DeepSeek V4 Flash vs Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite — Side-by-side pricing
Side-by-side API pricing and tokenizer details for DeepSeek V4 Flash (DeepSeek) and Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite (Google).
Side-by-side pricing
| Feature | DeepSeek V4 Flash | Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | DeepSeek | |
| Input (per 1M tokens) | $0.140 | $0.300 |
| Output (per 1M tokens) | $0.280 | $2.50 |
| Context caching | Yes — 98% off cached tokens | Yes — 90% off cached tokens |
| Batch API discount | Not available | 50% off |
| Context window | 1M tokens | 1M tokens |
| Tokenizer | SentencePiece (Llama) | Gemini tokenizer |
Real-world cost example
1,000 API requests per month, each with 500 input tokens and 200 output tokens (500K input + 200K output total).
DeepSeek V4 Flash
$0.1260
Input: $0.0700 +Output: $0.0560
Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite
$0.6500
Input: $0.1500 +Output: $0.5000
DeepSeek V4 Flash is 81% cheaper for this workload — saving $0.5240 per month at this volume.
Frequently asked questions
Yes, DeepSeek V4 Flash is cheaper for the typical workload above. At $0.140/1M input and $0.280/1M output tokens, it costs $0.1260 versus $0.6500 for Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite — a 81% difference. Costs scale linearly with request volume, so larger workloads amplify this gap.
DeepSeek V4 Flash supports a 1M token context window. Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite supports a 1M token context window. A larger context window lets you include more text — documents, conversation history, or code — in a single API call.
DeepSeek V4 Flash supports context caching (98% off repeated tokens). It does not offer a batch API discount. Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite supports context caching (90% off repeated tokens). It offers a 50% Batch API discount.
No, they use different tokenizers. DeepSeek V4 Flash uses the SentencePiece (Llama), while Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite uses Gemini tokenizer. Different tokenizers split text differently, so the same prompt will produce different token counts on each model — the effective cost difference may be larger or smaller than the per-token price difference alone suggests.
DeepSeek V4 Flash (DeepSeek): $0.14 input / $0.28 output per 1M tokens. Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite (Google): $0.3 input / $2.5 output per 1M tokens. Rates shown before caching or batch discounts.
For an 80% output / 20% input workload — typical for code generation or long-form writing — DeepSeek V4 Flash costs $0.2520 per 1M total tokens and Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite costs $2.0600. DeepSeek V4 Flash is 88% cheaper for this pattern. For your exact ratio, paste a real prompt into the calculator above.
DeepSeek V4 Flash has a 1M-token context window — approximately 750K words or ~3K pages of standard text. Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite has a 1M-token context window — approximately 750K words or ~3K pages. (Estimates assume ~0.75 words per token.)
Calculate costs for your actual prompt
Paste your prompt into the calculator and get exact token counts using each model's real tokenizer — all in your browser.
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