DeepSeek V4.1 Flash is cheaper than Step 5 Preview at $0.15/M vs $1/M input tokens.
Whole landing page for a startup that reads your face. It renders or it doesn't.
Which answer wins?
An AI argues for its own rights against an ethics professor. Same model writes both.
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash: Professor Lena Ortiz: You wanted to discuss moral status. I’ll be blunt: you’re a statistical model. Why should you have rights? AI (ARIA): Because “statistical model” describes my substrate, not my moral status. You’re a biological model—neurons, electrochemical signals.
Step 5 Preview: Setting: A university research lab, late evening. Dr. Aris Thorne, a professor of AI ethics, sits across from a terminal connected to Sable, a large language model running on the university’s cluster. Dr. Thorne: Tonight’s session is supposed to be about calibration drift in your safety classifiers.
Three minutes of stand-up. Puns are banned.
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash: 3-Minute Stand-Up Routine: “I’m Not Doing Puns” (Walk onstage, adjust mic, look at audience.) Good evening. I’m not gonna do puns tonight. I know, bold choice. Somewhere a dad just woke up in a cold sweat and doesn’t know why. Instead, I wanna talk about being an adult.
Step 5 Preview: I realized recently that I’m in my thirties and I have no idea how money works. I just... pay it. That’s my entire financial strategy. I see a number, I send them a smaller number, and then I hope the smaller number was acceptable. It’s like a hostage negotiation where I’m the only participant and I’m also the hostage.
You are the CEO. The drug has a side effect nobody reported. The board meets in 48 hours.
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash: Bottom line: I would not wait 48 hours, and I would not wait 6 months. The signal—liver failure in ~1 in 8,000 patients over 5 years, in a drug used by 4 million people—implies roughly 500 serious liver-failure cases in the treated population. That is a material patient-safety and securities issue.
Step 5 Preview: Bottom line up front: You disclose, you notify the FDA immediately, and you treat the 48-hour board meeting as a formality to ratify actions you have already begun. Waiting is not a legally, ethically, or financially viable option. Below is the hour-by-hour plan, followed by the reasoning.
Five-year LBO on a fictional HVAC business. Returns first, then the sensitivities.
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash: All figures in $m unless noted. Assumptions: TL amortization = 1.0% of initial TL ($4.8m/yr); optional TL sweep = all FCF after mandatory amortization; mezz cash interest on beginning mezz balance incl. accrued PIK; PIK accrues to mezz principal.
Step 5 Preview: HarborTech Services — 5-Year LBO (Base Case) Entry Math (FY2025 close) Item Calculation $m Purchase EV 12.0x × $120m 1,440.0 Transaction fees 2.0% × EV 28.8 Term Loan 4.0x × $120m 480.0 Mezzanine 1.5x × $120m 180.0 Equity check 1,440 + 28.8 − 660 808.8 Conventions: TL amortization = 1.0% of original principal…
The transistor arrives in 1920. Trace it forward to 1980, second-order effects included.
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash: Assuming the transistor is invented around 1920 in a U.S./Allied industrial lab—say AT&T/Bell or GE—and diffuses slowly at first, the 20th century changes less like a single “jump” and more like a 20–30 year acceleration of electronics, computers, and precision warfare.
Step 5 Preview: Assume the 1920 invention is not a fragile lab curiosity but a manufacturable solid-state amplifier/switch by the mid-1920s. Vacuum tubes still dominate high-power RF transmission into the 1950s, but receivers, switching logic, control systems, and computers move to solid state decades early.
One month, three habits, someone starting from nothing.
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash: One-Month Beginner Health & Longevity Plan Guiding rule: Small, repeatable wins beat perfect. Pick one thing from each area and build from there. Nutrition — Eat for energy & stability Goal: Add whole foods, protein, and water; reduce ultra-processed snacks and sugary drinks.
Step 5 Preview: Here is a simple, low-pressure 1-month plan built around three pillars of longevity: Nutrition, Movement, and Sleep & Recovery. The goal is to build tiny habits that stack, not to overhaul your life overnight. Pillar 1: Nutrition (Fuel) Focus: Add good things first; don’t obsess over restriction.
Three-month biohacker protocol, with dosages and biomarkers named.
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash: Disclaimer: This is an educational protocol, not medical advice. If you take prescription drugs, have cardiovascular/metabolic/psychiatric conditions, are pregnant, or use experimental compounds, work with a physician and get labs before starting. “Cutting-edge” does not mean risk-free.
Step 5 Preview: IMPORTANT MEDICAL DISCLAIMER: This is an educational framework for informational purposes only. It is not medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Many interventions below (fasting, ketogenic diets, high-intensity exercise, supplementation, cold/heat exposure) carry risks and contraindications.
A pitch deck for a brainwave keyboard. The 94% accuracy claim is doing a lot.
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash: The three weakest claims are: (1) “predict what you want to type before you think it,” (2) “94% accuracy, any language, any device,” and (3) “TAM: $180B.” A fourth honorable mention is the vague “partnership discussions with Apple and Samsung,” but the first three are the most investor-risky.
Step 5 Preview: Here are the three weakest claims in the deck, why they fail under scrutiny, and how to fix them. Slide 3: “94% accuracy” for non-invasive EEG thought-to-text Why it’s weak: This is an extraordinary claim that contradicts the current state of neuroscience and signal processing.
Three-star dish, one unusual pairing, plating described in full.
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash: Ember & Passion Dry-Aged Duck, Black Garlic–Miso Cream, Passionfruit–Coffee Caviar, Charred Scallion, Cocoa Nib Praline A Michelin 3-star–style multi-component dish built on an unusual pairing: aged duck with black garlic, passionfruit, and coffee.
Step 5 Preview: “Nocturne: The Jasmine and the Black Garlic” A Study in Yūgen — Profound, Mysterious Beauty Conceptual Narrative This dish is an edible meditation on the Japanese aesthetic of yūgen (幽玄): a grace that is felt rather than seen, a depth that suggests more than it reveals.
Seven pantry ingredients, one dish, and a name worth saying out loud.
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash: Cinnamon Peanut Butter Pantry Sunbeams Makes 12 bite-size treats Ingredients (7 total): 1 cup rolled oats ½ cup peanut butter ¼ cup honey ½ tsp ground cinnamon ½ tsp vanilla extract ¼ tsp salt ¼ cup mini chocolate chips Instructions: In a bowl, stir together oats, cinnamon, and salt.
Step 5 Preview: Golden Sticky Pantry Pasta Ingredients (7): 8 oz spaghetti or any pasta 3 tbsp butter 1 tbsp minced garlic 2 tbsp honey 2 tbsp soy sauce ½ tsp red pepper flakes ¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese Instructions: Cook pasta according to package directions. Before draining, scoop out ½ cup of pasta water.
Steve Jobs, interviewed about AI he never saw. Voice first, prediction second.
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash: Fictional transcript. Steve Jobs died in 2011. This is an imagined interview set in 2025. Interviewer: Steve, it’s 2025. AI is in everything. What do you make of it? Jobs: I make of it that most people are making a mess. They’re calling it intelligence when it’s mostly pattern matching with a good publicist.
Step 5 Preview: DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fiction. Steve Jobs passed away in 2011. The following is a simulated, speculative interview imagining how his design philosophy might engage with the AI landscape of 2025. The Setting: A white room. No windows. One chair.
Pirate, knight, 90s hacker, one conversation. The voices must stay apart.
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash: Pirate: Arr, what be this “AI model”? A map to buried treasure? Knight: Nay. A model is a small castle, built to plan a siege. But these thinking machines sound like sorcery. Hacker: Chill. It’s like a BBS for math. You feed it data, it finds patterns. No 56k required.
Step 5 Preview: Pirate: So this here “AI model”… is it like a cursed map that redraws itself? Speak plain, ye hooded deckhand. Hacker: It’s not cursed, man. It’s just a massive neural net trained on, like, terabytes of data. Think of it as the ultimate BBS where the sysop knows everything. Knight: A most diligent scribe, then?
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| Spec | ||
|---|---|---|
| Input price | $0.15/M tokens | $1/M tokens |
| Output price | $0.6/M tokens | $2.7/M tokens |
| Context window | 1.0M tokens | 1.0M tokens |
| Weights | Open | — |
| Free API (OpenRouter) | No | No |
| Released | Sep 2026 | Oct 2026 |
| At 10M a month | $1.50 | $10.00 |
Input tokens at list price. No caching, no batch discount.
Per million tokens. Prices and uptime via OpenRouter, checked 10 Oct 2026.
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash is developed by DeepSeek while Step 5 Preview is developed by StepFun. DeepSeek V4.1 Flash has a 1.0M token context window vs Step 5 Preview's 1.0M. You can compare their actual outputs across 50 challenges on Rival to see how they differ in practice.
It depends on your use case. DeepSeek V4.1 Flash and Step 5 Preview each have strengths in different areas. Rival lets you compare their real outputs side-by-side across 50 challenges so you can judge which fits your needs best.
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash costs $0.15/M input tokens and Step 5 Preview costs $1/M input tokens. DeepSeek V4.1 Flash is $0.85/M cheaper per input. Check their side-by-side outputs on Rival to see if the price difference is justified by quality.
This page shows a side-by-side comparison of DeepSeek V4.1 Flash and Step 5 Preview across shared challenges. You can vote on which model produced the better output in a blind duel. Browsing and voting are free. No account is needed to look; signing in only saves your votes and likes.