 1M+ tokens is a difference of a few percent. Remember advertised ≠ usable: recall typically degrades before the ceiling.
Can I use both DeepSeek V4.1 Flash and Hunyuan Hy4 Preview together?
Yes — a multi-model platform like LumiChats gives you DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, Hunyuan Hy4 Preview and 40+ others under one ₹69/day pass (about $1/day), so you can draft with one and cross-check with the other instead of buying two subscriptions.
Which is newer, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash or Hunyuan Hy4 Preview?
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash — released September 10, 2026, about 13 days after Hunyuan Hy4 Preview.
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash vs Hunyuan Hy4 Preview
DeepSeek · China | Tencent · China · Updated June 2026
Quick verdict
Pick DeepSeek V4.1 Flash for software engineering (deepswe v1.1: 74.2, essentially level with claude opus 5's 74.0) or 1m-token context window at a fraction of frontier pricing ($0.15/$0.60 per million tokens off-peak). Pick Hunyuan Hy4 Preview for gpqa diamond (92.3) or terminal-bench (85.4). On a tight budget at scale, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash is the value pick.
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (DeepSeek) and Hunyuan Hy4 Preview (Tencent) are two of the models people most often weigh against each other in 2026. DeepSeek V4.1 Flash is deepSeek's September 2026 flash-tier update adds native vision and a 1M-token window to its cost-efficient V4 line, at $0.15/$0.60 per million tokens. Hunyuan Hy4 Preview is tencent's open-sourced (Apache 2.0) next-generation Hunyuan flagship preview, released August 28, 2026 as a 770B-parameter (49B active) MoE model that helped optimize its own training pipeline. They diverge most on price and context window — each quantified below from the models' real specs.
Key differences at a glance
▸Price: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash is about 5.6× cheaper on input ($0.15/$0.6 per 1M tokens vs $0.834/$2.501 per 1M tokens) — a large enough gap that at scale it can be the single biggest line item in the decision.
▸Context window: 1.05M tokens vs 1M+ tokens — within a few percent of each other, so treat this as a tie and test on your own long inputs, since usable recall varies by model.
Side-by-side specs
Spec
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
Hunyuan Hy4 Preview
Provider
DeepSeek (China)
Tencent (China)
Released
September 10, 2026
August 28, 2026
Context window
1.05M tokens (~1,573 pages)
1M+ tokens (~1,500 pages)
Price (in/out)
$0.15/$0.6 per 1M tokens
$0.834/$2.501 per 1M tokens
Open weight?
Yes — self-hostable
Yes — self-hostable
Modalities
text, image
text
SWE-Bench Verified
Not published
Not published
MRCR v2 @ 1M
Not published
Not published
Who wins what
Software engineering (DeepSWE v1.1: 74.2, essentially level with Claude Opus 5's 74.0)
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
DeepSeek's September 2026 flash-tier update adds native vision and a 1M-token window to its cost-efficient V4 line, at $0.15/$0.60 per million tokens — and it runs cheaper at $0.15/$0.6 per 1M tokens.
1M-token context window at a fraction of frontier pricing ($0.15/$0.60 per million tokens off-peak)
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
DeepSeek's September 2026 flash-tier update adds native vision and a 1M-token window to its cost-efficient V4 line, at $0.15/$0.60 per million tokens — and it is the newer of the two.
Native multimodal vision, added over the text-only V4-Flash it replaces on most traffic
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
Hunyuan Hy4 Preview is comparatively weak here — text-only, no native vision support
GPQA Diamond (92.3)
Hunyuan Hy4 Preview
Hunyuan Hy4 Preview lists gPQA Diamond (92.3) among its strengths; DeepSeek V4.1 Flash does not.
Terminal-Bench (85.4)
Hunyuan Hy4 Preview
Hunyuan Hy4 Preview lists terminal-Bench (85.4) among its strengths; DeepSeek V4.1 Flash does not.
SWE-bench Multilingual (82.9)
Hunyuan Hy4 Preview
Hunyuan Hy4 Preview lists sWE-bench Multilingual (82.9) among its strengths; DeepSeek V4.1 Flash does not.
Lowest cost at scale
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
At $0.15/$0.6 per 1M tokens, it is the cheaper of the two — the gap dominates the bill on high-volume workloads.
Which should you pick?
A cost-sensitive startup shipping high volume
→ DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
At $0.15/$0.6 per 1M tokens it undercuts Hunyuan Hy4 Preview, and on millions of tokens that margin decides the monthly bill.
Someone analysing very long documents or codebases
→ DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
Larger 1.05M tokens window fits more in one prompt.
Anyone whose priority is software engineering (deepswe v1.1: 74.2, essentially level with claude opus 5's 74.0)
→ DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
It is specifically built for that.
Anyone whose priority is gpqa diamond (92.3)
→ Hunyuan Hy4 Preview
That is its strongest area.
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash: where it fits
DeepSeek's September 2026 flash-tier update adds native vision and a 1M-token window to its cost-efficient V4 line, at $0.15/$0.60 per million tokens. Released September 10, 2026 by DeepSeek, it is built for software engineering (DeepSWE v1.1: 74.2, essentially level with Claude Opus 5's 74.0), 1M-token context window at a fraction of frontier pricing ($0.15/$0.60 per million tokens off-peak), native multimodal vision, added over the text-only V4-Flash it replaces on most traffic, and mIT-licensed open weights, self-hostable.
Its trade-offs are real: the $0.15/$0.60 pricing is an off-peak rate — cost reportedly doubles during peak-demand hours, new Causal Encoder-Decoder architecture (8B active for input, 16B for output) is unproven at broader scale versus DeepSeek's mainline V4/V4-Pro line, and positioned as a cost/speed tier, not a frontier-reasoning flagship — DeepSeek kept V4-Pro running in parallel rather than replacing it outright. At $0.15 in / $0.6 out per million tokens, it sits in the budget price band.
Hunyuan Hy4 Preview: where it fits
Tencent's open-sourced (Apache 2.0) next-generation Hunyuan flagship preview, released August 28, 2026 as a 770B-parameter (49B active) MoE model that helped optimize its own training pipeline. Released August 28, 2026 by Tencent, it is built for gPQA Diamond (92.3), terminal-Bench (85.4), sWE-bench Multilingual (82.9), and large jump in long-horizon coding vs prior Hunyuan model (DeepSWE 28.0 to 64.3).
Its trade-offs: text-only, no native vision support, labeled a 'preview', not yet Tencent's finalized GA flagship, and sWE-Marathon score still low in absolute terms (31.9) despite a large relative jump. At $0.834 in / $2.501 out per million tokens, it sits in the budget price band.
The bottom line for this matchup
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash and Hunyuan Hy4 Preview overlap enough that the right pick depends on your specific job. DeepSeek V4.1 Flash costs less per token; DeepSeek V4.1 Flash holds the larger context; and each leads in its own area — DeepSeek V4.1 Flash for software engineering (deepswe v1.1: 74.2, essentially level with claude opus 5's 74.0), Hunyuan Hy4 Preview for gpqa diamond (92.3). Rather than crowning one, run the same hard task through both once and let the results decide.
Want both DeepSeek V4.1 Flash and Hunyuan Hy4 Preview without two subscriptions? LumiChats gives you these plus 40+ models under one ₹69/day pass (about $1/day) — draft with one, cross-check with the other.
Is DeepSeek V4.1 Flash or Hunyuan Hy4 Preview better for coding?
Public SWE-Bench figures are not available for either model, so the honest test is your own repository — run an identical real bug through both. By design, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash leans toward software engineering (deepswe v1.1: 74.2, essentially level with claude opus 5's 74.0) while Hunyuan Hy4 Preview leans toward gpqa diamond (92.3), and that positioning usually predicts which feels better on your codebase.
Which is cheaper, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash or Hunyuan Hy4 Preview?
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash is cheaper — $0.15/$0.6 per 1M tokens vs $0.834/$2.501 per 1M tokens, roughly 5.6× apart on input.
Which has the bigger context window?
Effectively neither — 1.05M tokens vs 1M+ tokens is a difference of a few percent. Remember advertised ≠ usable: recall typically degrades before the ceiling.
Can I use both DeepSeek V4.1 Flash and Hunyuan Hy4 Preview together?
Yes — a multi-model platform like LumiChats gives you DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, Hunyuan Hy4 Preview and 40+ others under one ₹69/day pass (about $1/day), so you can draft with one and cross-check with the other instead of buying two subscriptions.
Which is newer, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash or Hunyuan Hy4 Preview?
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash — released September 10, 2026, about 13 days after Hunyuan Hy4 Preview.
Specifications and benchmarks reflect publicly reported figures as of June 2026 and may change as providers release updates. Always verify on your own workload.