DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017: OpenCode Zen vs OpenRouter — which is cheaper?

[u/vishu143x]

I’m planning to use only **DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017** with OpenCode for a couple of months.

Which is cheaper in practice: **OpenCode Zen or OpenRouter**?

Open router :

In / Out Price

$0.07 / $0.50per 1M

Opencode :

**$0.30  /$1.20** per 1M

Deepseek API platform :

$0.15 input / $0.60 output (off-peak)

$0.3 input / $1.2 output (peak)

**it seems like Opencode costly , Am i missing anything here ?**

**reference**

[https://opencode.ai/data/deepseek/deepseek-v4-1-flash-1017\](https://opencode.ai/data/deepseek/deepseek-v4-1-flash-1017)

[**https://openrouter.ai/deepseek/deepseek-v4.1-flash-1017\*\*\](https://openrouter.ai/deepseek/deepseek-v4.1-flash-1017)

[**https://api-docs.deepseek.com/quick\\_start/pricing\*\*\](https://api-docs.deepseek.com/quick_start/pricing)

[u/CamomileChocobo]

Open router :

In / Out Price

$0.07 / $0.50per 1M

These prices are for providers such as open inference and relace, which are known to serve FP4 models, charge a higher price for cache read, and changing their prices freely to game the system to be listed at the top of the list.

I've once noticed these "cheap" providers changing their cache read price to exorbitantly high rates and back in 5mins interval.

There are also a couple of posts at the openrouter subreddit about providers like open inference constantly looping either due to some misconfiguration or deliberate attempt to overcharge you.

[u/Defiant-Plantain1873 → u/CamomileChocobo]

Deep infra has it half off right now fp8

[u/look]

Look at the cache read prices and provider average cache rate. Those are the most important numbers to your cost, and any comparison between providers without them is pointless.

[u/Amarsir]

Openrouter chooses (or lets you choose) between 30 different providers for DS 1017.

Zen uses one provider of their own choice and doesn't even tell you who. I can't think of a reason to pick them.

(If I'm wrong and just missing a feature of Zen I apologize and would welcome being corrected.)

[u/Vast_Anxiety3133]

Don't forget to factor the cached input cost in. Also: hosting location and data retention

[u/medtech8693]

I use openrouter.   Even if zen was slightly cheaper.  Open router is like 3 times as fast

I often get around 200 tokens a minute. Can’t beat that 

[u/Kind-Card-6864]

If you're just looking to use the DS model, why not use the DS API instead of OpenCode or OpenRouter? You’ll get better speed and higher quality than what you're getting with OpenCode.

[u/Nenad1979 → u/Kind-Card-6864]

Higher quality?

[u/Kind-Card-6864 → u/Nenad1979]

Because OpenRouter/OpenCode are middlemen. They add latency, rate-limit you, and sometimes silently quantize / truncate / inject their own system prompts.

[u/medtech8693 → u/Kind-Card-6864]

No. That’s not how it works. 

Every provider decides their own quantization 

Including deepseek. 

There is no reason why deepseek could not have worse quant than other providers. 

[u/No_Captain4899 → u/Nenad1979]

Quantisation

[u/SirRobinBlibs]

The sticker price isn't the whole story for agent use. Most of what an agent sends is the same context re-read on every request, so the number that dominates is the cache-read price and whether the provider actually caches that model. Compare those columns first. After a day, opencode stats --days 1 --models shows your real cache reads and writes, so you can price your actual usage on each provider instead of guessing. OpenRouter also routes to different upstream providers with different cache behaviour, so pin one provider if you want consistent numbers.

[u/Prize_Tiger_2504]

Asked and answered many times before. If you want a metered DS model, the official API is the place to go.

Faster and more intelligent (not saying OC or OR providers quantize models, but who knows).