DeepSeek V4.1 Flash is being listed at dramatically lower input prices by some third-party providers on OpenRouter, with Relace advertising rates around 1,500 times below DeepSeek’s official off-peak input price.
Relace lists the model at $0.0001 per million input tokens. By comparison, DeepSeek’s official off-peak rate is $0.15 per million input tokens.
The price gap has sparked discussion on Reddit’s r/DeepSeek community. Users have highlighted the unusually low rates listed by Relace and Open Inference.
Open Inference also advertises a low input rate of around $0.00011 per million tokens. Its listed output rate is approximately $0.36 per million tokens.
However, the 1,500-times difference applies only to input pricing. Relace still lists output tokens at $0.60 per million, matching DeepSeek’s official off-peak rate.
How the Listed Prices Compare
DeepSeek’s published off-peak pricing for V4.1 Flash is $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.60 per million output tokens. During peak periods, both rates double.
Relace’s OpenRouter listing shows $0.0001 per million input tokens and $0.60 per million output tokens. Meanwhile, Open Inference lists approximately $0.00011 for input and $0.36 for output per million tokens.
These figures make Relace’s advertised input rate roughly 1,500 times lower than DeepSeek’s standard off-peak price.
The rates are provider listings on aggregators such as OpenRouter. However, prices can change, and actual costs depend on factors such as caching, routing and output volume.
What Is DeepSeek V4.1 Flash?
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash is a sparse mixture-of-experts model released around September 10, 2026. It is the first model based on DeepSeek’s Causal Encoder-Decoder architecture.
The company describes a 552-billion-parameter backbone. According to DeepSeek, the model activates around 8 billion parameters for input processing and 16 billion for output generation.
The model targets coding, terminal operations, computer-use agents and long-context tasks. OpenRouter lists a context window of one million tokens.
DeepSeek also says compressed key-value (KV) caching reduces memory use compared with the previous Flash generation. This can be useful for AI agents that repeatedly process long prompts.
ProPakistani previously covered the DeepSeek V4.1 Flash launch, including its official pricing and native vision support.
The latest attention, however, centres on third-party providers advertising exceptionally low rates rather than another official price reduction by DeepSeek.
Why Developers Are Watching the Prices
For applications that process large amounts of input text, a drop from $0.15 to $0.0001 per million tokens could significantly reduce costs if the advertised rates remain available and the service delivers reliable performance.
However, output costs remain important. Relace charges $0.60 per million output tokens, so applications that generate long responses will not benefit from the same 1,500-fold price difference.
Open Inference’s lower advertised output rate of $0.36 per million tokens offers another potential saving. Still, developers should compare uptime, response speed and consistency before choosing a provider.
DeepSeek has previously attracted attention for pricing changes, including when it raised prices by up to four times. The latest third-party listings present a sharp contrast with those earlier increases.
For now, the key distinction is clear: Relace and Open Inference advertise DeepSeek V4.1 Flash input rates near $0.0001 per million tokens, far below DeepSeek’s official off-peak rate. Output pricing, however, remains much closer to the standard rates, and developers should verify current prices and service performance before committing to a provider.
