Models
MiniMax and DeepSeek: Flash models slash the price of agentic coding
Within three days, DeepSeek and then MiniMax shipped compact models that chase frontier coding scores for a few cents per task.
Between October 17 and 19, 2026, two Chinese labs released "Flash" models built for coding agents, with the same pitch: a much lower cost per task.
MiniMax M3.1 Flash (Oct 19)
- Price: $0.15 per million input tokens, $0.60 output, $0.015 cached input (MiniMax).
- Coding: 73.7% on DeepSWE v1.1, according to MiniMax.
- Efficiency: nearly 3x faster inference and 70% lower usage cost on agentic tasks versus its predecessor, according to MiniMax.
- Availability: MiniMax API, M Plan and MiniMax Code; weights will be released later.
On independent testing, Artificial Analysis gives it 42 on its Intelligence Index (up from 29 for M3), but flags a strong tendency to answer wrongly rather than admit uncertainty (VentureBeat).
DeepSeek V4.1-Flash-1017 (Oct 17)
- Coding: 77.0% on DeepSWE v1.1, up from 74.2% for the previous version (Hugging Face).
- Cost: just under $0.20 per DeepSWE task on average, per DeepSeek's published chart (The Decoder).
- Open: MIT-licensed weights on Hugging Face and ModelScope. DeepSeek is also opening its Search and Fetch APIs at $0.75 per 1,000 calls (DeepSeek).
Most of these scores come from the vendors themselves: wait for independent tests before betting production on them.