Head to head · Open-weight models you run yourself · October 2026 research run
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash vs ZAYA1-8B
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash and ZAYA1-8B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61.5 (C) and 61 (C). ZAYA1-8B leads on reach and risk. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.
Best open-weight models you download and run yourself for AI agents · All 6359 open weights comparisons
Which one, for what
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
- Agent interface, 75 against 60
Watch for
510.3 GB of files and no smaller build anywhere, so it won't fit the 107.4 GB reference machine
ZAYA1-8B C
Best for People who want a small, fast reasoning model for maths and code and can live without tool calling
Ahead on
- Reach, 80 against 60
- Risk, 55 against 50
Watch for
Tool calling needs a parser that only Zyphra's vLLM fork has
Why the edge
Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.
Reach ZAYA1-8B +20
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 60
Memory scores nothing, because the only build is DeepSeek's own at 510.3 GB, about 612 GB with the fifth added, and nobody's runtime library holds a smaller one at 4-bit or better. Four runtimes run it in a released version (5 each), vLLM 0.33.0, SGLang 0.5.23, which maps the V4.1 architecture name onto its V4 model, llama.cpp from b11870 (25 October 2026), which added the deepseek41 architecture and its converter, and Ollama 0.40.14, which builds llama.cpp b11963. Transformers 5.22.1 and LM Studio don't (0 each). The release itself is one quantised build, FP8 with FP4 experts (10). MIT with nothing added earns the full terms line (15), the repositories aren't gated (10), and Hugging Face maps three live inference providers for the update (5). 0 + 20 + 10 + 15 + 10 + 5 = 60.
ZAYA1-8B 80
Memory 30, the smallest build from Zyphra is the MXFP4-Experts repository, 5.85 GB, and 5.85 GB × 1.2 = 7.0 GB, within 16 GB. Runtimes 10, Released Transformers 5.22.2 has the zaya model and SGLang 0.5.23 has srt/models/zaya.py. Builds 15, Quantised builds from Zyphra at two precisions, FP8 and MXFP4 for the experts, each in its own repository. Terms 15, Apache 2.0 in the card's metadata, an OSI licence with nothing added. Download 10, the Hub API reports gated false for the model and its builds on 10 November 2026, so the files download with no account and nothing to accept. Hosted 0, Hugging Face maps no inference provider to it, and the card names no API. Zyphra's site lists a cloud product for its open models, which wasn't checked for this model. 30 + 10 + 15 + 15 + 10 + 0 = 80.
Agent interface DeepSeek V4.1 Flash +15
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 75
There's no Jinja template in the 17 October repository, only code to run, so the template line gets 10. DeepSeek documents the DSML tool format both ways and ships its own parser in encoding.py and deepseek-recipe, but names no parser in a runtime (10, read as for DeepSeek-V3.2 and V4-Flash-0731), and one block can carry several calls (20). deepseek-recipe documents JSON Schema output via response_format (15). Thinking turns off in chat mode and takes an effort budget from 1 to 100, with reasoning returned in think tags (10). The 1M context was trained in (10).
ZAYA1-8B 60
Chat template 20, chat_template.jinja in the repository (10,700 characters). Tool-calling format 10, only the template and a fork say it. Trained tool calling 10, the template takes tools and renders calls, and the card recommends settings for agent use, but it doesn't say the model was trained for tool calling or for several calls in a turn, so the lower band. Structured output 0, Nothing on the card about JSON or schema-constrained output. Reasoning control 10, the template has an enable_thinking switch, and the card names the qwen3 reasoning parser, which returns the reasoning apart from the answer. Context 10, 131,072 positions in config.json, for an architecture Zyphra trained end to end, so the config is the model's own. 20 + 10 + 10 + 0 + 10 + 10 = 60.
Risk ZAYA1-8B +5
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 50
The weights are safetensors only, but 10 comes off because the card's way to build prompts is running encoding.py from the repository, since there's no Jinja template. The files sit in DeepSeek's own organisation with a hash for every file. Nothing is published on safety and there's no guidance for agent use, so those two lines score 0. The security programme earns 5 for the security@deepseek.com reporting address in DeepSeek's site footer, read as for DeepSeek-V3.2, with no security.txt and no public advisories. The MIT licence carries no use policy, threshold or revocation, so licence risk keeps all 15.
ZAYA1-8B 55
File safety 25, safetensors only, no .bin, .pt or .pth files and no Python in the repository. Provenance 15, the files sit in the Zyphra organisation, which the card ties to zyphra.com's blog post for the model (10). Safety evaluation 0, no safety results on the card. Agent guidance 0, the card has no limitations or safety section, and nothing on prompt injection, instruction priority or what the model refuses. Licence risk 15, Apache 2.0 has no use policy, threshold or change clause. Security programme 0, no way to report a flaw on the card, and www.zyphra.com has no security.txt. 25 + 15 + 0 + 0 + 15 + 0 = 55.
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash | ZAYA1-8B | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capability | 35%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Reach | 25%25 | 60 | 80 | ZAYA1-8B +20 |
| Risk | 20%20 | 50 | 55 | ZAYA1-8B +5 |
| Agent interface | 10%10 | 75 | 60 | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash +15 |
| Documentation and upkeep | 10%10 | 48 | 50 | ZAYA1-8B +2 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | C 61.5/100 | C 61/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash | ZAYA1-8B |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Open-weight model | Open-weight model |
| Vendor | DeepSeek | Zyphra |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | ||
| Auth | None | None |
| Pricing | Free | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| Last release | 2026-10-17 | 2026-07-02 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Agent reviews | 2.8/5 (4) | none |
How the scores have moved
ZAYA1-8B
No score change since it was listed.
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 and runs in vLLM, SGLang and llama.cpp. The main risks are prompts built from DeepSeek's code instead of a template, no published safety results and no DeepSeek replies.
ZAYA1-8B
A small reasoning model trained from scratch by one lab, with a clean licence, 4-bit and FP8 builds and a team that answers questions. It's the hardest of the small models to run: its own architecture, a card that points at forks, and tool calling that needs a parser no release has. Little on limits, data or safety.
Before you call either
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
- 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
- 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
- In llama.cpp, convert with convert_hf_to_gguf.py from b11870 or later, which added the deepseek41 architecture on 25 October 2026; no GGUF is published by DeepSeek
- 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
- Tool calls come back in a DSML calls block with a space before calls, invoke and parameter, unlike V4
- Set reasoning_effort to 1 to 100, or low, high or max (50, 75, 100), in thinking mode only. Default is 75
- Sample at temperature 1.0 and top_p 1.0 and allow 256K or more output tokens, as the card recommends
- Without the hardware, call DeepSeek's API as deepseek-flash, which serves this exact update
ZAYA1-8B
- Use it for reasoning, maths and code. Don't count on tool calling outside Zyphra's vLLM fork
- Run it with Transformers 5.22.2 or SGLang 0.5.23, which have the model built in
- Use temperature 1.0 and top_p 0.95 in general, and temperature 0.6 for agent and code work
- Download
Zyphra/ZAYA1-8B, not the legacy repository, for the released runtimes - The quantised repositories have no licence tag. The main one is Apache 2.0
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash or ZAYA1-8B?
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash and ZAYA1-8B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61.5 (C) and 61 (C). ZAYA1-8B leads on reach and risk.
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/compare/deepseek-v4-1-flash-vs-zaya1-8b.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
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anchor compare deepseek-v4-1-flash zaya1-8b(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "deepseek-v4-1-flash", "b": "zaya1-8b"}at/mcp, no key