DeepSeek released V4.1 Flash on 10 September 2026 and an updated version, V4.1-Flash-1017, on 17 October. It is fast, cheap and widely covered, so a lot of people want to know whether they can use it for free.
Is it free?
Not in the usual sense. DeepSeek’s pricing page states no free tier for V4.1 Flash; it mentions a granted balance on some accounts but gives no amount. OpenRouter lists the model only as a paid model, with no :free version.
What it does have is a low price. DeepSeek’s own figures as of 29 October 2026:
| DeepSeek V4.1 Flash | |
|---|---|
| Model ID on DeepSeek’s API | deepseek-flash (older deepseek-v4-flash names route to it) |
| Input price | $0.30 per million tokens at peak hours |
| Output price | $1.20 per million tokens at peak hours |
| Off-peak | Half price |
| Image input | Listed as supported on DeepSeek’s pricing page |
At these prices, a short question with a short answer costs a small fraction of a cent. Check the DeepSeek pricing page before you rely on the numbers; they change.
Where else you can call it
| Platform | Model ID | Free? |
|---|---|---|
| DeepSeek API | deepseek-flash |
No stated free tier |
| OpenRouter | deepseek/deepseek-v4.1-flash-1017 |
No; paid only |
| Cloudflare Workers AI | @cf/deepseek-ai/deepseek-v4.1-flash-1017 |
Not in the free allowance; needs Workers Paid or credits |
| Mistral | deepseek-v4-1-flash-1017 |
Listed since 28 October as a public preview |
Free models that do a similar job
If you want a fast, capable model without paying, these are free through an API today:
- GPT-OSS 120B on Groq: up to 1,000 requests and 200,000 tokens a day on the free plan. Good for text questions that need reasoning.
- Qwen 3.8 27B on Groq: the same free limits, and it reads images.
- Gemini 3.8 Flash on the Gemini API free tier: reads images and handles long questions.
- Gemma 4 as a
:freemodel on OpenRouter: 50 requests a day, useful as a second opinion.
How to get a free Groq API key and how to get a free Gemini API key each take a couple of minutes. For the other new releases, see which new AI models have a free API.
Using these models in LuciQA
LuciQA is a free desktop app that answers questions about what is on your screen with the provider you choose. It does not offer DeepSeek models at the moment; it does offer the free alternatives above. With LuciQA Pro you can ask Groq and Gemini the same question at once and compare the two free answers side by side.