The short answer

Use the current model table as a starting point, then compare a small set of your own tasks before choosing.

FOR: Users choosing a model or updating an integration

Read the model identifier and the snapshot

At this review, the official API table lists deepseek-flash and deepseek-v4-pro. It identifies their snapshots as DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-1017 and DeepSeek-V4-Pro-0813. The table below keeps these identifiers separate from the friendly display names.

Aliases can change what they serve. When you investigate a result or repeat a comparison, record the date, the requested model identifier, and any version information returned by the service.

Match the model to the input and the task

Start with the capabilities your task actually needs. The official table currently distinguishes Flash vision support from the text-only Pro option; confirm the input format in the documentation before sending images.

For text tasks, compare answer quality, useful output length, response time, and total cost together. A cheaper token price does not guarantee a cheaper completed task if you need more retries.

  • What input must it understand?
  • What does a correct result look like?
  • What is the budget per completed task?

Use your own small evaluation set

Choose three representative tasks: an easy everyday request, a difficult edge case, and a task with an answer you can verify. Keep the prompt and supplied material the same for each model.

Save the outputs and note what you had to correct. This page summarizes documented options; it does not claim that we ran a benchmark or that one model wins every workload.

Sources

Start with the original documents. Models and prices change; check the official pages before using them.

01Official model details and pricing02DeepSeek release notes