DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-1017 vs MiniMax M3.1-Flash-Preview
A direct, empirical evaluation of DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-1017 (DeepSeek) against MiniMax M3.1-Flash-Preview (MiniMax).
DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-1017
Developed by DeepSeek · Open-Weight Distilled Transformer (MIT License) parameters
Top-tier open-weight coding (81.6% SWE-bench Verified), concise reasoning traces with 32% lower token bloat, and fast consumer GPU self-hosting.
MiniMax M3.1-Flash-Preview
Developed by MiniMax · Proprietary Sparse Coding MoE parameters
Low-latency interactive IDE code completions at 165 tokens/sec, SWE-bench Verified bug fixes (73.8%), terminal automation, and budget-optimized pull request reviews.
| Metric | DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-1017 | MiniMax M3.1-Flash-Preview |
|---|---|---|
| SWE-bench Verified | 81.6% | 73.8% |
| MMLU-Pro | 92.8% | 81.2% |
| MATH-500 | 94.8% | 92.4% |
| Context Window | 128,000 tokens | 1,000,000 tokens |
| Input Pricing (per 1M) | $0.14 | $0.10 |
| Output Pricing (per 1M) | $0.28 | $0.40 |
Architectural & Practical Deployment Analysis
Evaluating DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-1017 (DeepSeek) alongside MiniMax M3.1-Flash-Preview (MiniMax) highlights key technical trade-offs across neural parameter scale and compute efficiency. DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-1017 executes across Open-Weight Distilled Transformer (MIT License) total parameters with Multi-Head Latent Attention (MLA) Core active per token, whereas MiniMax M3.1-Flash-Preview operates on Proprietary Sparse Coding MoE parameters with 16 Active Specialized Coding Experts active per token.
On SWE-bench Verified software engineering tasks, DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-1017 achieves 81.6% autonomous resolution rate, compared to 73.8% for MiniMax M3.1-Flash-Preview. On complex reasoning benchmarks, DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-1017 posts 92.8% on MMLU-Pro and 94.8% on MATH-500, against 81.2% and 92.4% respectively for MiniMax M3.1-Flash-Preview.
From an operational economics perspective, processing 10,000,000 mixed tokens (7M input / 3M output) costs approximately $1.82 on DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-1017 versus $1.90 on MiniMax M3.1-Flash-Preview.
Recommendation: Deploy DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-1017 when your infrastructure prioritizes top-tier open-weight coding (81.6% swe-bench verified), concise reasoning traces with 32% lower token bloat, and fast consumer gpu self-hosting.. Deploy MiniMax M3.1-Flash-Preview when workload requirements favor low-latency interactive ide code completions at 165 tokens/sec, swe-bench verified bug fixes (73.8%), terminal automation, and budget-optimized pull request reviews..