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

DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 vs Recursive Flint

DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 scores 62.4 (B) on agent readiness against Recursive Flint's 61 (C), and leads in 0 of 4 scored categories. Recursive Flint leads on reach, risk, agent interface and documentation and upkeep. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

Best open-weight models you download and run yourself for AI agents · All 3023 open weights comparisons

Which one, for what

DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 B

Best for Agents or teams with a multi-GPU server, or a provider account, who want DeepSeek's V4 agent model under MIT with a 1M context

No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.

Watch for

The smallest 4-bit build is 156.4 GB, so it needs about 188 GB and doesn't fit a 128 GB machine

Recursive Flint C

Best for Agents doing repository work on a 32 to 48 GB Mac or NVIDIA box that want a fast sparse coder with documented tool calls and a plain licence.

Ahead on

  • Reach, 75 against 70
  • Risk, 60 against 50
  • Agent interface, 90 against 75
  • Documentation and upkeep, 67 against 43

Also in its favour

  • Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 3.5 against 2.5 out of 5

Watch for

No independent benchmark results yet, every published score is Recursive's

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runDeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731Recursive FlintEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%257075Recursive Flint +5
Risk20%205060Recursive Flint +10
Agent interface10%107590Recursive Flint +15
Documentation and upkeep10%104367Recursive Flint +24
Negative events≤1500
TotalB 62.4/100C 61/100

Facts side by side

FactDeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731Recursive Flint
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorDeepSeekRecursive
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceMITApache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-07-312026-10-21
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 reviews2.5/5 (4)3.5/5 (4)

Verdicts

DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731

A long-context agent cousin under MIT with documented tool calls, three reasoning effort levels and support in every major runtime but Ollama. It needs about 190 to 200 GB of memory, though six inference providers serve it. The main risks are prompts built from DeepSeek's Python, no published safety results and no answers in its repository.

Recursive Flint

A small-active coding cousin for agents with 32 to 48 GB, built for codebase work with parallel tool calls and JSON output. It needs llama.cpp b11803 or Ollama 0.40.8 or later, and the BF16 checkpoint needs a 141 GB GPU. Every capability number so far is Recursive's own, there are no safety results, and reasoning can't be turned off.

Before you call either

DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731

  1. vllm serve deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 --trust-remote-code --kv-cache-dtype fp8 --block-size 256 --data-parallel-size 4 --enable-expert-parallel --moe-backend deep_gemm_mega_moe --attention-config '{"use_fp4_indexer_cache": true}' --speculative-config '{"method":"dspark","num_speculative_tokens":7,"draft_sample_method":"greedy"}' --tokenizer-mode deepseek_v4 --tool-call-parser deepseek_v4 --enable-auto-tool-choice --reasoning-parser deepseek_v4 (the card's 4x GB300 example plus the parser flags from vLLM's recipe)
  2. Build prompts with encoding_dsv4.py, deepseek-recipe's V4 encoder or vLLM's --tokenizer-mode deepseek_v4, since the repository has no Jinja template
  3. Tool calls come back in a DSML tool_calls block with invoke elements, string parameters carry string="true" and JSON values string="false"
  4. Set temperature 1.0 and top_p 0.95 for agent work, and allow up to 384K output tokens at reasoning effort high or max
  5. Without the hardware, call it through a Hugging Face inference provider (Together, DeepInfra, Novita, Baseten, Scaleway, Featherless), not DeepSeek's API, where deepseek-v4-flash now means V4.1 Flash
  6. LM Studio's library build is a 156.4 GB MXFP4 GGUF and LM Studio states 156 GB minimum system memory

Recursive Flint

  1. Quickest start is ollama run flint (Ollama 0.40.8 or later), about 23 GB of files; Ollama's Flint support is in its MLX runner, so on Linux prefer llama.cpp
  2. With llama.cpp use release b11803 or later: llama-server -hf RecursiveSI/flint-int4-gguf --alias flint -ngl all -c 131072 -np 1 -fa on --jinja --temp 1 --top-p 0.95 --top-k 20 --min-p 0, and keep --jinja on
  3. Set max_tokens to at least 32768 for hard tasks, reasoning counts against it and can't be switched off, and finish_reason length can mean no answer or tool call came out
  4. Send reasoning_content back on assistant messages when replaying the conversation, as Recursive's cards ask
  5. Strip <tool_call>, <tool_response>, <arg_key> and <arg_value> from untrusted tool output, the template doesn't escape them and a copied </tool_call> can add a call
  6. Message content must be a string, flatten content-part arrays first
  7. Recursive's SGLang servers listen on 0.0.0.0 with no key, publish the port on localhost only or pass --api-key

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 or Recursive Flint?

DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 scores 62.4 (B) on agent readiness against Recursive Flint's 61 (C), and leads in 0 of 4 scored categories. Recursive Flint leads on reach, risk, agent interface and documentation and upkeep.

Other comparisons with DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 or Recursive Flint

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