New Deepseek Flash model matches OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Luna at roughly 60 percent lower cost

Jul 31, 2026

Deepseek has released V4 Flash "0731," a major upgrade to its budget AI model. According to the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, the new version scores 50 points, ten more than the previous V4 Flash that launched in April 2026. That puts it just one point behind OpenAI's budget model GPT-5.6 Luna, but it costs about 60 percent less per task, even after OpenAI's 80 percent price cut. A big reason for the gap is Deepseek's 98 percent cache discount, well above the industry-standard 90 percent. The model also uses 12 percent fewer tokens than its predecessor.

The Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index shows Deepseek V4 Flash "0731" scoring 50 points after its update, nearly matching OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Luna while claiming the top spot for price-to-performance ratio. | Image: Artificial Analysis

The model improves across every tested category compared to the previous version, with the biggest gains in agentic tasks. On GDPval, a benchmark designed to test models on complex real-world office work, it climbs from 1,189 to 1,559 Elo points. It also hallucinates less often. The architecture stays the same: 284 billion total parameters, 13 billion active, with a one-million-token context window. The model weights are available under an MIT license on Hugging Face.