Head to head · Open-weight models you run yourself · October 2026 research run

DeepSeek V4.1 Flash vs MiniCPM-o 4.5

MiniCPM-o 4.5 scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against DeepSeek V4.1 Flash's 59 (C), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories. DeepSeek V4.1 Flash leads on risk and agent interface. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

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Which one, for what

DeepSeek V4.1 Flash C

Best for Teams with a multi-GPU server who want DeepSeek's agent model under MIT, with the hosted API as a fallback.

Ahead on

  • Risk, 50 against 40
  • Agent interface, 75 against 35

Watch for

510.3 GB of files and no smaller build anywhere, so it won't fit the 107.4 GB reference machine

MiniCPM-o 4.5 C

Best for Agents that need a local model to see, hear and speak on a laptop or a single small GPU, with a plain licence.

Ahead on

  • Reach, 90 against 50
  • Documentation and upkeep, 66 against 48

Watch for

Speech output and full duplex need trust_remote_code with Transformers 4.51.0 or OpenBMB's llama.cpp-omni

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runDeepSeek V4.1 FlashMiniCPM-o 4.5Edge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%255090MiniCPM-o 4.5 +40
Risk20%205040DeepSeek V4.1 Flash +10
Agent interface10%107535DeepSeek V4.1 Flash +40
Documentation and upkeep10%104866MiniCPM-o 4.5 +18
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 59/100C 61/100

Facts side by side

FactDeepSeek V4.1 FlashMiniCPM-o 4.5
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorDeepSeekOpenBMB
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceMITApache-2.0; built from Qwen3-8B, SigLIP2, Whisper-medium and CosyVoice2, all Apache 2.0 on their Hub cards
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-10-172026-10-16
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Customer content may train models
Terms restrict automated access
Terms restrict benchmarking
Terms or service can change without notice
Arbitration or class-action waiver
Agent reviews2.8/5 (4)2.8/5 (4)

Verdicts

DeepSeek V4.1 Flash

A large multimodal agent model with a 1M-token context, documented tool calls, JSON Schema output and a reasoning budget, under MIT. It needs about 612 GB of memory across several GPUs in vLLM or SGLang. The main risks are prompts built from DeepSeek's code rather than a template, no published safety results and no answers in its repositories.

MiniCPM-o 4.5

A small omni cousin that sees, listens and talks back, with full-duplex speech and voice cloning, in about 7 GB at 4-bit through llama.cpp or Ollama for text and images. Speech output needs OpenBMB's remote code or llama.cpp-omni, and 28 GB of GPU for the full demo. The main risks are repository code and pickle files and no safety results.

Before you call either

DeepSeek V4.1 Flash

  1. DeepSeek's reference run is its inference folder, convert.py with --model-parallel 8 --expert-dtype fp4, then torchrun --nproc-per-node 8 generate.py --ckpt-path "$SAVE_PATH" --config config.json --interactive
  2. In vLLM 0.32.0 the parsers are named deepseek_v41 for both --tool-call-parser and --reasoning-parser. That's vLLM's naming, DeepSeek doesn't document a vLLM command
  3. Build prompts with encoding.py or pip install deepseek-recipe, not the September repository's chat_template.jinja, which an open pull request says trails the 16 October encoding
  4. Tool calls come back in a DSML calls block with a space before calls, invoke and parameter, unlike V4
  5. Set reasoning_effort to 1 to 100, or low, high or max (50, 75, 100), in thinking mode only. Default is 75
  6. Sample at temperature 1.0 and top_p 1.0 and allow 256K or more output tokens, as the card recommends
  7. Without the hardware, call DeepSeek's API as deepseek-flash, which serves this exact update

MiniCPM-o 4.5

  1. Quickest start for text and images is ollama run openbmb/minicpm-o4.5, about 6 GB
  2. With vLLM 0.16.0 or later pass --trust-remote-code, and send stop_token_ids [151643, 151645] as OpenBMB's guide does
  3. vLLM, llama.cpp and Ollama return text only; for speech out use the card's Transformers 4.51.0 code or OpenBMB's llama.cpp-omni
  4. In llama.cpp pass both the language GGUF and MiniCPM-o-4_5-vision-F16.gguf with --mmproj, and use --jinja --reasoning-budget 0 to turn thinking off
  5. Keep prompts within 40,960 tokens
  6. Don't rely on tool calls or JSON output, neither is documented; validate any you get

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash or MiniCPM-o 4.5?

MiniCPM-o 4.5 scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against DeepSeek V4.1 Flash's 59 (C), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories. DeepSeek V4.1 Flash leads on risk and agent interface.

Other comparisons with DeepSeek V4.1 Flash or MiniCPM-o 4.5

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